Ga. school board OKs teaching creationism

CNN.com ^ | Friday, September 27, 2002 | CNN

[Heartlander]

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."

[VadeRetro]

"Suddenly, on the 2-billionth day" is a little strawmannish. Not a lot happens on one day in most models. And an anthropomorphic Nature is about as bad as an anthropomorphic God, scientifically speaking. What's the evidence for it? And--OK, this is more of a writing critique than a textual one--what does "without intelligence" refer to? You mean, of course, that no guiding intelligence is required, but appear to say that life on earth has not acquired intelligence.

Your ability to spew nonsense, IOW, does not constitue logical argument.

[VadeRetro]

Don't get me started again today. I'm cooling off.

[hoosierskypilot]

I must confess, it's been so long since I studied world religions in college I can't remember the theology of the religions you mentioned. (I do remember Zoroastrianism, though, since I did a paper on Zoroaster, once upon a time.)

But, back to the discussion. This particular debate hinges upon the religious beliefs of the community in Georgia. If I understand, the parents of the particular kids are tired of government teachers teaching whatever they, the government, chooses, without regard to the parent's beliefs. If they (the parents) are predominantly Christian, then that's probably what they'll demand be taught in addition to evolutionary hypothesis.

[f.Christian]

Review by Richard Milton
When, a dozen years ago, I first published my view that Darwinism is scientifically flawed, I immediately encountered a kind of opponent who was to become very familiar to me over the next decade. I mean the kind who (quite sincerely) believes that anyone who challenges the conventional Darwinist view must be someone who is simply ignorant of the scientific facts. Such an opponent thus sets out to cure the ignorance he meets by the simple expedient of rehashing over and over again the tenets of the received wisdom, as found in the pages of Nature and Scientific American.

These guardians of Darwinian truth find it literally impossible to believe that anyone could actually have conducted some research and analysis that has led them to conclude rationally that Darwinism is scientifically flawed and think that -- like an Englishman abroad -- if only they shout a little louder, the dimwit foreigner might finally get the Darwinist message.

Michael Brass is such an upholder of the received wisdom on Darwinism, and his book, The Antiquity of Man, is just such a rehashing of that received wisdom. There is nothing new here. No new facts, no new scientific discoveries, not even a new interpretation or new analysis, merely the repetition of all the same old stuff that anyone who has ever spent time in a dentist's waiting room, leafing through old copies of National Geographic, is already thoroughly familiar with.

But in his book, Brass is not merely sounding off about anti-Darwinists in general -- he has some specific targets in his sights. From the outset he attacks scientific creationists for their views and he singles out the book 'Forbidden Archaeology' by Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson.

As I'm not a creationist, and I don't have any religious beliefs, I don't intend to try to speak for Cremo, Thompson or anyone else, and I'm sure they are well able to look after themselves. But I am concerned, as a secular critic of the scientific content of Darwinism, that writers like Brass are getting away with obscuring the real scientific issues under the guise of 'debunking' what they pretend is merely 'creationist propaganda', a pretext that enables them to continue to dodge engaging in real scientific debate.

I've read Cremo and Thomson's book. I didn't find any religious propaganda or creationist messages, but I did find a mountain of carefully compiled scientific observations and reports that uniformly tend to undermine the conventional view that people like Brass hold so tightly and are unwilling even to debate openly and honestly. Certainly there are a few geological and palaeontological observations in Forbidden Archaeology that I found weak or questionable. That is hardly surprising since the book is 1000 pages long and contains thousands of references.

What a book like Forbidden Archaeology shows, in my view, is that if even a half (or even a tenth) of the objections raised by its authors are valid scientific objections, then Darwinism is a theory that is in deep, irremediable trouble. And the best that Brass can do in the way of rebuttal is to question a handful of their cases as unproven or badly chosen. His preferred method of rebuttal in almost all cases is that described earlier: he simply recites again, more loudly, the accepted Darwinist view.

