Results from nationwide poll (Overwhelming support for teaching both sides of Evolution debate)

4. Would you strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree that teachers and students should have the academic freedom to discuss both the strengths and weaknesses of evolution as a scientific theory?

5. Charles Darwin wrote that when considering the evidence for his theory of evolution, “…a fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” Do you strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree with Darwin’s statement?

6. I am going to read you two statements about Biology teachers teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution. Please tell me which statement comes closest to your own point of view—Statement A or Statement B?

Statement A: Biology teachers should teach only Darwin’s theory of evolution and the scientific evidence that supports it.

Statement B: Biology teachers should teach Darwin’s theory of evolution, but also the scientific evidence against it.

Said truth_seeker to GodGunGuts: How big of a ship would it take, to have room for all known species of animals on board? Two each.

Creation science should answer the questions of how many species, and how big a boat (ship).

Did the technology exist at the time, to build a vessel of whatever size the scientists calculate?

Name the species.

I think my question is very legitimate, from a logical standpoint.

That is a logical question, but a little context answers a lot of it. For example, when we ask about the technology, we must remember who the designer was - Gen 6:13 and following: "And God said unto Noah ... Make thee an ark of gopher wood; ..." and God proceeded to give many more details - so the designer was God himself.

And do you remember who closed the door on the arc when Noah and his family and all the animals were inside? Gen 7:16 says that "and the LORD shut him in." -- so God shut the door. Now mind you, isn't that scientifically impossible to say that God did anything since science doesn't say that God exists? I mean, never mind whether it could have floated with the door shut - if God didn't close the door, and the story doesn't record anyone else closing then it's scientifically impossible for it to have floated anyway!

I hope you can see my point - if you look at the story with the assumption that God does not exist and nothing supernatural ever happened, then obviously the story will always be impossible to you!

As to how many animals, keep in mind that any species that can breed with another species and produce offspring (fertile or otherwise) is almost certain (even to a creationist) to share a common ancestor. I mean, even as a Creationist myself, I know without a shadow of a doubt that, for example, the teeny pocket-poodle is related to the great Dane. And that's after only what, 150 years of dogbreeding? And compare the tiniest horsey which is smaller then the biggest dog, to the biggest horse which is a huge draft horse. See a cute comparison pictures at bottom of this post

So you can see then that hundreds of dog breeds would be just a single pair of dogs. Since zebra and horse can interbreed and produce (generally infertile) offspring, horses and zebras would have been another pair. Don't think that all hundred subspecies that we have now would had to have been saved on the ark to save, for example, dogs.

So while we don't know exactly what the kinds of animals were, we can still see that the ark wouldn't have had to hold all the gazillions of subspecies we have now. And just how many truly unique big animal types are there? Cats, dogs, horses, oxen, buffalo, giraffe, elephant, elk, and so on - even if I've only listed 10% of them, still, the majority of major kinds are small. So it's really not the correct question to ask "How big of a ship would it take to have room for all known species of animals onboard, two each " because not all known species existed then, and even then all variations within a kind didn't need to be saved.

By the way, I should mention -- while I believe that God did create the world in 6 days per the Genesis account, it just so happens that I wasn't there at the time. And while the creation story makes the most sense to me, it is ultimately a matter of faith - because I was not there and did not see it myself -- just like nobody was there when [if] the big bang took place, or when the first life form sprang into being, etc.

So let me ask you a logical question: What about the big bang? Do you really believe that there was nothing, and then the vacuum fluctuated? Since vacuum is empty space without anything in it, how could the vacuum fluctuate when there was nothing to fill in the void thus reducing the vacuum? And what about the issue of something having come from nothing? Do you really believe that? You sure can't know it.

The big bang theory violates many known laws of physics, was not seen by anybody, and has not been proven to even be possible much less to have happened - and yet it is taught in schools across the country as scientifically valid.

Does that too raise questions in your mind?

And what about that transition from non-life to life? Again, never ever been demonstrated to be possible under natural conditions, and yet it is taught across the country.

Now I grew up on a small family farm - so I well know that when a cow gives birth to a calf, it's not an exact copy of either of its parents - in other words, there's a slight change in DNA makeup - in other words evolution. So that's the kind of evolution I've seen and know exists. The other kind of evolution, which I have not seen and do not know exists, is that which says that a dog and a cow are related.

So I have been long asking "What must I do to know for myself that ASBE (All Species By Evolution) is true without having to rely purely on faith in other people about things I have never seen." And so far nobody has been able to show me.

You see, I work in the field of electronics where if I doubt a claim, I can generally just go test it. If I tell you that a transistor behaves in a certain way and you don't believe me, I can just show you. And if you too wanted to personally know how a transistor behaves under different circumstances, I could lay out a series of material for you to study and at the end you'd be able to know for yourself and demonstrate for others how a transistor behaves - without having to reply on faith in anything.

But the "science" of evolution (the kind I haven't seen) is not like that - at best, I could only believe it as a faith - I cannot know it. And that, my friend, sure sounds like religion to me.

Have a wonderful day,

-Jesse

“Why would you use a biology course written by someone who doesn’t have any credentials in biology?”

Keep in mind this is a high school course.

To teach high school science in a public or private school, you need only your teaching degree and (normally) a Master’s in some sort of physical science. So, in your local high school, your science teachers may have a chemistry degree, or a biology degree, or physics, or marine biology, or oceanography, or any other number of hard science degrees.

