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Ga. school board OKs teaching creationism
CNN.com ^ | Friday, September 27, 2002 | CNN

Posted on 09/27/2002 5:59:21 AM PDT by Heartlander

Edited on 04/29/2004 2:01:19 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) --A suburban Atlanta school board Thursday night voted unanimously to allow teachers to introduce students to different views about the origins of life, among them creationism.

The Cobb County Board of Education, the state's second-largest school board, approved the policy change after limited discussion, calling it a "necessary element of providing a balanced education."


(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: crevolist
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161 posted on 09/27/2002 10:10:32 PM PDT by general_re
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To: gore3000
The evidence is the Cambrian explosion and the lack of both intermediate fossils and intermediate species.

"Most families, orders, classes, and phyla appear rather suddenly in the fossil record, often without anatomically intermediate forms smoothly interlinking evolutionarily related taxa with their presumed ancestors."

Eldredge, N., 1989
Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics: Species, Niches, and Adaptive Peaks
McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, New York, p. 22

"The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life's history -- not the artifact of a poor fossil record."

Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I. (1982)
The Myths of Human Evolution Columbia University Press, p. 59

"The gaps in the fossil record are real, however. The absence of a record of any important branching is quite phenomenal. Species are usually static, or nearly so, for long periods, species seldom and genera never show evolution into new species or genera but replacement of one by another, and change is more or less abrupt."

Wesson, R., 1991
Beyond Natural Selection
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, p. 45

"Taxa recognized as orders during the (Precambrian-Cambrian) transition chiefly appear without connection to an ancestral clade via a fossil intermediate. This situation is in fact true of most invertebrate orders during the remaining Phanerozoic as well. There are no chains of taxa leading gradually from an ancestral condition to the new ordinal body type. Orders thus appear as rather distinctive subdivisions of classes rather than as being segments in some sort of morphological continuum."

Valentine, J.W., Awramik, S.M., Signor, P.W., and Sadler, P.M. (1991)
"The Biological Explosion at the Precambrian-Cambrian Boundary" Evolutionary Biology, Vol. 25, Max K. Hecht, editor, Plenum Press, New York and London, p.284

The molecular clock does not exist

There's a whole scientific community that would beg to differ.Allan Wilson published a paper titled 'Immunological Time-Scale For Human Evolution' in Science magazine in December 1967. Together with doctoral student Vince Sarich, Wilson argued that the origins of the human species could be seen through, what he termed, a 'molecular clock'. This was a way of dating, not from fossils, but from the genetic mutations that had accumulated since they parted from a common ancestor. The molecular clock estimated the length of time from divergence, given a certain rate of change.
When Wilson and Sarich analysed and compared genetic material of humans and chimpanzees, they found the material to be 99 percent identical. From this, using the 'molecular clock' reasoning (bigger differences equate to greater time since their last common ancestor) they deduced that the earliest proto-hominids evolved only five million years ago.
In the early 1980s, as his findings for the age of the proto-humans were starting to be more widely accepted, Wilson again dropped a bombshell on traditional anthropological thinking with his best known work with Rebecca Cann and Mark Stoneking on the so-called "Mitchocondrial Eve" hypothesis. In studying gene types he started to focus on mitochondria DNA (mDNA) - genes that sit in the cell, but not in the nucleus, and are passed from mother to child. This DNA material is important because it mutates quickly, thus making it easy to plot changes over relatively short time spans. By comparing differences in the (m)DNA Wilson believed it was possible to estimate the time, and the place, modern human first evolved. With his discovery that human mDNA is genetically much less diverse than chimpanzee mDNA, he concluded that modern human races had diverged recently from a single population while older human races such as Neanderthal, Java Erectus and Pekin Erectus had become extinct. He and his team compared mDNA in people of different racial backgrounds and concluded that all modern humans evolved from one 'lucky mother' in Africa about 200,000 years ago.

Potassium-Argon dating is not exact enough to tell us what came first because of the large +- variable. In addition, because the fossil record is spotty, one can never be sure which species arose first or later.

Potassium/Argon method is for determining the age of igneous rocks based on the amount of argon-40 in the rock. Radioactive potassium-40 decays to argon-40 with a half-life of about 1.3 billion years, making this method useful for dating rocks that are billions of years old. A more sophisticated method, called argon-argon dating, provides a more accurate estimate of the original potassium-40 content by means of the ratio of argon-40 to argon-39 in the rock, thus yielding a more accurate age determination. As for the fossil record being spotty, paleoanthropologists have identified forms of protohominids and hominids in various sites throughout the world which display evidence of speciation with both shared and derived characteristics. This is also true with fossil primates.