We get an early glimpse of Brass's fundamentalist stance on the evidence claimed to support Darwinism such as dating of fossils. On page 38 he presents a table of two kinds of fossil dating. He labels the first as 'relative dating' and the second, radiometric dating by the potassium-argon method, he calls 'absolute dating'. Now, as his degrees are in history and archaeology, it is perfectly possible that Brass is completely unaware of the important scientific error he is making in describing radiometric dating of fossils as 'absolute' dating, and is merely taking it on trust from his physicist colleagues that his belief is correct -- as most scientists do. But the fact remains that the words 'absolute dating' can never be used in connection with the radiometric dating of fossils of any kind. (For background to dating fossils, see 'Shattering the myths of Darwinism' chapters 3, 4, and 5.)

To be fair, I should add that Brass is far from being the only professional scientist who is confused about this question. Most Darwinists are. Even Gavin de Beer, director of the British Museum of Natural History, wrote in the museum's Guide to Evolution, first published in 1970, that the rocks forming the geological column and the fossils in them had been directly dated by radiometric methods -- a claim which is scientific nonsense and based solely on ignorance of the real facts.

In the same passage, Brass tries to make his claims for the potassium-argon method seem credible by pointing out that '0.01% of all natural potassium is radiopotassium.' To the uninitiated, this rarity must make the method seem special. But Brass forgets to mention that the substance this radioactive potassium turns into, the end product that is measured, is argon-40. Argon is the twelfth most abundant element on earth, and more than 99 per cent of it is argon-40. And there is no physical or chemical way to tell whether a given sample of argon-40 is the residue of radioactive potassium or was present in the rocks when they formed.

There are many other places where Brass shows he has swallowed Darwinist urban scientific myths hook, line and sinker. On the very first page of his introduction he repeats the commonly-made claim that Darwinian evolution is supported by observed speciation, when the true scientific facts are that there is not a single real case of observed Darwinian speciation (the cases listed in the talk-origin "FAQ" being entirely bogus [more information available here]).

Whenever he encounters scientific evidence that he is unable to rebut, Brass appeals to authorities who, in his mind, are so grand as to be unimpeachable. Yet these 'authorities' and their words often turn out on closer inspection to have no more substance than Brass himself.

For example, the work of zoologist Solly Zuckermann, has long been a thorn in the side of Darwinists because Zuckermann conducted a study which concluded that Australopithecines (like 'Lucy') were predominantly ape-like and not human-like creatures and thus not ancestral to humans. Brass dismisses the work of Zuckermann, one of Britain's most distinguished zoologists, by reference to a quote from Jim Foley. Who is Jim Foley? He is the author of the talk-origins "FAQ" on human origins, which is as badly-researched and bogus as the rest of the talk-origins "FAQs" [more information available here].

In writing this book, Michael Brass has put on his arms and armour, chosen a cause about which he feels passionately, selected a battleground and engaged those he perceives as the enemies of science. Unfortunately, his armour doesn't fit him, his weapons are blunt, his passionate cause is already lost and, worst of all, he has chosen the wrong battle. For instead of attacking the real enemies of science -- the brain-dead pedlars of urban scientific myths -- he is attacking the few people who are making an honest attempt to question a theory that is long past its sell-by date.

This book is designed to bring aid and comfort to the excrement-hurling howler monkeys that infest Internet groups such as talk-origins, by reaffirming once more the oft-told Darwinist tale of human origins. It does not advance the cause of scientific investigation nor, despite its title, does it shed any light on the antiquity of mankind.

Richard Milton is the author of Shattering the Myths of Darwinism and 'Alternative Science'.

---

[f.Christian]

National Review's List of the Top 100 Nonfiction Books of the 20th Century (85)
Author Info:
Russell Kirk
1918-1994
To understand the historic import of this book, which began life as a doctoral dissertation, it is perhaps helpful to note that a year after it came out, Lionel Trilling, in his book The Liberal Imagination, would maintain that :

[I]n the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition.... It is
the plain fact [that] there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation...[only]...irritable mental gestures
which seem to resemble ideas.

Though the sentiment is obviously inane, Mr. Trilling's hubris, and that of liberals in general, was perhaps understandable in light of the fact that he wrote at the precise midpoint of the long liberal interregnum that prevailed from the presidency of Herbert Hoover (1928) until the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. The position of Left intellectuals of that day seems somehow reminiscent of the famed little old lady who told a physics lecturer that all he had said about the heliocentric universe was rubbish because :

'The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.'

The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, 'What is the tortoise standing on?'

'You're very clever, young man, very clever,' said the old lady. 'But it's turtles all the way down.'

