Posted on 07/25/2009 10:11:21 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Life is not a naturalistic phenomenon with unlimited evolutionary potential as Darwin proposed. It is intelligently designed, ruled by immutable laws, and survives only because it has a built-in facilitated variation mechanism for continually adapting to internal and external challenges and changes. The essential components are: functional molecular architecture and machinery, modular switching cascades that control the machinery and a signal network that coordinates everything. All three are required for survival, so they must have been present from the beginninga conclusion that demands intelligent design. Lifes built-in ability to adapt and diversify looks like Darwinian evolution, but it is not. Darwins theory of speciation via natural selection of natural variation is correct in principle, but it cannot be extrapolated to universal ancestry. What we see instead is different kinds of organisms having been designed for different kinds of lifestyles, with enormous potential for diversification built-in at the beginning, but with time this potential for diversification has become depleted by selection and degraded by mutations so that we are now rapidly heading towards extinction. Intelligent design and rapid decay point to recent Creation and Fall, as the Bible tells us....
(Excerpt) Read more at creation.com ...
Just to make it clear, I took part in the prayer and the pledge. And was glad to do so.
You put the liberal secular God of science before Christianity.
To shut God out of the discussion of His own creation and call yourself a Christian will forever be a “you” problem allmendream.
You have issues and of course dozens of people know this and constantly tell you as much.
Stop parroting liberal nonsense and pay attention for once!
Thanks for the clarity!
Not having government officials in charge of deciding which religious creeds should be taught to children isn’t liberal nonsense; it is a necessity for a nation to have religious liberty.
But you obviously think teaching Creationism is more important than having a nation of religious liberty.
Including God in discusssions of His creation is called religious freedom. Simple as that.
You really do project too much.
We are talking about a government official declaring some religious doctrines to be true and others to be false; and your idiotic assertion that anybody who opposes it isn't a Christian.
You are just pretending to be a Christian.
OF COURSE I’m talking about discussions!
What in the world would you call my previous example of a little girl asking about God’s wonderful hand in creating two sets of teeth?
You had two options:
1. The little girl could be encouraged and told we’re not sure why God made us this way and then move onto the science.
2. Your choice and your words: “God doesn’t belong in science class”.
Your bed was made a long time ago, shutting down the discussion and YOU full well know it.
Quit whining and sleep in it already!
We are talking about what would be taught in public schools as determined by government officials.
Your idiotic and asinine position is that unless I believe that government officials should have the power to determine what religious doctrines (specifically Creationism/I.D.) are correct and which are not; then I am somehow only pretending to be Christian.
Your view is anathema to the idea of religious liberty and the idea of a limited and secular government with no power over the freedom of conscience.
“We are talking about what would be taught in public schools as determined by government officials.”
Who determines what is taught in public schools now?
Exactly. Allmendream is simply too indoctrinated to recognize which side he's on.
And for those who repeat that saw about it not being a religion, it meets the definition: Explanation for origins and purposes of humanity and the rest of life, the relationships between them, human morality and consciousness, a directing force, its holy men and doctrine.
That is why Dover school board that got sued by parents when they tried to introduce “cdesign proponentist” arguments; and thrown out of office by the votes of their concerned constituents.
People want science taught in science class, not religious precepts.
Moreover government teaching what religious doctrines (creationism) are correct is an abridgment of freedom of conscience and anathema to a nation of religious liberty.
Wanting science taught in science class is not an anti-Christian position; I find it completely in line with my own Christianity and the view of our founders that we shall all have freedom of conscience.
The states set the basic requirements for public schools and the local boards can add some things but can’t go below what the state requires, at least in this state.
“People want science taught in science class, not religious precepts.”
Then “people”, I assume you mean the majority, should decide what is taught?
And if a majority should decide that some form of creationism as an alternative to evolution be taught as well as evolution?