The problem with mtDNA is quite simple - there is no standard (or for any other genetic dating technique). We do not know what the mtDNA was of any creature a billion years ago for the simple reason that DNA decays quite fast

We have evidence of DNA sampling from a Neanderthal specimen.Molecular anthropologists have been using mtDNA for almost a decade to examine both the extent of genetic variation in humans and the relatedness of populations all over the world. Because of its unique mode of maternal inheritance it can reveal ancient population histories, which might include migration patterns, expansion dates, and geographic homelands. Recently mtDNA was extracted and sequenced from a Neanderthal skeleton. These results allowed anthropologists to say with some conviction that modern humans do not share a close relationship with Neanderthals in the human evolutionary tree.

162 posted on 09/27/2002 10:26:39 PM PDT by stanz
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To: Dimensio
Dimensio wrote: Science deals with observations. Creation, to have any merit within science, would need to be based on real observation, not speculation or some book that says that some god did it.

Hi Dimensio

We have many artifacts...and The Dead Sea Scrolls but most important we have God's Word telling us everything that has happened and everything that is about to happen. Prophecies!!! When the scriptures were written it wasn't possible for mankind to look forward in the future and tell us everything 100% but God - according to His record in the Bible, gets every prediction ( prophecy) 100% correct! How much more do we need?

The Old Testament was written between approximately 1450 BC and 430 BC. During that time, many predictions of the future were recorded in the Bible by God’s prophets. Of the events that were to have taken place by now, every one happened just the way they predicted it would. No other “sacred writing” has such perfectly accurate predictions of the future.

One Type—The Messianic Prophecies

Of these prophecies, the most striking examples are the predictions about an “anointed one” (“Messiah” in Hebrew) who was to arrive in the future. About 4 BC, a miraculous event occurred—a boy named Jesus was born to a virgin named Mary. You can read His story in the book of Luke. Starting at age 30, Jesus fulfilled more and more of these prophecies written about the Messiah. His fulfillment of these prophecies was very spectacular: Jesus gave sight to the blind, made the lame walk, cured those who had leprosy, gave the deaf hearing, and raised people from the dead!

These miracles and others were done many times in front of thousands of witnesses for three years. About 30 AD, Jesus was crucified (a prophecy) and died (a prophecy). Three days later he rose from the dead (another prophecy), after which He was seen by over 500 witnesses. Since these prophecies were written down at least 400 years before they happened, there is no doubt that the Bible’s writers were inspired supernaturally—by God. To examine these prophecies yourself, click on the link below. http://www.clarifyingchristianity.com/b_proof.shtml

The Messianic Prophecies

A Second Type—Fulfilled Prophecy Dealing With Nations There are many prophecies that can be proven through archaeology, especially prophecy dealing with entire nations. Typically, when God declared judgment on a nation, He would send a prophet to announce to the citizens why He was judging them and what He was going to do to them if they continued their evil behavior. On occasion, God would also tell the citizens how He would reward them if they started doing what was right.

The book of Jonah records a case where the very evil Assyrians stopped doing what was evil as a result of Jonah’s short prophecy. This is what God wanted, and God did not punish them as a result of their change of heart. However, most often the people would jeer at God’s prophet and continue their bad behavior—later becoming recipients of the exact punishment that God threatened.

Like other prophecy recorded in the Bible, these predictions support the supernatural inspiration of the Bible. The prophecies recorded in the Bible came true in such a detailed way that they could not have been predicted by chance. Further, archaeologists have evidence that these prophecies were written down many years before they were fulfilled, proving that they were not falsified documents claiming to be prophecies that came true. (The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls stopped the majority of that talk.)

Now I want you to read the prophecies that are still to be fulfilled. And remember how long ago the Bible was written then just listen to the news tonight.

Those events still to come.

Summary of Unfulfilled Prophecy.

