Posted on 08/30/2005 8:11:27 AM PDT by dukeman
SYDNEY-- After decades of teaching the theory of Darwinian evolution as though it were established fact, school boards in Australia may rethink their approach. The Intelligent Design (ID) theory is making inroads with formerly skeptical members of the scientific community now that the mathematical improbability of the random and spontaneous generation of life has been more thoroughly analyzed.
Australian Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson told reporters earlier this month that ID would have a place with Darwinism should parents or schools be interested. This announcement coincides with an attempt by researchers at Harvard University to debunk the Intelligent Design theory, which is seen by many committed anti-religious secularists as a threat to their hold on the scientific community.
Some secularists are furious at the threat to their religious dogma that God could not have created the universe. Those scientists who have dared publicly to examine the case on its merits have faced severe professional sanctions, in some cases amounting to witch hunts.
A US-produced video used in Australia features Dr. Dean Kenyon, a Stanford trained biophysicist, who was censured by his departmental colleagues at San Francisco State University for allegedly teaching religion in his introductory biology course. Kenyon, no naïf in the academic world with postgraduate work at UC Berkeley, Oxford, and NASA, said that he lost his job for the mere mention that there were other theories than pure Darwinian random evolution. He fought the decision and has been reinstated.
Kenyon, co-author of the book, Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins, speaks of how his own research on the chemical origins of life and his examination of the fossil record caused him to question the naturalistic assumptions that allow most evolutionary scientists to ignore and reject all evidence of intelligent design in the universe.
Kenyon says on the video, “We have not the slightest chance of a chemical evolutionary origin for even the simplest of cells, so the concept of the intelligent design of life was immensely attractive to me and made a great deal of sense.”
But the possibility of any religious influence has enraged the secularist scientific establishment and is seen as enough to condemn a researcher to the crank gallery. A senior lecturer in evolutionary biology at the University of New South Wales, Rob Brook, said that the presence of religious ideas automatically discredits a researcher.
About Kenyon, he said, “I don't really know what is it that's motivating him, and I don't think that we're told publicly what it is that's motivating him, but a lot of the prime people in the intelligent design movement appear to have had religious conversions of some type or another.”
”They all seem to be people of deep religious faith,” said Brook in an interview on Australian Public Radio, “so one has to argue, is it their religious faith that's driving the agenda, or is it their science and the scientific process? And I'd say it's the former.”
Hey, why not have the ability to "choose"? Isn't that what the liberals like to stress so much? The right to choose what to believe?
Thank you, I have just posted this on todays update of Christian-news-in-maine.com.
You only get to choose to kill your baby or an ill person. You can't let children choose what to believe!
I am interested in reading more about the analysis of the statistical improbability of spontaneous generation of life. Anyone happen to have a link?
The solution to this controversy is quite simple.
Initiate classes in Philosophy, Logic, and Critical Thinking at about Grade 7. Then the claims of the various camps could be seen as what they were - metaphysics, not empirical science.
This approach would cure the social studies plague, as well.
But it ain't gonna happen - it would defeat the whole point of government schools to inculcate scepticism and reason in the citizenry.
'Ignorance is Strength', after all.
I wonder what the probability is for spontaneous generation of god?
I'd also like to have the ability to choose whether my kids are taught about other "beliefs" as well.
I think we should hear both sides of the story about that so-called "moon landing" for one thing. And this whole concept of "imaginary numbers" I've been hearing about in advanced mathematics - that makes no sense at all. And NO WAY do I believe that some crazy made up commie language like this "French" they keep trying to push on the kids belongs in the classroom.
Don't even get me started about the whole "speed of light" thing, either. It's just a theory! I mean, what if I'm driving really fast and I turn on my headlights? Isn't that breaking the speed of light?
I don't understand these things, therefore they are just theories, and kids oughta make up their own mind about what to believe.
All I want is for the flaws in Darwinism to be pointed out discussed. Furthermore it should be told to the kids that the modern definition of science revolves around naturalism and thus all scientific theories will inevitably deny the existence of God because God is, by definition, not science.
Its one thing to observe chemical reactions etc and quite another for science to speculate on first causes. If it were possible to create new life in the lab by throwing a bunch of lifeless chemicals together and voila you get a living thing....then science would be on a much better foothold to claim life without God. But they can't and so any scientific speculation about first causes is on par with religious speculation and so should be taught that way in school.
Bingo !
10.Free education for all children in public schools (government indoctrination centers/athiesm via darwinism)
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
I know many "freepers" who believe the above.
Had Darwin and evolution remained a "theory" as it had for years this would not be a discussion. The left made evolution a "fact" not a theory hence it had to prove the fact and could not so, it opened the door to everyone else and ID is just as much a fact as evolution. Here we are, 60 years later talking about the same things our grandparents did.
You only get to choose to kill your baby or an ill person.
Yes, that's what I meant.
What flaws in particular do want pointed out and discussed?
I'd say the prime scientist in the intelligent design camp was Albert Einstein and he never had a religious conversion, just an admiration for the work of a superior but aloof intelligent designer who never gave a squat about mankind or about making it "easy" to figure everything out.
Here is a link, with further links. http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/i/in/intelligent_design.htm
Evolution is fact and theory. See: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html
A scientific theory is never "proven", and a scientific theory does not graduate to a law. While ID claims to be a scientific theory (I am unaware of any claim that "ID is just as much a fact as evolution"), it fails a basic theoretical test -- there is no discernible way to falsify it.
This tells you where this piece is going. And where it came from.
So, this is a good time for another "alternative" creation story.
No one knows just how the story of Raven really begins, so each starts from the point where he does know it. Here it was always begun in this way. Raven was first called Kit-ka'ositiyi-qa-yit ("Son of Kit-ka'ositiyi-qa"). When his son was born, Kit-ka'ositiyi-qa tried to instruct him and train him in every way and, after he grew up, told him he would give him strength to make a world. After trying in all sorts of ways, Raven finally succeeded. Then there was no light in this world, but it was told him that far up the Nass was a large house in which some one kept light just for himself.This story is very long. The rest can be accessed at: http://www.indigenouspeople.net/creatlingit.htmRaven thought over all kinds of plans for getting this light into the world and finally he hit on a good one. The rich man living there had a daughter, and he thought, "I will make myself very small and drop into the water in the form of a small piece of dirt." The girl swallowed this dirt and became pregnant. When her time was completed, they made a hole for her, as was customary, in which she was to bring forth, and lined it with rich furs of all sorts. But the child did not wish to be born on those fine things. Then its grandfather felt sad and said, "What do you think it would be best to put into that hole? Shall we put in moss?" So they put moss inside and the baby was born on it. Its eyes were very bright and moved around rapidly.
Round bundles of varying shapes and sizes hung about on the walls of the house. When the child became a little larger it crawled around back of the people weeping continually, and as it cried it pointed to the bundles. This lasted many days. Then its grandfather said, "Give my grandchild what he is crying for. Give him that one hanging on the end. That is the bag of stars." So the child played with this, rolling it about on the floor back of the people, until suddenly he let it go up through the smoke hole. It went straight up into the sky and the stars scattered out of it, arranging themselves as you now see them. That was what he went there for.
Some time after this he began crying again, and he cried so much that it was thought he would die . Then his grandfather said, " Untie the next one and give it to him." He played and played with it around behind his mother. After a while he let that go up through the smoke hole also, and there was the big moon.
Ping.
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