Trilling and company, perched on the middle tortoise, assumed it must be tortoises all the way up and down. As Russell Kirk amply demonstrated, they were as wrong as she.

Mr. Kirk begins his survey of Anglo-American conservative thought (he is even credited with bestowing upon this philosophy the term conservative) by defining what it generally consists of :

Any informed conservative is reluctant to condense profound and intricate intellectual systems to a few portentous phrases;
he prefers to leave that technique to the enthusiasm of radicals. Conservatism is not a fixed and immutable body of dogma,
and conservatives inherit from Burke a talent for re-expressing their convictions to fit the time. As a working premise,
nevertheless, one can observe here that the essence of social conservatism is preservation of the ancient moral traditions.
Conservatives respect the wisdom of their ancestors...; they are dubious of wholesale alteration. They think society is a
spiritual reality, possessing an eternal life but a delicate constitution: it cannot be scrapped and recast as if it were a machine.
[...] I think there are six canons of conservative thought--

(1) Belief that a divine intent rules society as well as conscience, forging an eternal chain of right and duty which links
great and obscure, living and dead. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. [...]

(2) Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of traditional life, as distinguished from the narrowing uniformity,
egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems. [...]

(3) Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes. The only true equality is moral equality; all other attempts
at levelling lead to despair, if enforced by positive legislation. [...]

(4) Persuasion that property and freedom are inseparably connected, and that economic levelling is not economic progress.
Separate property from private possession and liberty is erased.

(5) Faith in prescription and distrust of 'sophisters and calculators.' Man must put a control upon his will and his appetite,
for conservatives know man to be governed more by emotion than by reason. Tradition and sound prejudice provide
checks upon man's anarchic impulse.

(6) Recognition that change and reform are not identical, and that innovation is a devouring conflagration more often than it
is a torch of progress. Society must alter, for slow change is the means of its conservation, like the human body's perpetual
renewal; but Providence is the proper instrument for change, and the test of a statesman is his cognizance of the real tendency
of Providential social forces.

He contrasts these core beliefs with those of conservatism's opponents on the Left, the radicals of all stripes, who believe in :

(1) The perfectibility of man and the illimitable progress of society: meliorism. Radicals believe that education, positive
legislation, and alteration of environment can produce men like gods; they deny that humanity has a natural proclivity
toward violence and sin.

(2) Contempt for tradition. Reason, impulse, and materialistic determinism are severally preferred as guides to social
welfare, trustier than the wisdom of our ancestors. Formal religion is rejected and a variety of anti-Christian systems
are offered as substitutes.

(3) Political levelling. Order and privilege are condemned; total democracy, as direct as practicable, is the professed
radical ideal. Allied with this spirit, generally, is a dislike of old parliamentary arrangements and an eagerness for
centralization and consolidation.

(4) Economic levelling. The ancient rights of property, especially property in land, are suspect to almost all radicals;
and collectivist radicals hack at the institution of private property root and branch.

Thus, the playing field. He then goes on to an erudite, idiosyncratic and altogether beguiling discussion of the chain of men who have defended conservative ideas and resisted radical impulses from Edmund Burke, the sine qua non of the Right, to T.S. Eliot, the great poet and critic. Among the others whose thought he surveys are : John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Sir Walter Scott, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Randolph, John Calhoun, James Fenimore Cooper, Alexis de Tocqueville, Orsestes Brownson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Benjamin Disraeli, Cardinal Newman, Henry Adams, Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More, and George Santayana. Their styles, their particular concerns, their errors, their failures, their successes all vary widely, but the core principles that they seek to vindicate remain, unchanging. Pluck Edmund Burke from the mists of time and plop him down on Meet the Press this Sunday and he'd voice the same concerns about our society as he voiced about his own in the 18th Century. On the other hand, put Karl Marx on the Today Show and even Katie Couric would tear him apart. The enemies and the fetid ideologies that the conservative mind had to contend with were ever changing, a vast array of utopian daydreams discarded one after another by a Left that never admits the error of its ways, but merely moves on to the next destructive iteration of radicalism, secure in the delusion that this next attempt will achieve a "perfect" society, right here on Earth, while instead leaving piles of corpses in its blood-soaked wake.