1. The rapture of the church. (1 Cor. 15:51-53; 1 Thess. 4:14-15; Heb. 9:24-28; Rev. 4:1).

2. Revival of the Roman Empire: The Ten-Nation Confederacy. (Daniel, 7:7, 24; Rev 13:1; 17:3, 12, 13)

3. Rise of the Middle East Dictator (Daniel 7: 8; Rev 13:1-8)

4. Peace Treaty with Israel: Seven years before the second coming of Christ to establish kingdom on earth. (Daniel 9:27)

5. World church established. (Rev 17:1-5)

6. Russia and allies attack Israel: about 4 years before second coming of Christ. (Ezek 38, 39)

7. Peace treaty with Israel broken: world government, world economic system, world atheistic religion begins, three and a half years before second coming of Christ (Daniel 7:23; Rev 13:5-8, 15-17; 17:16, 17)

8. Martyrdom of many Christians and Jews (Rev 7:9-17; 13:15)

9. Catastrophic divine judgements poured out on the earth. (Rev Chapters 6-18)

10. World war breaks out in Middle East; Battle of Armageddon (Daniel 11:40-45; Rev 9:13-21; 16:12-16)

11. Second Coming of Christ (Matthew 24: 27-31; Rev 19:11-21)

12. Judgement of the wicked (Ezekiel 20:33-38 ; Matthew 25: 31-46 ; Jude 14, 15; Rev 19:15-21 ; 20: 1-4)

13. Satan bound (Rev 20: 1-3)

14. Resurrection of the saints (Rev 20:4)

15. Millennial kingdom begins (Rev 20: 5, 6)

16. Rebellion at end of millennium (Rev 20: 7-10)

17. Resurrection and judgement of the wicked: Great White Throne Judgement (Rev 20: 11-15)

18. Eternity begins: New heaven, new earth, new Jerusalem (Rev 21, 22)

163 posted on 09/27/2002 11:02:33 PM PDT by Ready2go
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To: Ready2go
"Fulfilled" prophecies are typically vague enough to be shoe-horned into any real-world event. Further, prophecy fulfillment itself is not evidence against evolution nor is it evidence for traditional Biblical creationism.
164 posted on 09/27/2002 11:09:47 PM PDT by Dimensio
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Comment #165 Removed by Moderator

To: piltdownpig
piltdownpig signed up 2002-09-21.

Say "Hi" to medved and to Lyndon Larouche!

166 posted on 09/28/2002 4:39:32 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
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To: Condorman
Keep up the good work and give me a ping when you've mastered "coherent thought."

Any particular reason your bio page is blank?

Because your mind is consumed by evo schlockism nothing resonates in an empty space. A guy over here always inebriated died in a drainage ditch with a broken beck. Nobody was around like the the times before to pull him out. Your tank must have a permanent drain in it. I know another guy who pushed his junker off of a cliff into the ocean because the only value was the insurance pay out for theft.

Ping me back wnen you get your brain donation---transplant!

167 posted on 09/28/2002 4:49:56 AM PDT by f.Christian
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To: hoosierskypilot
"the community is taking back government schools......But now that a community is actually doing that, it seems some Freepers are distressed."

That would be the libertarians amongst us (apparently they have no worthwhile site of their own), who decry the power of the fed gov except when it is used to smash any and all religious expression.

What I find most enjoyable in this debate is the so-called "protection" of scientific education. Given the state of scientific education, and education in general, in this country, the very last thing a thinking person would advocate is its protection.

I do not understand how the introduction of a small dollop of spirituality into an otherwise materialistic subject could cause such apoplexy. Clearly, the foundations of their ediface will not allow an honest inquiry. That monopoly is coming to an end.

Fortunately, they do not have the ultimate say in the matter. We will educate our own children in and outside of the public schools as is necessary. And it will be our children that lead the way into the future, having been equipped w/ a broader array of tools than those who have relied upon the government for their educational sustainence.

Just as it has been written "you will know them by their fruits" so too will the final evaluation be determined.

168 posted on 09/28/2002 5:19:03 AM PDT by Pietro
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To: Pietro
Govt indoctrination is necessary to jumpstart this hoax to brainwash children...

where are tax dollars are going---to finance freaks--liars--drones!

The evo master race---gods!

169 posted on 09/28/2002 5:25:53 AM PDT by f.Christian
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To: Tribune7
Because once they are found with modern animals they stop being prehistoric. Think, coelacanth.

False. Because a species persisted does not mean that it developed out of evolutionary sequence--sharks are living fossils, too--and alligators, I believe, and of course, insects/worms/et cetera.

