You really don't know how much you've revealed, do you?
Posted on 06/07/2002 11:35:28 AM PDT by jennyp
To Seattle area residents the struggle over how evolution is taught in public high schools may seem a topic from the distant past or a distant place.
Don't bet on it. One nearby episode in the controversy has ended, but a far-reaching, Seattle-based agenda to overthrow Darwin is gaining momentum.
Roger DeHart, a high-school science teacher who was the center of an intense curriculum dispute a few years ago in Skagit County, is leaving the state. He plans to teach next year in a private Christian school in California.
The fuss over DeHart's use of "intelligent design" theory in his classes at Burlington-Edison High School was merely a tiny blip in a grand scheme by promoters of the theory.
The theory is essentially this: Life is so complex that it can only be the result of design by an intelligent being.
Who is this unnamed being? Well, God, I presume. Wouldn't you?
As unlikely as it may seem, Seattle is ground zero for the intelligent-design agenda, thanks to the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and its Center for Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC).
Headed by one-time Seattle City councilman and former Reagan administration official Bruce Chapman, the Discovery Institute is best known locally for its savvy insights on topics ranging from regionalism, transportation, defense policy and the economy.
In the late '90s, the institute jumped into the nation's culture wars with the CRSC. It may be little known to local folks, but it has caught the attention of conservative religious organizations around the country.
It's bound to get more attention in the future. Just last month, a documentary, Icons of Evolution, premiered at Seattle Pacific University. The video is based on a book of the same name by CRSC fellow Jonathan Wells. It tells the story of DeHart, along with the standard critique of Darwinian evolution that fuels the argument for intelligent design.
The video is part of the anti-Darwin agenda. Cruise the Internet on this topic and you'll find something called the Wedge Strategy, which credits the CRSC with a five-year plan for methodically promoting intelligent design and a 20-year goal of seeing "design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life."
Last week, Chapman tried to put a little distance between his institute and the "wedge" document. He said it was a fund-raising tool used four years ago. "I don't disagree with it," he told me, "but it's not our program." (I'll let the folks who gave money based on the proposed strategy ponder what that means.)
Program or not, it is clear that the CRSC is intent on bringing down what one Center fellow calls "scientific imperialism." Surely Stephen Jay Gould already is spinning in his grave. Gould, one of America's most widely respected scientists and a prolific essayist, died just two weeks ago. Among his many fine books is one I kept by my bedside for many weeks after it was published in 1999, "Rock of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life."
In "Rock of Ages," Gould presents an elegant case for the necessary co-existence of science and religion. Rather than conflicting, as secular humanists insist, or blending, as intelligent-design proponents would have it, science and religion exist in distinct domains, what Gould called magisteria (domains of teaching authority).
The domain of science is the empirical universe; the domain of religion is the moral, ethical and spiritual meaning of life.
Gould was called America's most prominent evolutionist, yet he too, was a critic of Darwin's theory, and the object of some controversy within the scientific community. There's a lesson in that: In the domain of science there is plenty of room for disagreement and alternative theories without bringing God into the debate.
I have no quarrel with those who believe in intelligent design. It has appeal as a way to grasp the unknowable why of our existence. But it is only a belief. When advocates push intelligent design as a legitimate scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations of evolution, it is time to push back.
That's what they continue to do in Skagit County. Last week, the Burlington-Edison School Board rejected on a 4-1 vote a proposal to "encourage" the teaching of intelligent design. Bravo.
Despite proponents' claims of scientific validity, intelligent design is little more than religion-based creationism wrapped in critiques of Darwin and all dressed up in politically correct language. All for the ultimate goal — placing a Christian God in science classrooms of America's public high schools.
You really don't know how much you've revealed, do you?
*You'll soon be making arbitrary and unscientific pronouncements.
Are there facts outside the space-time continuum?
How do you know?
Please present facts to support your contention.
**Horsepuckey. If you start from the position "That which is moral is that which causes the least harm and makes the most people the most long-term content," science can kick in quite nicely.