It seems certain that the Left will never bring itself to reckon with the conservative critique of the whole liberal impulse, but after Russell Kirk's book, no one can honestly argue that such a critique does not exist. The very endurance and continuing relevance of conservative ideas suggests that, in fact, when the intellectual history of the West is written, it will be conservatism that is found to have been the most powerful philosophical tradition that our culture created. Whether that history is written by a free and decent human being may well depend though on the ultimate success of the conservative mind.

(Reviewed:05-Feb-02)

Grade: (A+)

Buy The Conservative Mind: from Burke to Eliot from Amazon.com

[4CJ]

Are evolutionists scared of competition?

[hoosierskypilot]

"Please provide examples of scientific methods that can be used to test the possibility of creationism.."

I don't know the dynamics involved in this debate in Georgia, except the excerpt in the article posted.

But I don't think anyone is talking about scrutinizing Creationism according to scientific principles.

It seems they (the parents) simply want Creationism presented as an altenative. Or maybe I missed the gist of the entire post.

Without being in Georgia (and, sometimes, I wish I were), I'm guessing the parents would like evolution to be presented as an hypothesis, which it is.

Maybe, in the minds of many, Creation is not scientific. But, since evolution cannot be proven scientifically, which confines it forever to the "theoretical" arena, then it needs to be presented as theory.

In the classroom, then, both "theories" are on a level playing field.

But, then again, I may have missed the point of the post.

[PatrickHenry]

Are evolutionists scared of competition?

There is no competition. Evolution is the only scientific theory that explains the evidence. All the "competing" tales are religious in nature. I have no problem with any of them, but they don't beling in a science class.

[Frapster]

I'll wager 400. The loser has to start their own crevo thread.

[whattajoke]

Sigh, what an absolute embarrassing blight on our great country. What a freaking joke our science curriculum is becoming. When accredited colleges stop accepting students from Cobb county, will they wake up from their stupor?

The point has been made, but I must reitterate: Non-evol fantasies can be dealt with 2 ways in class. One would involve the teacher, on day one, stating, "Some people think the earth, sky, solar system, galaxy, universe was creating about 6000 yrs ago in 7 days by God. Now open your textbooks and for the rest of the year we'll study what anyone with a brain knows as evolution."

The second way of dealing with it will be an exhaustive, comprehensive narrative fiction class during which the teacher tries to capture every single creation myth in existence from the Pau Pau New Guinean "The world was created from a giant Egg," to Greek mythology to Norse mythology, on and on and on and on and on and on. Now tell me, dear creationists, does that sound like science class to you? does that sound like something you want your kid sitting through? This GA decision is stupid beyond words.

[AndrewC]

When accredited colleges stop accepting students from Cobb county, will they wake up from their stupor?

Good reasoning. That is why home-schoolers tend to clean the clocks of public schooled kids.

[Dimensio]

But, since evolution cannot be proven scientifically, which confines it forever to the "theoretical" arena, then it needs to be presented as theory.

Evolution is change in alelle frequency over time. It's a definition of an observed phenomenon, kind of like rain. That much is 'fact'. It's sometimes used as a catch-all term for the various theories regarding origin of species (which relies on the process called evolution as a driving mechanism). That much is theory. I don't see anyone having a problem with calling it theory. The problem is when people insist that it be restated over and over again that "evolution is theory, not fact" but they never make demands of any other theories such as gravity or relativity.

It seems they (the parents) simply want Creationism presented as an altenative

Except that Creationism isn't science, so it should not be presented as such. It's like teaching auto mechanics as an "alternative" version of mathematics to calculus.

I'm guessing the parents would like evolution to be presented as an hypothesis, which it is.

Um, no, it's a theory. There's a difference.

In the classroom, then, both "theories" are on a level playing field.

What predictions are made by "Creation" theory. How can these predictions be tested. What observations should result from these tests. What observations would falsify Creation theory?

[f.Christian]

Running joke is 'evo-science'...

biggest cult of oxy-moonie-morons---art bells!

Latest evo gem--artist...

Sure. All domesticated animal husbandry is proof of evolution but in the case of planned animal husbandry, man, rather than environmental influences, play the role of selectivity. Try to think this through, which, I realize, may not be easy. If you cross a poodle to a poodle, do you get a wolf? (Knock, Knock)

Now: Do you care to give me scientific proof that God exists?

I'm not kidding. You people amaze me.

