Intelligent Design out of Pub Schools in PA

[cpxxx]

From Seagoon.

The "gubment" skools are going to teach Neo-Darwinism long after every hope of finding evidence to support it has disappeared. Long after palentologists have given up on the hunt for non-existent transitional lifeforms, long after biochemists have accepted that chemical reactions do not create information, and long after astronomers have accepted that we are in fact in an enormously "privilleged position" in the galaxy, high school biology teachers will be trotting out the outdated and outmoded theories of Darwin and performing the yearly ritual of dogmatically teaching were we came from in accordance with their roles as the new priesthood of the reigning paradigm - Darwinian Fundamentalism. Meanwhile those schools will continue to decline, to become more and more toxic to kids, until anyone with a shred of sanity and enough money, will have moved their children to private schools or started homeschooling. That is if the NEA hasn't managed to legally end both of those practices by then.

Those comments are all very fine and a legitimate view for a skeptic against evolution. Hey, it's a free country. You are entitled to your view. I could even agree with you (in theory) and say there could even be an alternative to evolution. A better, more elegant, more proveable process which demonstrates how we came to be in this world. I'm not a Darwinian fundamentalist. (If such a person exists).

But the problem is this: Your belief, no blind faith that the world was created in six days by a supernatural being you call God. Your reigning paradigm, consists of a single chapter in a 2000 year old book.

You see the problem? It's not your skeptisicm about evolution but your so called alternative. Which in fact is a view only held by a minority of Christians like you.

Like I said before, creationists have zero credibility when it comes to criticising evolution.

[Holden McGroin]

Originally posted by cpxxx
Your reigning paradigm, consists of a single chapter in a 2000 year old book.

That chapter is from a book that is 3,000 or maybe 4,000 years old.  Only the last part is 2,000 years old.

However,

Evolution is a process which is well documented in the fossil record.

In our own lineage, Australopithecus Afarensis (Lucy) is presently considered the oldest known bipedal "ape". She is different species to our own homosapien, and a fossil ancestor to us that follows thru many succesive steps to present humanity.

[deSelys]

Originally posted by Holden McGroin
That chapter is from a book that is 3,000 or maybe 4,000 years old.  Only the last part is 2,000 years old.

However,

Evolution is a process which is well documented in the fossil record.

In our own lineage, Australopithecus Afarensis (Lucy) is presently considered the oldest known bipedal "ape". She is different species to our own homosapien, and a fossil ancestor to us that follows thru many succesive steps to present humanity.

Burn in Hell, you heretic!!!!

[Seagoon]

Hello SOB,

Originally posted by SOB
You should start a commune, Seagoon.  Just make sure to pay your taxes and don't have a small arsenal.  Then your kids could be sheltered from the evil non-Christians.

Forgive me for being somewhat bitter in my reply above. It was inappropriate.

Please don't misunderstand me, I understand that I am commanded to remain in the world, rather than withdrawing to form some sort of commune, or adopting an Amish approach to life (as much as I am sure there are many who would prefer it if I did ). In fact, to do so would be to go against Christ's commandment to go into the all the nations, and to teach men to be his disciples (Matt. 28:19-20) and to be the light and the salt of the earth. But sometimes I chafe under the other assurances Christians have received from Christ, that in the world we will have tribulation and be hated. (John 16:33, John 15:18-20). Intellectually, I can understand it, but the practical outworking of living through it for many years begins to grind. But hey, then again, I have no cause to be ungrateful, especially considering I live in the most "Christian friendly" nation on earth.

It is not so much wanting my kids to be sheltered from the "evil non-Christians" nor would I for a moment allege that I and my children don't have our own sin problems. What I would like to shelter them from if it were possible, is the coarsening of society that has come as a direct result of our being cast adrift into the moribund sea of secular humanism. The long term effects on our society, of refusing to acknowledge God, biblical ethics, the concept of absolute truth, or the concept that there will indeed be a final judgment, is making western society a progressively more horrible place in which to raise children.

 Just going to mall and seeing the general decline in civility and behavior since I was a young pagan thug in High School 20 years ago is depressing. Walking in the other day with my kids, we had the fun of witnessing a catfight at the entrance between two teenaged girls after one screeched a warning to the other about the dangers of trying to "xxxx my boyfriend". I'm guessing they were 15 or 16. Behavior like that used to be reserved for the worst sections of the dockyards 100 years ago, but now its becoming all-pervasive.

This past weekend we went to Chuckie Cheese (man I hate that place) and my daughter got "farmed" of her tokens by some older boys while I was taking my son to the bathroom. They discovered that since we have taught her to share, if they asked for some tokens she would give them. By the time I got there they were taking handfuls out of her cup. The mothers of these boys were actually sitting at a table not too far away as their boys stole tokens from a 5 year old. My three year old Son on the other hand, learned a wonderful lesson. The boy next to him played a game and won some tickets but didn't take them with him when he left the machine. My son spotted the tickets and immediately snatched them up before I could say anything and ran after the boy finally finding him across the room with his parents getting ready to go. My son handed him the strip and said "You forgot your tickets." The boy snatched them up and turned around. That kind of impolite behavior didn't amaze me, what did is that neither of his parents did anything either. The idea of saying "thank you" was apparently lost on the entire family of old. But then again, if might makes right, and the strong prosper and the weak die, and we are all just animals constructed by time and chance and life is the oddity and death the constant, then what does saying "thank you" to a three year old matter? In that case neither saying "thank you" nor pushing him down and taking his is wrong or right. More fool my son for not pocketing the tickets, eh?

