pet·u·lant Pronunciation Key (p ch  -lnt)adj.
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Posted on 02/12/2002 12:24:57 PM PST by PatrickHenry
Since 1920 creationists have been successful in persuading legislatures in five Southern states to pass laws favorable to their views, but the courts consistently struck them down, saying that they violated the establishment clause of the Constitution. In the 1990s creationists began focusing instead on changing state educational standards. The most famous attempt to do so in recent years--the decision of the Kansas Board of Education to eliminate evolution from the state's science standards--was not a success: the decision was reversed in 2001 when antievolution board members were defeated for reelection.
Still, creationists have been victorious in many other states, a trend catalogued by Lawrence S. Lerner of California State University at Long Beach. His evaluation, summarized and updated in the map below, is valuable in part because it points up the widespread sway of creationists in Northern states, such as Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin, that have a liberal or moderate tradition. Furthermore, it highlights the fact that certain Southern states--North and South Carolina--have more rigorous educational standards than some Northern states, such as New York and Massachusetts.
There is little information on what is actually taught in individual classrooms and school districts, so it is not clear what effect state standards have on the quality of evolution teaching. The influence of the standards is, however, potentially great because they are likely to affect the content of textbooks and lesson plans. Standards set the tone under which teachers and administrators work and, if written well, make it easier for science-oriented educators to insist that all teachers, including the one third who advocate equal time for creationism, observe proper guidelines.
Creationists have been able to alter state education standards despite being a fairly small minority. According to a 1999 poll by the People for the American Way Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based organization opposed to the teaching of creationism in science classes, only 16 percent of Americans support the teaching of creationism to the exclusion of evolution. A huge majority--83 percent--favor teaching evolution, but most of them maintain that creationism should be discussed in science classes with evolution. Only 37 percent expressed strong support for evolution--that is, teaching it to the exclusion of all religious doctrine in science classes.
In the absence of a majority favoring strict standards for evolution teaching, it is easy to see why creationists have been able to make headway even outside the circle of evangelical Christianity. In 1996 Pope John Paul II reaffirmed the Catholic Church's commitment to evolution, first stated in 1950, saying that his inspiration for doing so came from the Bible. Despite this, 40 percent of American Catholics in a 2001 Gallup poll said they believed that God created human life in the past 10,000 years. Indeed, fully 45 percent of all Americans subscribe to this creationist view. Many who are indifferent to conservative theology give creationism some support, perhaps because, as mathematician Norman Levitt of Rutgers University suggests, the subject of evolution provokes anxiety about the nature of human existence, an anxiety that antievolutionists use to promote creationist ideas.
There was no mixing in that quote. Plate tectonic movements happen because the magma currents don't mix. And I still don't see an answer to how sedimentary strata get atop high mountains in the word "mixing." You could just as well be referring to turbulent mixing in the waters of the Great Flood, silly as that would be.
the next town in the universe---God owns that one with clear undisputed title--no entry for that farce--show!
Well, when a left-leaning magazine uses poll data from a leftist organization, one is naturally skeptical.
If we take the poll they cited at face value, most Americans aren't hostile to Evolution being taught, but it appears many are concerned about it being presented in a context that is religiously hostile. Wouldn't it be wise to make the case for Evolution instruction in a way that doesn't confirm this view?
Certainly. Evolution, like other scientific theories (gravity, atomic structure, etc.), doesn't deal with the supernatural at all, so there's no hostility to religion which is inherent in evolution.
v. mixed, mix·ing, mix·es
v. tr.
Finally, the lithosphere will be driven back into the asthenosphere where it returns to a heated state.
Pedesis
According to what I have read on some of these threads, they don't necessarily act that way. In any case random, by its nature, is not designed, but I do agree with you that it(Brownian motion) has a purpose.
To obfuscate, evade, and confuse in the manner of lawyers.
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Both are correct statements. The key word is "spontaneously". If heat does flow from a colder body to a hotter one, there must be an active agency at work (such as a refrigerator) pumping heat from the cold area to the hot one.
Creationists like to point at life as something they believe to be low in entropy, and leap to the assumption that the agency responsible must be intelligent. But since there is a far more egregious local lowering of entropy associated with the sun's corona, why do they trust that in that case a natural mechanism is responsible for pumping the heat? Why don't they invoke the hand of God to move the heat?
Okay, I thought I misunderstood that part of your answer.
As to the Corona, how do you determine its entropy/change?
Try Charles Ginenthal's description of geological evidence for global floods, note the s on the end of the word 'flood' indicating plural and note also that I somehow resisted the temptation to post the thing here rather than providing a URL...
Or invoke a band of angels to push the plantets around in their orbits?
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