"Does God exist" is no more special a question than "Do dinosaurs thrive on a high mesa in Brazil." You have the questions, now look for facts to support the answer you think is correct. If all the evidence for God or Brazillian dinosaurs turns out to have a much more mundane explanation, and no new evidence comes along, and you've made an exhaustive search... then you can safely answer "No, to within such and such a probability." if, on the other hand, incontrovertible evidence for God or Brazillian dinos turns up, then you can answer "Yes."Between "Horsepuckey" and "science can kick in," you confirmed the point you thought you were refuting.
At "start from the position" you were arbitrary.
There are Ivy League department chairs in Philosophy waiting for you, if you can demonstrate parameters on how to go about conducting an exhaustive search for evidence of God's existence.
Not one of your better posts.
To equate the teaching of faith with beaking on the wheel is no more intellectually honest with than equating the teaching science (or evolution) with communism or nazism.
"teaching science" should read "teaching of science."
Scientist? More like story teller. He gave up paleontology because it did not prove his atheistic theory. He thus went into fiction writing about new species arising where no one could see them and where no one would find a trace of them. His writings are more new age religion than science.
A creationist here once showed me a definition of "spiritual" that said "having to do with consciousness". But it is kinda confusing, though, since it most often is taken to mean having to do with the supernatural.
Equating God == good is a reification error
Are you seriously implying that good is not an abstraction? Or are you asserting that God is material?
As I said in the rest of the paragraph,
Equating God == good is a reification error. Just like saying God == a supernatural man on a supernatural throne would be an anthropomorphization error, a specific kind of reification error. It's like saying "God is profit and profit is God", or "God is the color blue and the color blue is God", or "God is hurry up and hurry up is God". It's a category error. The Good is a class of actions and attitudes, and God is a supernatural person. They're fundamentally different things. So you can't solve the Euthyphro dilemma that way.
If you propose that such-and-such is or might be... it is up to YOU to show that it is so.
Is that a fact. Then YOU define what the word morality means. If we cannot agree on a basic definition of the word, then it is a pointless debate.No, when it comes to what might or might not be beyond the space-time continuum, there's no scientific evidence... period.
Science only deals with what can be observed. We are unable to extend our observations beyond space-time. Science is irrelevant outside of it.
What's outside? Something or Nothing? Science is silent.
Dunno why you decided to ramble about aether, since it's not something that was suggested beyond space-time.
Unless God is actively trying to hide evidence of his existence, there are a wide range of possibilities for finding evidence of God in the universe. Take irrational numbers, frex (such as pi). Do as Sagan suggested in "Contact" and start looking at pi at a wide range of numerical bases... God could have, if he so wanted, put a message within pi that would be incontrovertible proof of the existence of an intelligent creator of not just manking, not just the Earth, not just the Universe... but the laws that govern the way the entire universe works.Morality is the objective standard by which we measure ethical behavior.
You OK with that?
I look at the Periodic Table or the simple fact that our Universe has Laws of Physics, and I see plenty of God's handiwork. But is that scientific evidence?
No.
You appear to offer two possibilities, that either God would conceal His existence, or that He would leave incontrovertible proof of it all over the Universe. You neglect a third:
That God hides in plain sight, waiting for us to discover the obvious by what ultimately boils down to a leap of faith.
Why?
For free will.
God could have talking neon signs floating around and following us wherever we go to constantly prove His existence to us. Why bother with Carl Sagan and pi?
Yet He doesn't, because He isn't interested in puppets, which is what we would be if we were constantly bombarded with incontrovertible evidence of Him.
You anoint all that falls under your label of "science" with equal usefulness. As if Science were the New Christianity or some such rot. Since when has the theory of evolution brought mankind even one single concrete benefit.
Oh I know what good it has brought. The employment of thousands of evolutionists is a fact that cannot be denied. And the debunking of the idea of creation. So I take it back. </sarcasm>
Note that these characteristics appear in social critters; for relatively weak animals, being part of a group increases one's chances of survival. These characteristics promote group, and hence individual, survival.
You counter that he has bad taste in postcards. Hello-o?
That still doesn't answer which one is material. That is, unless you are redefining reification or admit to misusing reification.
re·i·fy Pronunciation Key (r   -f  , r -)tr.v. re·i·fied, re·i·fy·ing, re·i·fies
|
The title says it all.
I'll be researching this theory further.
Forty-two.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.