Now, if you had a modern man or a modern species that dated back to an ancient strata, you'd have effectively disproven evolution. You should be looking for examples of modern species residing in ancient fossils with and dating far back before they should have evolved.

Silly argument, as nearly everything would have an anatomical structure that is older than the newest species. The coelacanth is simply a surprise. Now, if you had a coelacanth fossil in the precambarian strata, you'd get the nobel prize.

Can you give me an example of a walrus remain found in the same strata as that of a camel?

I'll bite, although I can imagine some conditions where that could arise. Link please.

fChristian posted an interesting article by Richard Milton in post 44 describing problems relating to radiometric dating of fossils specifically the potassium-argon method. I'm interested in your opinion.

Will look at it tonight. Hope you're having a nice weekend. :)

170 posted on 09/28/2002 6:18:54 AM PDT by Nataku X
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To: f.Christian
You have to give up or give me the answer!

dude, I gave up on you months ago. One can never "debate" you. If an man tells me the clock is talking to him, and he truly hears the clock talking to him, how can I tell him he's crazy?
171 posted on 09/28/2002 8:17:50 AM PDT by whattajoke
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To: Heartlander
Stephen Jay Gould’s greatest hits: Track 1: “Biology took away our status as paragons created in the image of God.

Stephen Jay Gould, RIP, believed in God. He wrote a treatise on how science and religion can complement each other.
172 posted on 09/28/2002 8:19:22 AM PDT by whattajoke
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To: SwordofTruth
At least you have an appropriate screen name.

And you too, "SwordofTruth", evoking that christian love, peace, and compassion we all hear so much about. Chopping the head of of knowledge and science. Go get 'em!
173 posted on 09/28/2002 8:22:14 AM PDT by whattajoke
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To: whattajoke
Chopping the head of of knowledge and science. Go get 'em!

ROFL!!

174 posted on 09/28/2002 8:27:09 AM PDT by RadioAstronomer
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To: piltdownpig
No it isn't; it's basically just a BS pseudo-religion done up to justify the lifestyles of the British aristocracy in the late 1800's.

WOW! Please cite your sources for this tidbit.

175 posted on 09/28/2002 8:29:04 AM PDT by RadioAstronomer
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To: gore3000
Perhaps you should finally learn to read before you post, Pope Gore the Looney.

"It is the educational philosophy of the Cobb County School District to provide a broad based curriculum; therefore, the Cobb County School District believes that discussion of disputed views of academic subjects is a necessary element of providing a balanced education, including the study of the origin of the species.

The new policy isn't limited to science class or evolution.

176 posted on 09/28/2002 8:33:40 AM PDT by balrog666
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To: whattajoke
whattajerk
177 posted on 09/28/2002 8:33:49 AM PDT by f.Christian
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To: f.Christian
[---disconnected gibberish snip---]

Well that was a fairly impressive post. Complete sentences, punctuation and everything. Unfortunately, content level, relevance, understanding of cause and effect, and argument from anything other than ad hominem were all approaching zero.

Wait a minute! I know what's going on! You are using Free Republic to practise human speech... so you can walk among us undetected... to learn our weaknesses... so the invading hordes can descend from the sky and enslave us all! Well I'm telling you right now, I'm not going to be pet monkey to some slimy, scaly, intergalactic conqueror! I'LL NEVER BE TAKEN ALIVE!!! AAAHHHHH!!!!!!

(We now return you to your regularly scheduled crevo thread, already in progress.)

178 posted on 09/28/2002 8:36:56 AM PDT by Condorman
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To: RadioAstronomer
piltdownpig: No it isn't; it's basically just a BS pseudo-religion done up to justify the lifestyles of the British aristocracy in the late 1800's.

RadioAstronomer: WOW! Please cite your sources for this tidbit.

The source is of course one of medved's FPS (Frequently Posted Spam) articles. That's not surprising since pp does such a superb imitation of medved himself.

179 posted on 09/28/2002 8:42:55 AM PDT by VadeRetro
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To: PatrickHenry; VadeRetro; general_re
The morons on parade appear to be out in force. Do you think they got some marching orders or just spontaneously decided to trash the thread? Think they will try to get the thread pulled again?

Oh, and take back the Senate of course.

180 posted on 09/28/2002 8:43:01 AM PDT by balrog666
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