Posted on 02/20/2006 5:33:50 AM PST by ToryHeartland
Churches urged to back evolution By Paul Rincon BBC News science reporter, St Louis
US scientists have called on mainstream religious communities to help them fight policies that undermine the teaching of evolution.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) hit out at the "intelligent design" movement at its annual meeting in Missouri.
Teaching the idea threatens scientific literacy among schoolchildren, it said.
Its proponents argue life on Earth is too complex to have evolved on its own.
As the name suggests, intelligent design is a concept invoking the hand of a designer in nature.
It's time to recognise that science and religion should never be pitted against each other Gilbert Omenn AAAS president
There have been several attempts across the US by anti-evolutionists to get intelligent design taught in school science lessons.
At the meeting in St Louis, the AAAS issued a statement strongly condemning the moves.
"Such veiled attempts to wedge religion - actually just one kind of religion - into science classrooms is a disservice to students, parents, teachers and tax payers," said AAAS president Gilbert Omenn.
"It's time to recognise that science and religion should never be pitted against each other.
"They can and do co-exist in the context of most people's lives. Just not in science classrooms, lest we confuse our children."
'Who's kidding whom?'
Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, which campaigns to keep evolution in public schools, said those in mainstream religious communities needed to "step up to the plate" in order to prevent the issue being viewed as a battle between science and religion.
Some have already heeded the warning.
"The intelligent design movement belittles evolution. It makes God a designer - an engineer," said George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory.
"Intelligent design concentrates on a designer who they do not really identify - but who's kidding whom?"
Last year, a federal judge ruled in favour of 11 parents in Dover, Pennsylvania, who argued that Darwinian evolution must be taught as fact.
Dover school administrators had pushed for intelligent design to be inserted into science teaching. But the judge ruled this violated the constitution, which sets out a clear separation between religion and state.
Despite the ruling, more challenges are on the way.
Fourteen US states are considering bills that scientists say would restrict the teaching of evolution.
These include a legislative bill in Missouri which seeks to ensure that only science which can be proven by experiment is taught in schools.
I think if we look at where the empirical scientific evidence leads us, it leads us towards intelligent design Teacher Mark Gihring "The new strategy is to teach intelligent design without calling it intelligent design," biologist Kenneth Miller, of Brown University in Rhode Island, told the BBC News website.
Dr Miller, an expert witness in the Dover School case, added: "The advocates of intelligent design and creationism have tried to repackage their criticisms, saying they want to teach the evidence for evolution and the evidence against evolution."
However, Mark Gihring, a teacher from Missouri sympathetic to intelligent design, told the BBC: "I think if we look at where the empirical scientific evidence leads us, it leads us towards intelligent design.
"[Intelligent design] ultimately takes us back to why we're here and the value of life... if an individual doesn't have a reason for being, they might carry themselves in a way that is ultimately destructive for society."
Economic risk
The decentralised US education system ensures that intelligent design will remain an issue in the classroom regardless of the decision in the Dover case.
"I think as a legal strategy, intelligent design is dead. That does not mean intelligent design as a social movement is dead," said Ms Scott.
"This is an idea that has real legs and it's going to be around for a long time. It will, however, evolve."
Among the most high-profile champions of intelligent design is US President George W Bush, who has said schools should make students aware of the concept.
But Mr Omenn warned that teaching intelligent design will deprive students of a proper education, ultimately harming the US economy.
"At a time when fewer US students are heading into science, baby boomer scientists are retiring in growing numbers and international students are returning home to work, America can ill afford the time and tax-payer dollars debating the facts of evolution," he said. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/4731360.stm
Published: 2006/02/20 10:54:16 GMT
© BBC MMVI
Here's my problem with that: Unless God came to you directly and told you personally that the Bible is his word, you are putting your faith in the word of other men. Period.
So we have to believe them, but not hold them to a standard of *proof*.
That sounds like a creationist's argument.
Yes, or no
So God told you personally that the Bible is his inspired word?
No, he is a state employee and as such he is constrained by the US Constitution. Surely there is academic freedom in deciding who to give a recommendation to but when you run afoul of the constitution in the manner you suggest your academic freedom ends.
Of course, Dini could have gotten off the public payroll and stood by his principle that any doctor not adhering to Dini's loyalty oath can not be a good doctor but pragmatism won out over principle.
Such is life.
Ah Captain Obvious strikes again ;^)
Sorry, couldn't resist but that the Theory of Evolution doesn't cover the origins of life is what we tell the creationists at least a dozen times per thread but somehow it just doesn't sink in.
In more general terms the ToE is only concerned with the dynamics of populations of self-replicating entities. How these entities arose doesn't matter because it doesn't affect the dynamics of this system in the least. So as long as there are imperfect self-replicators, you have evolution.
If science is going to operate under the assumption that only what is provable IS science, it cannot prove that life originated by 'accident'.
Well, science certainly does operate under the assumption that only what is observable (proof is for mathematics and whisky) is indeed science. However, observable doesn't mean only directly observable but also indirectly. If it were only the former, science would have stopped before it really took off.
Returning to your example, science can indeed not prove that life originated by 'accident', what it can demonstrate however, is that life could have arisen naturally under the right conditions.
Now, this doesn't prove that creationism is false only that it need not necessarily be true (as far as the origin of life is concerned).
Oh, but I thought you disapproved of the Federal Courts being brought into it? Doesn't Dini, as part of his right to free speech, have the right to decide who he writes letters of recommendation for? And isn't the intervention of the federal government, to force someone to write a letter recommending someone, a far more egregious intrusion than a federal government preventing a school broad from adopting a certain curriculum?
Unless God came to you directly and told you personally that the Bible is his word...
JMO, but I think this is what many fundamentalists think has happened to them.
I disagree.
I am. I would not employ a creationist physician.
???
I'm sorry, I don't understand . . . how did he violate the constitution?
He also won't give a letter unless he knows the person well, as he states there. And he could choose to only give a letter to someone from a given city, or any other requirement he wants -- it's a *PERSONAL* letter of reccommendation.
It is a letter that uses his personal reputation to reccommend someone. It is not a 'University' matter, as I understand it.
Am I mistaken?
I've answered your question several times. The theory of evolution is no more tentative than any of the best-established scientific theories. To speak of the 'tentative theory of evolution' is therefore to speak falsely.
Yeah, I knew Huxley was a mystic. It is not really fair in many ways to call eastern religions "religious" as they ultimately deny a personal being that we would call "God" in favor of what I (and others) call "pan everything ism."
It was the progression FROM the idea of a personal God and judge on which I was trying to focus, however poorly I worded it, Thomas!
[marks in book.... this theist means well and seems nice but the idiot can't communicate]
Each of us is free to choose a church in which we are comfortable. You choose a church which, in effect, interprets scripture so that it's in conflict with the physical world. That conflict is one that you prefer, not one that necessarily exists. Fine with me. It's your choice. Nevertheless, the world is what it is.
Pure, unadultarated nonsense.
Have you ever considered the possibility that God used natural processes to create life?
I do not understand. Care to explain another way?
Not really. The Catholic sect of Christianity is the largest in America by a fair amount. Moreover, conservative Catholics and conservative Christians of other sects are allies in the cultural war being engaged with the secular humanists and liberal Chirstian sects. And judging by national elections, those battle lines are drawn evenly.
Yes, there are more Biblical literalists in sects other than Catholicism but that misses the point entirely. Evolution/ID is not on most of their radar screens. They could care less.
They do care deeply about issues like abortion, homosexual marriage, parental rights, public prayer et al and that is where the battle lines are drawn.
Thanks for the link. I'll listen to it this evening.
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