Cobb (County, GA) dads enter fray over evolution in schools

Atlanta Journal-Constitution ^ | 9.8.02 | MARY MacDONALD

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

In this realm, you are not free to legislate as you damn well please just because you are a majority, unless you are overly fond of anarchy or tyranny

As a matter of fact, if I have a sufficiently large majority (a Constitutional majority), I can change every word in the Constitution and the Amendments, including, as an example, establishing a national religion. All it requires is 2/3's of each house of Congress, and 3/4's of the state legislatures.

[HairOfTheDog]

Nothing about modern science precludes the existence of God. It would be nice if that respect were reciprocated toward modern biology.

I think you have drawn far more battle-lines than most Christians would. You are the one that says Science can't appear with God on the same page.

There is nothing wrong with a teacher presenting the origination of life by saying that some people believe that life started by itself in a mud puddle billions of years ago. Some people believe God made the mud puddle and caused the life. And some people believe that God created it all in seven days. Now class, what do you think?

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

the American Revolution and the production of the Bill of Rights are, indeed, the same event.

Funny thing, there were plenty of folks who supported the one, and not the other. They disagreed with you.

[donh]

I am a free American citizen. I get to label anything that I want to with any label that I want to. With a little luck, that will become the label that everyone uses, and earlier ones will be forgotten.

While I admire this quintessentially american sprit--what a rugged independent cuss you are--it doesn't really help much in addressing perplexing questions of the Commons, such as mandatory universal public schooling. Like humpty dumpty, a word means whatever you want it to mean? That works great until you are engaged in cooperative, reciprocal communities. Then, suddenly, objectively sharable meanings arising from historically commmon context and usage become vitally important. It is not useful for science to mean whatever you like, however much that tickles your fancy.

[donh]

Funny thing, there were plenty of folks who supported the one, and not the other. They disagreed with you.

There were plenty of folks who disagreed about individual amendments. To my knowledge, none of them therefore thought it was 10 discrete, unrelated documents. Thoughts do not occur in isolated containers. If one wants to know what original intent was, one must examine the intellectual anticedents of the event. Your position--that because we don't know what happened in secret meetings of a special committee of the congress, therefore the original intent was accomodation--is one mighty feeble excuse for an argument.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Tell you what, donh, I have been up now for over 16 hours, and we seem to be basically repeating ourselves here. I have also been participating in the soon to be war threads, and am beat. Why don't you come up with some new arguments, or we can just agree to disagree on this. I'll be sure to check back tomorrow.

[donh]

I think you have drawn far more battle-lines than most Christians would. You are the one that says Science can't appear with God on the same page.

I did not say that. I only said God can't appear on the page labeled "science" at the top. And don't be kidding yourself about who is drawing battle lines. There is an acknowledged, indeed, celebrated, attempt afoot to undermine the naturalistic (for which a scientist might easily read "evidence-based" but which a creationist erroneously reads "god-rejecting") assumptions modern science needs to make to do its job by weakinging science curriculums by including ID speculation as if it were science.

[donh]

Tell you what, donh, I have been up now for over 16 hours, and we seem to be basically repeating ourselves here. I have also been participating in the soon to be war threads, and am beat. Why don't you come up with some new arguments, or we can just agree to disagree on this. I'll be sure to check back tomorrow.

God keep you.

[HairOfTheDog]

OK - We can present you view too... that some people feel that nothing that cannot be proven should even be included in discussion of Science. Happy? Class? - What do you think?

[donh]

In this realm, you are not free to legislate as you damn well please just because you are a majority, unless you are overly fond of anarchy or tyranny

As a matter of fact, if I have a sufficiently large majority (a Constitutional majority), I can change every word in the Constitution and the Amendments, including, as an example, establishing a national religion. All it requires is 2/3's of each house of Congress, and 3/4's of the state legislatures.

Indeed you could--if you are overly fond of anarcy and tyranny. It is very tough on people to have to re-establish a basis for the common law, and it is rare to get it right. that's what's so insanely great about our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Useless as they are now, they served us well for 250 years--longer than the Roman Republic lasted, longer than the reign of any benign monarch. A triumph in a realm where punting and going belly-up is the common expectation.

[donh]

OK - We can present you view too... that some people feel that nothing that cannot be proven should even be included in discussion of Science

That is not my view. Since David Hume, most scientists and philosophers of science have been of the opinion nothing in the natural sciences can be proven. You can only develop (or lose) high confidence in a theory, you can never prove it--the tools for doing so do not exist, as they do in formal mathematics.

What I have contended, in my opinion, quite sensibly, is that what most scientists think is science is what we should teach as science. Likewise, I hold the opinion that what most dictionary consultants regard as good grammar should be taught as good grammar.

[donh]

Interesting quotes from Washington. Since you have them so handy, I am certain that if had ever said anything to support the idea that the government should forbid religious beliefs from being expressed in public institutions, you would have cited them. Since you failed to do so, it is obvious that no such statements exist.

