Univ. of Kansas Takes Up Creation Debate

Bravo.

This brings up a great point. In a typical science textbook, there are many more "theories" than just Darwin's. You ID folks seem to attack Darwin because it's labeled a theory...

In the scientific community, relativity is a theory that has long been much more controversial in the 20th century than evolution... yet where are the throves of "intelligent design" like people threatening to emphasise that relativity is only a theory...

and there are thousands of other working theories that science has relied upon... why single out evolution?

The fact is, people have no right to criticize what should be taught in a science classroom if they do not understand science and do not understand "theory."

 

By the same token, it should be reiterated that there is no such thing as a proven theory. You can form a hypothesis from a theory, test that hypothesis and see if it supports the theory or not, but a theory itself cannot be absolutely proven, else it would be fact.

Basically, proponents of creationism and ID are asking the scientific community to "prove" the scientific theory before they'll buy into it.

And I suppose that science has asked religion to do the same.

 

Brandon brings up a good point. Science really never "proves" anything. In truth, it is always a "theory" because the more we learn the more we realize what we don't know. Read Bertrand Russels treatise on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Anyone who studies science though can make a case for evolution. One just needs to look at the "ingenious" way that bacteria can change themselves to become immune to antibiotics or the way that HIV changes to adapt to the presence of anti-virals. Personally, I find it truly amazing how life manages to change and adapt through what can almost be termed "brute force" or at least the force of numbers...

 

Scientific theories model nature.
Through review and testing, they get refined and accepted or replaced with another scientific theory which models and tests more successfully.
Science is the study of the natural.
It has no place in commenting on the supernatural.
Religion is about the supernatural.
Both can and do coexist peacefully for most people.

There is no lack of concensus within the scientific community regarding the merits of the theory of evolution.
Only a few headline grabbing religious zealots with an agenda.
ID is not science, it is politics. Pure and simple.

 

Amen to that! -- no pun intended.

 

Pretty good, I've hit many rocks with sticks, and none have started gushing water. But I'm not sure that proves that it must not have happened when Moses did it.

Actually, a couple weeks ago God created an apple tree in my backyard since I needed some to make a pie. I made the pie and told some friends about the new tree. Of course, we just had to take a core sample and count the rings. Sure enough, there were 10.

 

I badly made my point. I was not trying to debate the validity of Darwin or ID, but I see how it looked that way. I was talking about the need to teach different ideas in school. Not real young...but when kids start reaching the point where we want them to think, they need to know a broad range of things.

If a class is discussing evolution, then ID or creationism should be part of the discussion. Schools should not be sterile. Everyone seems to think religion in schools means praying all the time and evangelists. In fact, why are non-believers so scared of even the word God in school?

 

Good discussion here. One defined word has been omitted, "fact".

FACT - a repeatedly confirmed observation.

This eliminates anecdotal, hearsay and metaphorical information - the "I heard", "I think," "Someone told me" stuff. A fact must be repeatable, reproducible and observable by more than one individual. Natural selection (Charles Darwin's term) and evolution are continuously observed, tested and repeated. Hypotheses are continuously modified.

Evolution is a skeleton that helps explain the whole. In science "commonly accepted" information has little credibility, i.e., science is NOT an act of faith or belief. Anything reported is immediately subject to testing, rejection and being disproven.

ID - creationism is an act of faith and very difficult to test. ID - creationism fails the basic concepts of science.

 

Everything started as a dot the size of a period on this page. After a few billion years the dot exploded. Out of the explosion came a primal soup, out of the primal soup came a single celled organism. Out of this organism came a man. Somewhere else in the soup, at the same time out came a woman..... And trees and fruit and food and water and......

Sounds like a religion to me. Much faith is required. By the way, where did the dot come from in the first place? Sounds like solid scientific theory to me, oops, can't explain that one either.....

Like I said, sounds like religion to me. You just have to decide what religion you believe.

 

ID is not science and so should not be taught in science classes.
ID is a political tool the religious right is using to try to insinuate religion into the classroom, nothing more.

 

Why?

What about all the other creation stories? Don't they deserve equal billing?

 

hence the idea of there being a separate class to discuss this... but that fails to disrupt confidence in science... so it's not good enough for id supporters.

<_<

 

Well, neither Creationism or ID take the Bible literally. They claim to, and take in those that are ignorant not only of science, but also of theology. As a former Creationist, and now an affirmed evolutionist who has not lost his faith, I came to my conversion to evolutionary theory not merely by science, but by actually reading the words believers call the "breath of God" Himself ... the Bible.

To interpret any writing you have to apply standards and rules to it, and Biblical interpetation has some very definite rules that should be applied. The author of Genesis knew that the sun gave us the light of day, because he says so when God creates the sun on the third day. However, the structure of the writing is such that there is "morning and evening" on two days prior to the creation of the sun and the moon. Now either Moses is an idiot and doesn't realize the sun gives us the light of the day, or he's an idiot for writing that there's daytime before the sun and simply overlooked it during editing, or some other interpetation than a wooden literalism has to be applied. In fact, if you scratch hard enough and read the comments of Biblical scholars, you will find that the "evening and the morning were the first day" structure of the writing is a form of poetry, and the "days" in the creation account cannot be taken literally anymore than Edgar Allan Poe's raven proclaiming "nevermore". The text itself argues against it. (Not to mention the fact that the SECOND creation story in Genesis chapter 2 differs in a few respects from the first chapter.)

