Posted on 11/13/2005 3:49:41 PM PST by Crackingham
U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said Saturday that he doesn't believe that intelligent design belongs in the science classroom. Santorum's comments to The Times are a shift from his position of several years ago, when he wrote in a Washington Times editorial that intelligent design is a "legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in the classroom."
But on Saturday, the Republican said that, "Science leads you where it leads you."
Santorum was in Beaver Falls to present Geneva College President Kenneth A. Smith with a $1.345 million check from federal funds for renovations that include the straightening and relocation of Route 18 through campus.
Santorum's comments about intelligent design come at a time when the belief that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power, an alternative to the theory of evolution, has come under fire on several fronts.
A federal trial just wrapped up in which eight families sued Dover Area School District in eastern Pennsylvania. The district's school board members tried to introduce teaching intelligent design into the classroom, but the families said the policy violated the constitutional separation of church and state. No ruling has been issued on the trial, but Tuesday, all eight Dover School Board members up for re-election were ousted by voters, leading to a fiery tirade by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson.
Robertson warned residents, "If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected him from your city."
Santorum said flatly Saturday, "I disagree. I don't believe God abandons people," and said he has not spoken to Robertson about his comments.
Though Santorum said he believes that intelligent design is "a legitimate issue," he doesn't believe it should be taught in the classroom, adding that he had concerns about some parts of the theory.
hmmm, I'd have to disagree. Das Kapital is the kind of turgid prose that nobody really reads unless they've already drunk the kool aid. The Manifesto was an attempt to hijack the 1848 revolutions in Europe for the cause - and it succeeded in getting socialism/communism on the map.
Marx is clap-trap that certain people feel a need to believe as a way of putting bones on the emotional reaction to capitalisms inevitable inequalities. It doesnt matter what he wrote in his 3000 page book, as the stuff in there is not the animating force in the communist agenda. Hatred of capitalists (ie envy) is.
I'm more interested in truth than junk science.
If you owned a parrot, it would probably say "science."
If I owned a parrot, it would say "truth and logic."
Regardless what you say, the basis for the idea the Earth is a sphere was determined by the Greeks, not from the Bible (there is a Flat Earth Society which does base its beliefs on the Bible, however). And, Columbus did get the size wrong.
Science does not depend upon popularity (nor do most other things outside of high school cliques). There are more Moslems in the world than Baptists; does this make the Baptists wrong?
Logic is only as good as the premeses used (GIGO). How do you determine the truth?
I mean, who're you going to believe? Me? Or your own lying eyes?
All the other species are dying out? The rat and the cockroach might disagree with that. And if you're still bringing up the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, you haven't been paying attention to these threads.
Unless you were trying to hybridize him.
Intelligent design belongs not only in the general classroom but also in the science classroom. It is the given under which most, if not all, education takes place. It has been omitted on occasion at the behest of a handful of bitter, thuggish ideologues, but to the detriment of both educational and scientific progress. Darwin and his ilk will prove to be an albatross to true learning.
The separation of church and state merely declares that the Government is not in the business of endorsing one religion over another. That means all religions, including those of creationsists, is allowed to be practiced and taught freely and without restraint. It is an abuse of reason and power to prohibit the teaching of intelligent design with or without science. It is an abuse of science to limit inquiry via darwinist philosophy.
Intelligent design is by far the more reasonable way to interpret the universe. God is not beyond the pale of science just because a few ideologues say so. Religion and science fit together well. They should not be separated from one another lest an undue burden be placed upon learning.
As for those who are afraid of the notion of God, your fears have nothing to do with education or science. Your fears are unfounded and false. Your notion of education without intelligent design is a caricature of what education should be. Your handwaving and semantic gymnastics will not erase the simple logic that connects design and designer.
Santorum is playing the part of a chicken if he truly believes intelligent design has no place in the science classroom.
Bears repeating, since people so frequently make that elementary mistake....
I almost never want a Pubblie to lose to a Rat, but Santorum needs to lose on general principle to teach a lesson to other Pubbies.
If the Vedics or the Muslims were on this thread saying the same thing as the "evangelicals", they'd be getting the same response.
ToE (as a theory of creation) ie Darwinism, is directly linked to Dialectic Materialism (or Scientific Socialism) which is the core of Communism. The link is an undeniable historic fact.
___________
Radical Islam is an Abrahamic religion just like Judaism and Christianity. That is an undeniable historical fact.
See how easy it is to write non-sequitors?
Pretty easy to see that you've swallowed somebody else's talking points hook line and sinker.
Unless you care to document that all believers in evolution are atheists, materialists, and / or Marxists.
I agree that Santorum is better than most, but it's going to take a long time for me to forget that his and Bush's betrayal of Pat Toomey put Arlen Specter back in the Senate.
He has also compromised what I know are his principles a few more times than I would like for the sake of political expediency.
I'll vote for him again but not as enthusiastically as I did the last two times.
Didn't the polls indicate that Gore was gonna win in 2000? Exactly what scientific and explanatory value does the quoted Gallup poll have?
500 years ago, had a poll been taken on whether monsters existed in the oceans, it would have been a runaway win for the existence of monsters.
When it comes to the explanatory value of science, polls MEAN NOTHING.
Evolutionists claim the Linnaean hierarchy is a crucial test that their theory has passed. But from the placental and marsupials to molecular comparisons, nature is full of deviations from that pattern. If the theory predicts the Linnaean hierarchy, then do the many deviations disprove the theory? Not according to evolutionists. Instead, they employ a battery of ad hoc explanatory devices, from convergent evolution and non-gradualistic evolutionary change to massive horizontal gene transfer and computational adjustments. But if evolution can explain the many deviations from the Linnaean hierarchy so well, it can hardly claim the general hierarchical pattern of the species as a crucial test.What if there were yet even more deviations? At what point would evolution be unable to explain them? Evolutionists can define no such point because they allow their theory to explain such a wide variety of outcomes. In fact, it is not even clear that evolution really does predict the Linnaean hierarchy. The problem is that the Linnaean hierarchy is a striking pattern that is not easily produced by any hypothetical evolutionary process. That is, even if we grant that evolution could produce large-scale change, that change would, on the one hand, have to create tremendous biological variation, and yet, on the other hand, have to create not so much variation that evolutionary relationships would be lost through saturation effects. Because evolution's purported process of creating large-scale change remains undefined, we don't have the neccessary details to seriously verify the claim that it predicts the Linnaean hierarchy.
Cornelius G. Hunter
Cordially,
"I'm more interested in truth than junk science."
Then maybe you would answer why anybody should take the link you provided promoting ID seriously when it's authors (William S Harris and John H. Calvert) shamelessly lied about what their Pope said when they sliced his words to say this:
"theories of evolution...are incompatible with the truth about man."
when he said no such thing? If you are so interested in the truth than why have you failed to answer this question and why must I ask it again for the third time?
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.