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
Their inteserst isn't science it is their own form of evangelizing and prosyletizing.
They have the ACLU on their side and are part of the culture war where no mention of religion in public is supposed to happen -- a la the recent so-called "War on Christmas".
They are ironically narrow minded and trying to push their beliefs down the throt of everyone else -- something they would accuse the evil religious right of doing.
Richard Dawkins would be one of their icons or high priests.
Here they form a little cultlike ping group.
What I find amazing is they don't even understand the science.
Two things to consider. First of all, in the Genesis narrative, the author was very careful to use the phrase "and the evening and morning was" the first day, second day etc. The length of the day is defined by the context in which it is written. Otherwise, proponents of the "long day" theory need to explain what it must have meant to the ecology of God's new creation to have a long night for each long day.
Also, confirmation is found in the giving of the ten commandments, where God's creation week is directly linked to the Israelites' workweek and keeping of the Sabbath -
Exodus 20:8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
Exodus 20:11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
The Israelites were instructed to observe a literal day of rest to represent God's day of rest. Considering how the two days are deliberately related by the commandment, I just don't see how we can interpret one day as literal and the other as figurative.
But it is not. It is an attack by the same ol' same ol' using science as their guise.
Ironically, as the ostensible defenders of science, they are attacking it as well by using it in this manner.
" Most of the scientists I know, including myself, are decidedly not liberal."
I know the antidote to this theory, the much vaunted Fox News Channel. When it comes to science or geography or economics, FNC has presents as many factual errors as CNN, if not more. During Katrina, or the talking points on hydrogen, or global warming, or Bill O'Reilly on oil markets FNC demostrates astoundingly poor scientific knowledge.
ID seems to me to be based on the Bible which is a religious book. Seems to me like comparing the records of Michael Jordon and of Mick Jagger.
I just don't see why it cannot be that ID is the reason and Evolution is the method? Why can't humans have a clear genetic history that goes back to pre-homo sapiens and yet it was God's plan all along.
I mean why can't God be the cosmic que ball. And evolution be Newtonian reactions. I see nothing in Darwinism that even questions God. What I find amazing is any person seeming to understand with great confidence the exact plan of God.
when I was a kid it was reported that the Catholic Church was not 'progressive' enough...Now it seems that the opposite is the way it goes...:
The Catholic Position
What is the Catholic position concerning belief or unbelief in evolution? The question may never be finally settled, but there are definite parameters to what is acceptable Catholic belief.
Concerning cosmological evolution, the Church has infallibly defined that the universe was specially created out of nothing. Vatican I solemnly defined that everyone must "confess the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, as regards their whole substance, have been produced by God from nothing" (Canons on God the Creator of All Things, canon 5).
The Church does not have an official position on whether the stars, nebulae, and planets we see today were created at that time or whether they developed over time (for example, in the aftermath of the Big Bang that modern cosmologists discuss). However, the Church would maintain that, if the stars and planets did develop over time, this still ultimately must be attributed to God and his plan, for Scripture records: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host [stars, nebulae, planets] by the breath of his mouth" (Ps. 33:6).
Concerning biological evolution, the Church does not have an official position on whether various life forms developed over the course of time. However, it says that, if they did develop, then they did so under the impetus and guidance of God, and their ultimate creation must be ascribed to him.
Concerning human evolution, the Church has a more definite teaching. It allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms, under God’s guidance, but it insists on the special creation of his soul. Pope Pius XII declared that "the teaching authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions . . . take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—[but] the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God" (Pius XII, Humani Generis 36). So whether the human body was specially created or developed, we are required to hold as a matter of Catholic faith that the human soul is specially created; it did not evolve, and it is not inherited from our parents, as our bodies are.
While the Church permits belief in either special creation or developmental creation on certain questions, it in no circumstances permits belief in atheistic evolution.
The Time Question
Much less has been defined as to when the universe, life, and man appeared. The Church has infallibly determined that the universe is of finite age—that it has not existed from all eternity—but it has not infallibly defined whether the world was created only a few thousand years ago or whether it was created several billion years ago.
Catholics should weigh the evidence for the universe’s age by examining biblical and scientific evidence. "Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth" (Catechism of the Catholic Church 159).
The contribution made by the physical sciences to examining these questions is stressed by the Catechism, which states, "The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man. These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers" (CCC 283).
It is outside the scope of this tract to look at the scientific evidence, but a few words need to be said about the interpretation of Genesis and its six days of creation. While there are many interpretations of these six days, they can be grouped into two basic methods of reading the account—a chronological reading and a topical reading.
Chronological Reading
According to the chronological reading, the six days of creation should be understood to have followed each other in strict chronological order. This view is often coupled with the claim that the six days were standard 24-hour days.
