Posted on 03/27/2009 6:23:20 AM PDT by laotzu
And a made up story that would do MARVEL COMICS proud is.
IIRC, the Texas standards apportion only 3 days to evolution. That sounds about right; when I took biology in high school, it was a very, very broad survey course. We didn't have time to debunk every proto- or pseudoscientific "theory" from history or modern fringe groups. If we did, we never would have gotten through the first chapter!
Same thing in every other class. We didn't do celestial spheres in Earth science, the Fomenko chronology in history, or homeopathy in health. There are only so many days in the school year, and only so many tax dollars available for education, and school boards must be good stewards of those resources. High schools should present students with the current state-of-the-art of science, not bog them down with earlier, rejected theories and outright junk science. There are college-level courses that specialize in that.
But in the end they are still explained by scientific theories, as is Evolution. And there are a great many actual scientists would would disagree with you that they cannot observe the results of evolution, or test it, or identify how it was done. How do you test or predict the intelligent designer, much less identify it?
Agreed. And if we’re going to discuss “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution, clearly we must discuss, in school classrooms, the issues with every other scientific theory as well.
Because it's a foundation of modern biology?
I don't think too many people are calling for a discussion of the Miasma theory of disease in schools -- so there's no much need to bother with that. Or the flat earth. Or the Fomenko chronology.
But there are a great many people (scientist and non-scientist) who would like criticisms of evolution discussed at least somewhat in schools. To shut them out of the marketplace of ideas -- when they are a large and vocal group -- is to show signs of fear.
Actually, funny little story here.
I sometimes hang around on Peter David’s message board. (For non-comic fans, he’s a writer who often works for Marvel.) At the time, he had recently written an issue of Spider-Man in which Spidey and Reed Richards were debating intelligent design. Of course, ID was dismissed as totally ridiculous, nonscientific, religious claptrap. Then I piped in with what I thought was a very interesting point -
In the Marvel Universe, we know that ID is true. Marvel has published stories about the origins of their fictional universe. Space aliens appeared on the scene and seeded the development of human beings. They also guided the gradual development of man into his modern form.
So, while I pointed out that I had no problem with the portrayal (since it had the “scientific” approach favoring a patently false notion), I suggested that it might be more in line with his viewpoint to have Spidey and Reed talking about how scientific Intelligent Design is while dismissing Evolution as total claptrap.
Needless to say, my opinion was not greeted very enthusiatically by Pete’s other fans.
The shape, and movement of heavenly bodies is constantly studied and theorized. Often by much smarter folks than us.
Nuts?!! Einstein, Neuton, Hawking, Morrison, Hubble. Nuts? Really?
In gradeschool science, I remember discussing (and rejecting) theories of “spontaneous generation”, which is life from non-life (you know, like molecules to man).
Yeah but.....the creationists really blow it for us with everything being created 6000 years ago. Dinosaurs, (which the material evidence proves existed) walked around with the newly created humans. I guess they went extinct because Noah couldn’t fit them on the ark.
ID is rational. It is the extremists that ruin the scenario.
How so? Is botany a religious belief? How about geology? How about astronomy? How about physics? Seems to me that at some point or other all these have "gone against" writing found in the Good Book.
“Agreed. And if we’re going to discuss “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution, clearly we must discuss, in school classrooms, the issues with every other scientific theory as well.”
As long as we limit it to valid scientific theories (which evolution is not), I agree.
No problem, remove that part of our property taxes.
“Because it’s a foundation of modern biology?”
Ridiculous. Another dodge by the evolutionists. There’s nothing in Modern Biology that REQUIRES the acceptance of Darwinian Evolution.
SUUUUUUUUUUURE they do. "They" just want "their" side.....Creationism poorly veiled as ID.....to be the indoctrination in the SCIENCE room. ...but hey, it'd be a much shorter class "their way", so the teachers could go on to teaching all about Global Warm....errr Climate Change. Afterall, "God did it" doesn't take very long to say.
Only a fool says that the ToE has no weaknesses, but only a different fool says that a "weakness" disproves the broad theory.
I especially like the debates about whether the Earth is flat.
It’s no setback to homeschoolers.
1 Corinthians 1:25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
Science, properly speaking, refers to observations in the present about the operation of nature. There is no conflict between science (thus defined) and the Bible, unless someone wants to argue against biblical statements like Gen. 8:22 ("While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest,And cold and heat,And summer and winter,And day and night Shall not cease").
If you look at the atheistic Galileo myth, for example, you find that the church teaching of the time was founded on Greek astronomy, not the Bible. They cited a few passages in support, out of context, but it is an obvious historical fact that the belief in geocentrism came from Ptolemy and other Greek writers, not theologians deriving a cosmology from Scripture independent of the Greeks.
The conflict is entirely between historical interpretations and models, which are not directly testable. On the one hand we have observations/documentation in the form of the Bible, on the other we have naturalistic models based on uniformitarian naturalism (which presumes from the outset that God has not intervened in nature).
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