Not any kind of an expert in genetics, but my understanding is that the impact of differing chromosome numbers can vary. The DNA can usually segregate and pair up properly, say during meiosis, even if some parts are on different chromosomes. But (it appears to be the case to this layman that) the more the differences in chromosome organization, the more likely that something can and will go wrong.
For instance, those chromosomal races of mice are all (all the combinations I've read about that have been tested anyway) interfertile. They can all mate and produce healthy offspring. However, the degree of fertility is reduced, by at least a little, in nearly all cases of crosses between chromosomal races. They don't produce pregnancies quite as easily and/or don't produce as many offspring.
Anyway, the point remains, I think, that an n-number change is a more drastic change, and more difficult to occur, and more difficult to fix in a population, etc, than is a simple point mutation (a change in a single DNA base pair). Yet you, and other creationists here, seem insistent in denying that point mutations can occur and accumulate in such a way as to generate new genetic diversity. (Although creationists don't seem to deny that point mutations occur, so I'm not sure, absent some magical mechanism creationists have never specified, what prevents them from adding new genetic diversity and variation.)
Evolutionists claim a common ancestor for all the horse kinds, ultimately for ALL animals really. How is that much, or any different, than what creationists are saying?
Because evolutionists attribute it to evolution. They propose actual mechanisms. They infer speciations occurred by natural mechanisms over thousands, hundreds of thousands and millions of years.
Creationists assert that, somehow (no model or mechanism is provided), the "kinds," represented by only 2 to 14 individuals each on Noah's ark, were crammed full of all the genetic information necessary to variously produce several, dozens, in some cases even hundreds, of distinct species, spread about the entire globe, closely adapted to varying local environments, all in a few hundred years following the flood.
IOW, creationists are cramming millions of years of evolution into hundreds of years, and aren't even allowing evolution to help!
Alternatively, if creationists aren't appealing to the ark-kinds-crammed-full-by-no-conceivable-means-with-all-the-genetic-information-of-dozens-of-species explanation, then they are, in effect, saying that, following the flood, evolution at first runs thousands of times faster than even the most rabid evolutionists would consider remotely plausible, but then abruptly stops at the boundaries of "created kinds." This even though creationists cannot operationally define "kinds" in such a way that we can tell what those boundaries are, and creationists provide no mechanism that would stop evolution at those supposed boundaries, OR that would make it operate at such breakneck speeds within them.
These are WILDLY different scenarios, even without getting into all the other bizzare revisions YECs propose to earth history.
I mentioned it to point out that not only is the argument for teaching religious doctrine in science class unconstitutional, it is unpopular.
And if you argue for freedom of conscience why should my child be taught Darwinism, a teaching that fits a description of religion? Or is popularity, a majority desire, sufficient justification for teaching what violates my freedom of conscience?
If teaching religious doctrine is a constitutional no-no why not remove all religious doctrine?
Should we also fail to teach children gravity and that the Earth orbits the Sun because a few creationists are also geocentrists and feel that doing so is an attack upon their belief system?
Is teaching heliocentrism also religious?
Would teaching Geology without including “the Flood” be religious?
Just because science conflicts with your interpretation of scripture doesn't make science a religion.
No indeed, but what makes Darwinism a religion are those that believe in it with with religious devotion.
You keep talking about limited government but want it limited to enforcing your belief in evolution, something that has nothing to do with gravity or geocentrism.
“Would teaching Geology without including the Flood be religious?” No, but it would be one sided.
If evolution is all about science why the objections to any mention of contrary views, religious or otherwise in schools? Why should the opinions of some scientists be a privileged position?
Sure, you're for freedom of conscience as long as it's your freedom and your conscience.
Teaching science is not an abridgment of someones freedom of conscience or the establishment of a religion.
But it seems you are not against impinging upon someones freedom of conscience or having government officials teach and pronounce the correctness of religious doctrine; so long as it is YOUR religious doctrine being promoted.
Ever wonder why science is accepted worldwide by people of every different culture and belief; but religious belief is different everywhere you go, even among practitioners of the same religion?
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