Christians once thought that if the earth were not the center of the universe, we were insulting God because He made the Earth as his crown jewel. Christians once thought that if the earth were round, not flat, we were denying the Bible because it says clearly that the earth has "four corners". Like these two examples, Creationism and ID set up a false premise that forces people to choose between two unrelated topics as if they were really polar opposites.

Once freed from the false choice you are given, you can examine the claims of science. There is still a lot of debate about things in science, and in my lifetime the majority view has changed from steady-state evolution to Gould's "punctuated equilibrium". But those differences of opinion are not the same as blasphemy is within a religious context, and not a sign of weakness. It is science's strength that it continually seeks the truth and self-corrects errors (too slowly sometimes, but it does self correct).

 

I'll challenge you a little bit on this.

If you were having an auto shop class, should you teach what 99.999% of the mechanics say about an engine, or should you find a plumber and give him "equal time" because, after all, pipes have water in them and so do engines? Are the plumber's views just as important as the mechanics?

Its not a flippant question. I have no problem with a college level class exploring wild theories that are held by only a tiny, tiny fraction of the experts. But primary and secondary schools are not the place for that kind of inquiry. To give "equal time" to Creationists and proponents of Intelligent Design in science classes is like giving equal time to flat earth advocates and Homeopathic Healers.

BTW - there's plenty of case law that individual (and even group) religious activity cannot be restricted by schools without a compelling interest in doing so, and your child has the right to self- or student-directed prayer during free time. A "compelling reason" to stop it would be to protect the safety of others, to avoid disruption, etc., but that's a lot of latitude in there. The law does not allow the lesbian feminist witch English teacher to direct the religious activities, and, personally, I don't understand why more of my Christian brothers and sisters don't realize that's a good thing!

 

You are wrong...

If it a science class, then ID has no place... if it is a philosophy class, then creationism is fair game.

We're not scared... we are concerned when people purposefully go out of the way to inject stuff that is clearly not science (that's creationism and ID) into a science class.

Can't you understand that?

To us, it sounds like you're trying to teach oil painting in a math class... that's the problem I have with teaching ID next to evolution... it's not about choice.

 

Exactly... i'd go as far as to put on my tin hat and say that this is a conspiracy to spread confusion among the populace about science to our high school students...

They are trying to distrupt the proper teaching of the scientific method by throwing in irrelevant debate about creationism into the mix.

This is not about choice. This is not about democracy... Science isn't handled by democratic vote by those who would recieve it, so *legislating* ID to be science does not work...

Just because a room full of people vote on the sex of a rabbit and a simple majority think that the rabbit is male without observation does not change the real sex of the rabbit...

 

It's more than that, though its short-term goals are clearly political, e.g., "shooting its way" into political discouse, infiltrating local school boards and state makers of educational decisions.

But we need a new word to describe this revived marriage of religion and politics, something similar to "geopolitical" or "socioeconomic". "Politicosectarian"?

The last time these two danced, we got "under God" inserted into the Pledge. Before that, 40 years of largely religion-based political agitation got us Prohibition. Ha!

But this time is different, if only because these camels are poking their noses under the secular educational tent. I don't think they're anti-science per se. They just find themselves HAVING to attack one of the most-studied---and most-validated---scientific theories extant. They need political allies, and they've got 'em. Who other than the President of the United States should pop up and tell the world that ID should get "equal time" in the public education system!

At first I was outraged. Then a light went on in my head. Many of you may not buy this, but try it on:

Let's HAVE a 3-5-year "debate", throughout the entire American education system. Let's stack up ALL the evidence validating evolution---all the studies and papers and books from zoology, botany, geology, paleontology, any discipline that has something to say, and that's Exhibit A. Then let's put the Christian theological writings (including the Bible) on the other side as Exhibit B. Choose spokespeople and have them come forward. C'mon, make my day!

Darwinian evolution has nothing to fear from ID. Let's devote hours of prime-time TV time to the debate, too. Who knows, some of the Creationists and IDers might even learn something out of this conflagration. Many of the zealous cretins behind this attempted cultural coup literally have no idea what they're up against.

 

I forgot to say that I applaud fshagan's wonderful posts. From some things he's said elsewhere, I knew he was pretty conservative politically---and suspected he might be on this question, too. But he has given us a clear-headed exposition of what might personally have been an anguished thought process for him. I say this without the slightest intent to be condescending. My intent is nothing but respectful, including his strengthened ability to assert his faith. Bravo!

 

I forgot to say that I applaud fshagan's wonderful posts. From some things he's said elsewhere, I knew he was pretty conservative politically---and suspected he might be on this question, too. But he has given us a clear-headed exposition of what might personally have been an anguished thought process for him. I say this without the slightest intent to be condescending. My intent is nothing but respectful, including his strengthened ability to assert his faith. Bravo!

 

A fair debate would be unfair to Creationism, which would only take about 15 minutes to present their argument, and then give way to evolution, which would take years to present their argument...

What these silly Creationism/ID people don't understand is that the question of creationism has already been addressed by the greater scientific community 150 years ago... way back in victorian times... a debate occurred in the 19th century.. Darwin's theory was successfully defended and was accepted, not a small feat...

Compared to the original debate by the world's greatest minds back in victorian times, the "creationist" debate of today is nothing.