So I don’t know why you find a Phd in Chemistry to be inappropriate for writing a high school biology text. College level, I could understand your concerns.

In regards to his not doing academic work since 1995, I imagine he was spending considerable time writing his textbooks. To ascertain their quality, visit www.apologia.com (I am not a salesman or any such thing, I am just providing the info for your perusal.) Tell me what you think about their quality. I have found no better high school level textbooks.

One of the things I especially like about Apologia Science is that Dr. Wile makes himself available via email to his students. I love it when someone stands behind their product in such a personal matter.

My Saxon DIVE CDs (Algebra 1, Algebra II) and my Spelling curriculum (Spelling Power) have the same accessibility to the writers. I love it.

In re: the human genome project, I don’t see where it is mentioned in the Biology course. Of course it may be, but it’s not in the appendix.

Module 7, mostly about cell reproduction, discusses Mendel, the definition of genetics, genes, chromosomes, DNA, histones, you do a DNA extraction (from an onion), mitosis (prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase), asexual and sexual reproduction, karyotypes (including male human cell mitosis), and viruses.

Module 8, mostly about genetics, teaches about true breeding, self-pollination, the four principles of genetics, alleles, genotypes, Punnett squares, pedigrees, monohybrid and dihybrid crosses, autosomes, sex chromosomes, autosomal inheritance, and mutation.

A reasonable amount of coverage of high school biology on the subjects of cell reproduction and genetics? What do you think?

>>>>I am teaching science, (but not at public school) and as a matter of fact I start each class off with reading a couple of verses from Genesis and if a video I’m showing talks about the earth being millions of years old, I stop the DVD and ask my students how long it really took God to create the world and they say “6 days!<<<<

>>Millions? Is that a typo?<<

Nope. “Millions” (plural) means two or more million. So “billions” contains at least a thousand millions. And the fact is that in the 1800s, the “calculations” for the age of the earth were often less then a billion, sometimes even around 20 million.

And much of the videos I use in my class are from the 1950’s and it is entirely possible that they would use the phrase “millions of years” when referring to the age of the earth - so it made perfect sense for me to use the more broad word who’s definition is “Two or more millions.”

Does that help?

By the way, I don’t know what your field is, but mine is electronics and other physical sciences. I’m used to science being a knowable demonstrable thing. How do you feel about evolutionary science (as in All From Nothing and All Species By Evolution) - how can I or anyone else know it to be true rather then taking it purely on faith? Having grown up on a small family farm, I well know that the livestock never gives birth to an exact identical copy of itself (or at least they never did on my family’s farm!) so if we take the word “evolution” to just mean “change” — then yeah I’ve seen evolution. That’s the kind I have seen. But the alleged fact that the dog and the goat (even though they both bark up trees (Except the goat eats the bark)) are related is the other kind of evolution - that which I have not seen and that kind of evolution I can at best take by pure faith.

Or do you think that the level of faith required, for example, AC/DC theory is just the same as that required for ASBE/AFN (All Species By Evolution, All From Nothing)?

Thanks,

-Jesse

PS: I tried to find a chart of how old the earth was in 1950 but I could not find any such thing in my admittedly brief search.

Said js1138: I'm aware of lots of conjectures about what caused the big bang ore what happened "before,"..

You mean like, for example, the conjectures that Berkeley is teaching?

They quite clearly describe the vacuum as having fluctuated and creating a singularity. Now pardon me, but this is obviously what Berkeley teaches - are you telling me that Berkeley isn't teaching their students that? The fact is that schools from gradeschools to universities across the country are teaching that the big bang is the best theory and is believed to be true, and you are trying to downplay it because you know it's absurd but you still don't want to appear to be butting heads with decades of science.

but I'm not aware of any positive assertions that would show up in a textbook as fact.

Again, you've got to be kidding if you're telling me that schools aren't teaching the big bang as how all matter was created, and that all came from nothing. Even my old Principles of Physics Fourth Edition by Bueche says in chapter 28 "... Astrophysics is greatly hampered by the lack of our ability to perform the really crucial experiments. The most important act of all, the formation of the universe, was performed several billion years ago and is still going on. ..." The book does caution the reader that many of our interpretations (of the origin of the universe) may later proved incorrect. Of course the book is probably a couple billion years old, since it was written between 1965 and 1982. But it does assert that the formation of the universe was performed several billion years ago..!

Much of what shows up on TV science channels has been scripted by the science equivalent of ad writers. The shows are designed to attract an audience rather than to educate.

Ironically, I had actually provided you a link in my post pointing directly to what Berkeley teaches about the big bang - and rather then addressing what a university has to say about it, you go rambling on about TV shows? I guess that's a straw man for ya!

It is much safer to talk about the history of the universe after the big bang than before.

Well if you really believed that then how come you didn't respond to my other questions in the same post -- like the questions as to whether you really believe that life came from non-life even though it's never been seen?

And I also asked about how you deal with the problem that the only way I or any thinking person can believe that ASBE (All Species By Evolution) is true is to take it on pure faith.

Anyway, I'm glad you're not teaching science.

(Even if you were teaching, it wouldn't be true science that you're teaching. It'd be a bunch of speculation that you couldn't demonstrate to anyone ever. [double wide grin])

Have a nice day anyway,

-Jesse

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