Posted on 01/22/2005 7:38:12 AM PST by PatrickHenry
A movement to drag the teaching of science in the United States back into the Dark Ages continues to gain momentum. So far, it's a handful of judges -- "activist judges" in the view of their critics -- who are preventing the spread of Saudi-style religious dogma into more and more of America's public-school classrooms.
The ruling this month in Georgia by Federal District Judge Clarence Cooper ordering the Cobb County School Board to remove stickers it had inserted in biology textbooks questioning Darwin's theory of evolution is being appealed by the suburban Atlanta district. Similar legal battles pitting evolution against biblical creationism are erupting across the country. Judges are conscientiously observing the constitutionally required separation of church and state, and specifically a 1987 Supreme Court ruling forbidding the teaching of creationism, a religious belief, in public schools. But seekers of scientific truth have to be unnerved by a November 2004 CBS News poll in which nearly two-thirds of Americans favored teaching creationism, the notion that God created heaven and earth in six days, alongside evolution in schools.
If this style of "science" ever took hold in U.S. schools, it is safe to say that as a nation we could well be headed for Third World status, along with everything that dire label implies. Much of the Arab world is stuck in a miasma of imam-enforced repression and non-thought. Could it happen here? Our Constitution protects creativity and dissent, but no civilization has lasted forever, and our current national leaders seem happy with the present trends.
It is the creationists, of course, who forecast doom if U.S. schools follow a secularist path. Science, however, by its nature, relies on evidence, and all the fossil and other evidence points toward an evolved human species over millions of years on a planet tens of millions of years old [ooops!] in a universe over two billion years in existence [ooops again!].
Some creationists are promoting an idea they call "intelligent design" as an alternative to Darwinism, eliminating the randomness and survival-of-the-fittest of Darwinian thought. But, again, no evidence exists to support any theory of evolution except Charles Darwin's. Science classes can only teach the scientific method or they become meaningless.
Many creationists say that teaching Darwin is tantamount to teaching atheism, but most science teachers, believers as well as non-believers, scoff at that. The Rev. Warren Eschbach, a professor at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pa., believes that "science is figuring out what God has already done" and the book of Genesis was never "meant to be a science textbook for the 21st century." Rev. Eschbach is the father of Robert Eschbach, one of the science teachers in Dover, Pa., who refused to teach a school-board-mandated statement to biology students criticizing the theory of evolution and promoting intelligent design. Last week, the school district gathered students together and the statement was read to them by an assistant superintendent.
Similar pro-creationist initiatives are underway in Texas, Wisconsin and South Carolina. And a newly elected creationist majority on the state board of education in Kansas plans to rewrite the entire state's science curriculum this spring. This means the state's public-school science teachers will have to choose between being scientists or ayatollahs -- or perhaps abandoning their students and fleeing Kansas, like academic truth-seekers in China in the 1980s or Tehran today.
Darwin himself was a creationist.
The "truth" is the interpretation of the data. That is what a theory is. Data by itself is useless.
Abiogenesys. Observing the unaided self-sequencing of DNA base pairs into a viable original living entity.
There are no fewer than 4 such scientifically backed projects along that train of thought right now, with Steen Rasmussen at Los Alamos showing particular promise with his PNA angle.
I've got problems both with random (how to do it and be objective, maybe digits in an irrational number?) and sequential (possibly smaller than optimal population of posters)
Maybe both and compare.
Y'know, when I registered I thought I'd mostly be posting on expanding the right to bear arms. Oh, well.
Theories come after, not before, an inital collection of observations (data).
I hear ya. I never thought I would be here either.
Please show your work backing up this assertion. Specific calculations would be appreciated.
Off topic:
I'm out to shovel snow.
How's your weather?
However, you know that once the sequence leading to the first life is demonstrated in the lab, the IDers will point out that it couldn't have come about without the intervention of intelligence -- i.e., the researchers.
Snowing hard in South Jersey. We look to get about 6-10 inches. Much worse up North.
Where are you?
"It was in the link that I gave in my original post, if you want the math for sequencing."
Ok, I read it... good grief. Here is his conclusion:
"In light of this, I find it impossible to believe that "chance" had anything to do with the process that created life. How can I suppose that Shakespeare himself was the result of a random process when it is quite clearly impossible for even a trivial fragment of his work to have arisen by chance? No sir, I see information all around me, and I conclude that it is the product of a far, far greater intelligence.
Information is the product of intelligence, not chance."
Since it would take an astronomical amount of time for the monkeys to type shakepeare, life could not have evolved? What kind of a lame argument is that?!?! It makes absolutely no sense. Just because he wrestled us through his grade 8 math tutorial on probability, we should just believe his conclusion that has nothing to do with his data?
Also, with regards to his monkey logic, he is WRONG. The saying specifies an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of typwriters. In the guy's logic, he does the math for ONE monkey! Not that it matters, since his conclusion was a non-sequitur anyway, and, well infinity is an abstract concept in mathematics, so you couldn't use it in the equation anyway. Which means he should have known better from the start.
This is the best argument you have for ID? Have you glanced lately at the thousands of technical papers published on evolution in the actual scientific literature?
The article is right on. Creationism is a threat to the security and well being of The United States of America. Rest assured that God shakes his head in dismay at the damage that's being done to America by creationists.
I BELIEVE that is true.
Unlike creationists, I don't know for sure.
poing
Here we go AGAIN! You don't postulate a theory. You postulate a hypothesis and then a hypothesis becomes a theory AFTER substantial observations verify the validity of the hypothesis.
What really bothers me is the fear that the press will soon figure out that they can easily use this creationism stuff to bash the Republican party. When they realize how devastating this tactic will be, you may be certain that at every press conference that every Republican candidate has in the future, the press will ask him his views on evolution vs. creationism. And if the guy says he's a creationist, he'll be ridiculed as an idiot out of the Dark Ages.
I'm seriously worried that Creationism has the potential to destroy the Republican party. As I've said before, this issue will hang like an albatross around our necks. And that's why I think these threads are so important.
Oh for the love of...Hypothesis are postulated...NOT theories!
Theories are solid representations backed by numerous evidence and observations.
Oh, you mean that debunked probability analysis that assumes there is no order to nature and that everything is totally random. That would be like saying the sun had a 50/50 chance of rising the next day and if it did rise there was a 50/50 chance that it would be green.
And if he says no, he will be castigated by the ID crowd.
I'm seriously worried that Creationism has the potential to destroy the Republican party. As I've said before, this issue will hang like an albatross around our necks. And that's why I think these threads are so important.
This is the issue the Evangelicals will use to hold the GOP hostage, like the greens & left hold the Dems hostage.
This will be our abortion & homosexual marriage albatross. We are handing the MSM and the Dims a club to bludgeon us with.
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