Uh huh. No one says that. What the current court says is governments can't spend money on it. No court finding, of which I am aware, nor any statement of Washington's, forbids a student or a legislative representative, or a postman from saying a prayer. It prevents them all from perverting an expensive public forum into a pulpit for the benefit of one religion to the exclusion of others.

As was obviously intended by Washington (and from the quotes I have given) , Madison, the Establishment clause, and the current Supreme Court.

[maxwell]

Faith based beliefs, such as creationism should NOT be taught in schools.

Well evolution is a faith-based belief too. Nobody was around then to measure red-shifts, luminosities, rotational and translational velocities, radiation backgrounds, density fluctuations and whatnot. Interesting stuff, to be sure, but it belongs to the theoreticians. As any decent experimentalist knows, extrapolation can be tricky.

[Brellium]

This is debate focusses on three issues really; first, weither Creationism is soemthing that should be taught in schools; second, should Evolution Theory be taught with or without any counter balance and should schools who teach it go out of their way to explain that it is indeed a theory; and third what is or should be allowed by law.

In addition to those three topics there is also the additional issue of if weither Creationism should can be justified scientificly or can Evolution Theory be justified using the bible. My personal religious beliefs demand that science and religion must be in harmony; without science to back up parts of religion it becomes dogmatic and stale, and without religion for science we lose our moral bindings.

First lets handle the issue should a religious belief be taught in schools.

We live in a Secular nation, but one who like many other secular countries our laws and beliefs are based on a religion and that religion is Christianity.

(from dictionary.com)
sec·u·lar Pronunciation Key (sky-lr)
adj.

1. Worldly rather than spiritual.
2. Not specifically relating to religion or to a religious body: secular music.
3. Relating to or advocating secularism.
4. Not bound by monastic restrictions, especially not belonging to a religious order. Used of the clergy.
5. Occurring or observed once in an age or century.
6. Lasting from century to century.


n.

1. A member of the secular clergy.
2. A layperson.

But in this country many of the people who founded it are were from religious sects that were not widely supported or even harrased by their local government(s). For instance the "pilgrims" were of a religious sect, puritians, that was widely persecuted in England and sought a place where they could practice their brand of Christianity without such persecution. The puritian movement had such an effect that when our constitution was drafted special protections were granted to those who wished to practice their own religion whatever it maybe.

The original intent of that clause was to allow anyone to practice their version of Christianity without persection from the state and to prevent the state from choosing or making a version of Christianity it's own. In the centuries following that we have taken that meaning to implay any religion or any sect of any religion. So it has become the duty of our nation and any of our local governments not to promote one religion in particular, even if a majority of it's people practice it. This does not prevent anyone associated with the state in any way from practicing their religion it merely protects us from the undue influence from the state. On that grounds since our public schools are an embodyment of the state it is only logical, and prudent to keep the schools as secular as possible and leave the schools only to teaching that which is of a secular nature, thus Creationism does not fit that profile.

On the issue of Evolution Theory, is there not a saying that God works in mysterious ways? I would consider Evolution if it is true to be that. Were Evolution proved true what would it change? Perhaps God in some mysterious way lobbed a lightening bolt down into a pool of water and that spark created some simple celled orginism that eventually became man. Could he not in the billion years it took for those orginisms to form into creatures guide their creation in such a way that he infact did give life, souls and intellect to us all? (well most of us, that is) Was belief in God broken when Capernicus turned his glasses to the sky and found that the sun did not revolve around the earth and that instead the earth revolved around the sun? No, it mearly broke the principles of Aristotle that the Cathlic church was built on. To claim that a Theory at best is defunct because it contridicts the bible could very well be considered a sin to God since it would forbit is from looking at a theory that could allow us to look at God and appreciate his mysteries that much more. If an interpetation of the bible goes up against science and one or the other is wrong I am willing to bet that it is the interpetation of the bible rather than science, since from what is written in the bible more than one gleaning can be made.

Lastly, can science be used to back up Creationism? No, creationism in it's current from does not conform with what we know, we know how the earth was formed we know when it was formed, and we know how old the entire universe is. The belief that God created everything day by day in our senses is quite a streach since we know the earth was not formed in one day the sun did not light up in just one day, the oceans were not formed in just one day and so forth and so on. It is only logical that man was not formed in one day nor was the rest of creation, atleast not in our sense of days, as it is written a day is but a thousand years.

The teaching of religious beliefs is not something for our government, I would rather them not instruct on the matter than risk the chance they instruct incorrectly. Religion is something to be taught by parents not the government and not through the government. The problem is that too few parents actually want to bother with their child's education and consider school for their children nothing more than tax supported day care. These parents become obssively upset when they find that the day care actually exists to try to instruct their children.

[donh]

Well evolution is a faith-based belief too.

Everything anyone believes is faith-based. Even mathematical proofs.