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
Amen. Certain conceptions of God do not stand up to scrutiny under the cold light of logic. This does not mean God does not exist; it simply means man's view of the Almighty is severely flawed and colored by his own expectations, wants and desires.
One would be a start. Pick the best one.
Are you saying that the concept of justice itself is an absurdity? If not, then why would it have no place in the idea of God?
I posed your question to a participant on another forum, and he suggested that you may be interested in an essay he had written.
He wrote: "I have addressed *some* of the real issues behind this in the following essay: click HERE See esp the paragraph on Provine/Dawkins and the final two paragraphs, but most of the essay is a propos." ~ Ted
Well, an example would've gone a long way to supporting your contention...
And this is also where we disagree:
You say that "justice demands a penalty"; I on the other hand think that "justice demands a penalty for the real culprit".
I agree with you that justice is hardwired into our brains (as it's to be expected with social animals) but what you describe isn't justice. It's simply seeking an outlet for ones anger after having been wronged: somebody has to serve as the lightning rod, ideally this should be the real culprit but if he isn't at hand somebody else will do just as well.
The idea of one person substituting for another is at the core of the Xn message. The claim, as preposterous as it may sound, is that Jesus sucked down evil itself and died under its eternal curse, so that an eternal punishment was executed in Him.
OK, this may well be what most Christian think but to me it makes absolutely no sense. I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is.
Very well said, sir. I would do well to remember this more often. So would we all.
Unless you have some really strange definition of justice we haven't heard about?
You assume correctly.
However, the evolutionist theory presented within this article is mighty convincing to me and obviously to many others.
I'm curious. Why would you present disconfirming evidence to support your position.
(As a side note, I have some personal issues to attend to, and my time is very limited right now, so my apologies to anyone I have failed to respond to.)
Merçi beaucoup.
And I second that ;)
However, one scenario under which that interpretation might make sense is one where this god is very angry at us mortals for being such a naughty and depraved lot. He wants to forgive us but he cannot do so before he hasn't vented his anger somehow.
He could release hell on us lowly vermin but because he loves us so much he decides to pull a Tyler Durden on himself (or a second instantiation of himself).
I'm sure I have posted logical fallacies as well as incorrect information. I'm curious, however, to see what the creos think are important fallacies.
To the best of my knowledge, most evo inconsistencies revolve around things like the definition of species or the definition of the word theory.
As if inconsistent definitions by FR posters changes reality.
That is a very good objection, but it only makes sense if you assume an anthropological starting point... ie, Our sense of justice is invariably mixed up with ego, bruised pride, and petty vengance, so therefore any "God" must be subject to the same imperfections when it comes to administering justice. Rather, the claim is that it is the other way around. The perfect standard for justice resides in God (otherwise, without an infinite reference point, the concept itself is an absurdity), and the perverted twisted representation of that is in men. We recoil from "justice" because 1) we have never seen a perfect example of it, and 2) we instinctively sense our vulnerability before it.
Indeed, the fact that we acknowledge the concept of justice while admitting it is flawed is in fact appealing to the acknowledgement that we have a concept in our minds, however fuzzy, of a perfect and impartial and unsullied justice. That attribute belongs to God, by definition.
There is also the possibility the author put those words in Jesus' mouth at a later date. Exodus gets a number of historical events wrong (some cities said to have been destroyed during this era were in fact quite prosperous and show no signs of destruction, for instance), which would indicate to any scholar that Moses did not write it. However, the real clencher would be that quite a bit of it was written after Moses died -- giving new meaning to the term "ghost writer" if the books are to be attributed to his hand.
I agree with what you wrote on your profile page. Don't know if you're interested or not, but I meant to copy you on this post also:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1582069/posts?page=1065#1065
For instance if someone owes me $1000 but can't pay me the money I don't mind if someone else is willing to pay in his stead.
On the other hand if someone runs over my dog and kills it I might get some satisfaction punching that guy in his face but this is clearly not the case if someone else wants to accept the beating in his place. I mean that other guy hasn't done anything to me so using his face as a punching bag doesn't give me anything.
And that's what I meant when I said that suffering doesn't have any transactional value (except of course you're a sadist and simply enjoy the suffering of people or animals).
When it comes to defining terms, there are two basic choices--either persuade or enforce. Thus far, I see an attempt to enforce, since you're making no effort to persuade.
As all of us are here voluntarily, and there's no authority outside the mods, I don't see how you can enforce much of anything. It's just a thread and a keyboard. No evo-cops that I can see.
...the ID hypothesis warrants due consideration, not for what it denies (the adequacy of Darwinism), although pointing out the inadequacies a received theory is a necessary part of an argument for an alternative, but for what it affirms–that some real causes might not be purely mechanistic–and for the possibility that a research program that looks in non-mechanistic directions might ultimately be successful. It is true that some very interesting and fruitful science has been done by great scientists who did not assume that all causes must be mechanistic. For example, Gottfried Leibniz called Newtonian gravitation a “perpetual miracle,” because Newton offered no mechanical explanation for it; and Johannes Kepler hypothesized that the orbital radii of the planets could be found from the assumption that God used the five Platonic solids as “archetypal causes” in laying out the dimensions of the solar system. (Kepler’s fascinating understanding of causation operating on various levels, working together, is one that might be instructive for ID advocates to study.) For ID to fit this category, however, it will be necessary for its advocates to spell out much more clearly just what an ID account of the origin of biological complexity would look like, and how this would actually further scientific inquiry rather than hinder it. I remain skeptical that this will happen–it seems central to the program to insist that irreducible complexity can be explained only by an appeal to direct divine agency–but the movement is still in its infancy and some of the very bright people associated with it may in time prove me wrong; certainly they will try to. Despite the desire by some in the ID movement to have potentially enlightening discussions of very interesting philosophical and scientific questions, however, thus far ID appears to be little more than a highly sophisticated form of special creationism, usually accompanied by strong apologetic overtones that tend to keep the debate at the ideological level. All too frequently science becomes a weapon in culture wars, denying in practice the clean theoretical distinction between science and religion that is otherwise widely proclaimed.
Again, thanks for the link
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