Some have denied that they were standard days on the basis that the Hebrew word used in this passage for day (yom) can sometimes mean a longer-than-24-hour period (as it does in Genesis 2:4). However, it seems clear that Genesis 1 presents the days to us as standard days. At the end of each one is a formula like, "And there was evening and there was morning, one day" (Gen. 1:5). Evening and morning are, of course, the transition points between day and night (this is the meaning of the Hebrew terms here), but periods of time longer than 24 hours are not composed of a day and a night. Genesis is presenting these days to us as 24-hour, solar days. If we are not meant to understand them as 24-hour days, it would most likely be because Genesis 1 is not meant to be understood as a literal chronological account.
That is a possibility. Pope Pius XII warned us, "What is the literal sense of a passage is not always as obvious in the speeches and writings of the ancient authors of the East, as it is in the works of our own time. For what they wished to express is not to be determined by the rules of grammar and philology alone, nor solely by the context; the interpreter must, as it were, go back wholly in spirit to those remote centuries of the East and with the aid of history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences, accurately determine what modes of writing, so to speak, the authors of that ancient period would be likely to use, and in fact did use. For the ancient peoples of the East, in order to express their ideas, did not always employ those forms or kinds of speech which we use today; but rather those used by the men of their times and countries. What those exactly were the commentator cannot determine as it were in advance, but only after a careful examination of the ancient literature of the East" (Divino Afflante Spiritu 35–36).
bump to read later
>They made a big mistake when they abandoned geocentrism just because the scientific evidence said so.
"[It is my] loving duty to seek the truth in all things, in so far as God has granted that to human reason." Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543).
Accepting Heliocentricism was hardly the same abandoning the Bible. The Medieval Church clung to geocentrism, not because of the Bible, but because they made the mistake of accepting the scientific orthodoxy of their day.
Because some people believe that their particular collection of stories is the actual, literal, word of God.
I guess they just *know* this, or something.
This is the issue in a nutshell.
"Pro-evolution?".
This is the language of a prosyletizer, an evangelist, not a scientist. And then you don;t even recognize that you start all this, run all the threadsm start the insults and provocations and it is still a mystery to you. I actually believe you might be that oblivious. The hallmark of the evolutionite zealots is not high intelligents or coherence of thought.
Of course evangelizing "pro-evolution" that is what the liberals mean when they say "pro-evolution". It has nothing to do with scientific integrity or investigation.
In using the term "pro-evolution" you've almost come to the point where you are intellectually honest and acknowledge that to you this is simply part of a civil war where you are on the liberal side against the side with more religious people.
Nothing to do with science.
How about science? I thought ID was based on science...
Assault on science? There is no assault on science. There is an assault, however, on free thinking and debate as well as an assault on religion. The nastiness is on the side of the evolutionists who are the most arrogant and unscientific people in the world.
Bump for later.
Great post.
False statement.
Creationism, as discussed on this forum says God created Man (along with other life on Earth) and it evolved from there.
I've seen more than one creationist make the statement that they didn't have a problem with evolution UNTIL it tried to justify that initial creation.
-----
Evolution is silent on what happens outside of observable evidence and events.
Odd. I know for a fact we were taught the first life on Earth 'slithered out of the primordial ooze' in science class. As far as I know, no one was around to observe that.
-----
You can believe in a God that created the Universe and set in motion all the mechanism we see
Which was pretty much the point I was making....but you DID say it better.
:-)
That's odd, you say one thing, and the learned churchmen who convicted Galileo of heresy say another. Whom should we believe?
We say, pronounce, sentence, and declare, that thou, the said Galileo, by the things deduced during this trial, and by thee confessed as above, hast rendered thyself vehemently suspected of heresy by this Holy Office, that is, of having believed and held a doctrine which is false, and contrary to the Holy Scriptures, to wit: that the Sun is the centre of the universe, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the Earth moves and is not the centre of the universe: and that an opinion may be held and defended as probable after having been declared and defined as contrary to Holy Scripture; and in consequence thou hast incurred all the censures and penalties of the Sacred Canons ...Source: The Crime of Galileo: Indictment and Abjuration of 1633.
I would not presume to argue with you on that. As it happens, I am also a Christian (CoE), send my children to a church school, but do not share your interpretation of the Bible. Which is neither here nor there, really, but the discussion (were we to pursue it) would be about religion, not science. If it is your sincerely held belief that science is in conflict with your faith, then I can understand why you might choose to ignore or discount science for yourself and your offspring. But I am struggling to understand the proponents of ID who insist it is a scientific challenge to Darwin.
Intelligent explanations of the real issue here would be appreciated!
The 'real issue' is reason and rationality vs rigid fundamentalist religious dogma. It's been going on since Galileo.
Biblical religious fundamentalists in the US hate the Theory of Evolution because they believe it (and much of science) contradicts and devalues their religious beliefs. They regard it as heresy and the source of many/most, if not all, of the USA's problems (as they see them). And so they are trying to attack and destroy it and control what science can and cannot explore. Sound familiar?
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.