294 posted on 8/25/02 12:02 PM Pacific by AllSmiles

More...

Like FR 'patrickhenry'...

"search for the creator via evolution"---

"total--only evolution" too---

The papal encyclical rightwingprofessor-whack thinks/interprets---"professes evolution"...

could abortion be next???

Nebullis..."preschool evolution---INTENSIVELY"---

donh..."if the sun can create crystals-snowflakes...human life would certainly follow"---

(Why, if the sun can create crystals and snowflakes, can't it create life?)

(How much different is my paraphase of your rhetorical question---statement!)

also by donh...Hitler and nazi germany were all Christians---creationists!

(With this statement we can safely say bankrobbers/murderers are auditors/morticians!)

dominick harr..."just like a ball bouncing down the stairs----evolution created everything"---

jennyp..."anarchist evolutionary(natural) capitalism---Christianity(manmade) is communism"---

and patrickhenry doesn't know..."if prior to darwin---if science existed"...

SkyRat...Divine hammer-retribution from above via evolution!

exdemmom...evolution is the "lug wrench" that fixes science--biology/life!

Running sores of evo schlock!

Few new ones by the vade--junior--ph evo cult...

More schlock---latests(evo proof/matches/links)...

over---abundance of dung for beetles...schlock providence/miracles

ground depressions on earth surfaces collect liquids producing ponding---more spontaneous schlock opportunities/diversity...

motion/movement is created via biological interference/resistance in gravitational force fields...

foot/toe ground contact---attractions/balance...

standing/walking/running upright

amazing...dancing too!

My own...how evo schlock made us...

Insects vibrate molecules and gas particles---sound...and how humans procreate via words/instruments---music/songs.

I get it!

This schlock is so simple...natural---unplanned---no design!

Presto...mommies/daddies---babies!

Only logic--sense--sanity could schock the evo-schlock world...if it could penetrate it!

One more evo gem by allsmiles...

CLASSIC...

I really don't care who is crazy as long as they are tame. But the religious are not tame. They insist upon imposing their lunatic beliefs upon the rational and the children of the rational. That's where you get yourselves in trouble. If you have any confidence in what you are saying at all, be content to keep it to yourselves, as atheists are.

381 posted on 8/26/02 5:42 AM Pacific by AllSmiles

Yeah...as atheists are?

All quotes accurate---some paraphased!

[Condorman]

This particular debate hinges upon the religious beliefs of the community in Georgia.

This is true. And this is why the argument should have stopped before it even got out of the gate. Religious beliefs are not appropriate for a science class in ANY school.

If I understand, the parents of the particular kids are tired of government teachers teaching whatever they, the government, chooses, without regard to the parent's beliefs.

Science can be damn inconsiderate of other people's religious beliefs. Cobb County (my home, BTW) has some of the best schools in Georgia. Of course, thanks in part to the efforts of our beloved "Education Govenor," Georgia has the 58th best school system in these-here United States. (Yes, I went to public school, why do you aks?)

Creationism is hardly cutting-edge science. We might as well teach school kids that angels are still pushing the planets around the sun. No good can come of this.

The Christian Creation myth is just that: a metaphor, a parable, an allegory, call it what you will it cannot be taken literally. As such, it is perfectly compatible with the scientific theory of evolution. Regardless, creation ain't science, and doesn't belong in the classroom.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

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.

I didn't see anywhere in here how they proposed to teach the alternate theories. Will the class be called religious origins or social studies or what?

[Dementon]

Is that a testimonial?

You better believe it. My thoughts are much clearer since I discovered MindGuard!

[<1/1,000,000th%]

"No, we're math majors; like, we understand the laws of probability."

Math majors don't say "like". And we don't go to biology class.

[Dimensio]

All quotes accurate---some paraphased!

A paraphrased quote is by definition inaccurate.

Of course, creationists contradicting themselves in a single sentence is nothing new :)

[f.Christian]

Most quotes exact...some paraphrased!

New one by PH..."no competition"---in his religion---faith based propaganda!

Wow!

[Condorman]

creationists contradicting themselves in a single sentence is nothing new

Of course it's new. Because it never happened. And the fact that it happened totally refutes the stupid theory of evolution.

[ANTIEVOLUTIONISTLOGICMODE=OFF]... Ow!