By contrast, the funny thing is, although our congregation is made up of converts to Christianity like myself, you can already see a difference in the behavior of our kids. Is their behavior perfect? Not at all. You can still see selfishness and so on. But the difference in their language, general level of respect especially towards elders, willingness to obey, patience, modesty of clothing, and attitude towards learning (seeing it as a gracious benefit rather than a mark of being a dweeb) is profound. Why? Because they are both being affected bit by bit by grace, and also because they are being taught to deny self, to take up the cross, to esteem others more highly themselves, and to obey God's commands out of love. You may end up hating and despising everything they believe, and think they are a bunch of brainwashed throw-backs to an earlier era, but in a few years when you are elderly, and they are grown up, these are the kids you'll hope are walking towards you in the dark alleyway, not the "I'll do whatever seems right in my own eyes" type.

The funny thing is even immigrants from other countries can see what our "Death of God" Nihilism is doing to our cultures. Recently for instance, David Lacy, the Moderator of the tremendously liberal "we don't believe the bible either" Church of Scotland was one of many British religious leaders approached by Muslim and Hindu leaders who begged them to abandon multiculturalism and be more "strident" in teaching Christian beliefs. They see that British culture is falling apart at a rate that far exceeds their ability to convert Britons to their faiths, and which has a negative effect on their children and families. The response of Lacy was predictably "NO", they are committed to following the humanist bandwagon off the cultural cliff. Atheistic Humanism and absolute autonomy uber alles. What does it matter if it is a death sentence for the institution of the family?

Ah well, thats the culture. I'll live in it, I'll work with it, but I'll demure from sending my children to its schools as long as I can.

[Seagoon]

Hi StSanta,

Originally posted by StSanta
This ain't a personal attack on you or your faith Seagoon. What sometimes baffle me is that people of obvious above average intellect such a Behe simply decide not to let the world affect their worldview and have it it the other way around instead. People who can do understand advanced philosophical concepts fail on a most basic level. It's actually a bit scary. I wouldn't want these people to lead me or educate me.

I am someone who was once a strident believer in Darwinian evolution, many of the scientists currently on the fringes of the ID movement were as well. For most of them, it is not ignoring the facts that caused them to change their minds. Rather it is the fact that the old Darwinian paradigm can no longer explain the available data, and therefore they are searching for a paradigm that can. I realized that before I ever became a Christian, so I began reading about novel ideas like "punctuated equilibrium" which attempted to "remold" the old evolutionary theory in order to wrap it around the new data. Even as I was becoming a Christian, I realized that endeavor was failing and that the advocates of the old paradigm were becoming more and more aggressive in the defense of what Stephen J. Gould (who was himself an evolutionist and an atheist right up to his death) had begun to call Darwinian Fundamentalism.

You see, as it has become more and more evident that mutation is not capable of producing the diversity of life we see in the time posited, that the transitional life forms Darwin hoped we'd find in the fossil record don't exist, that the information in DNA cannot be created by chemical reactions, that certain cellular structures and processes cannot have been gradually built, that the fossil record indicates a progression from more to fewer life forms not the other way round, that the Cambrian explosion of advanced lifeforms had no fossilized precursors and the discovery of soft tissue spore fossils in the preceding strata indicates that these precursors would have been preserved, elements in the Darwinian community have been falling increasingly into a faith mindset to plug the gaps. Ok, so we don't know now and it doesn't seem possible but we believe in the system, we have to, so we'll continue on with it until we someday the unified field theory Huxley hoped for materializes. In addition to that, they are increasingly screaming "heretic" at ANYONE in the scientific community who points out that the emperor isn't wearing clothes. To disagree with the Darwinian establishment is usually an E-ticket to being ejected from the scientific community, your grants, and being forever labeled a "Fundamentalist" if they can find your church affiliation or a "crypto-Fundamentalist" if they can't.

I hope he won't mind me quoting him, but another user, who is clearly not  religious posted an excellent message to that effect in another thread:

"Hi all. Good debate. One that I do not dare tread in my workplace.

1st, to Chairboy and Sandman...I am not religious by any stretch of the imagination. I don't go to church, I don't pray to God or god however I should be writing that. I laughed at my "religious nut" friends and throughout my college time in the deep South. One of my chemistry teachers even gave a lecture that touched on Itelligent Design. I buried my head in my arms and bit my tongue to stop myself from laughing.

However, my current work has me questioning my previous smug convictions. I'd take the time to explain why, but I can't post a trillion pictures/diagrams in here.

Suffice to say, I am not convinced that Darwinian evolution can explain the creation of DNA, the protein machinery to translate it into RNA and then into proteins.

In brief:

The mantra is: DNA-->RNA-->protein. Yet the process itself requires proteins to carry out the translation. It's like having machines build machines, but how did the first machines get built?

I don't care if you say God did it, aliens, space dust, Allah or whoever...just count me as one scientist who doesn't believe Darwin's theory of evolution in whole."

StSanta, the Neo-Darwinian community wants to frame the argument as being heroic scientists standing up to mindless believers, but what is actually going on at the moment is that the Neo-Darwinians have become the lock-step believers and will do anything to prevent the theory from being questioned. At this point, scientists could discover "MADE BY ALIENS FROM BETELGEUSE, GREETINGS EARTHLINGS" in tiny letters at the heart of the DNA Helix and they'd get to work trying to figure out how evolution created such an odd combination - no other course would be available to them unless they wanted to be permanently out of work and doing interviews on the Art Bell show for the rest of their lives.

So when we find irreducible complexity and information at the heart of cells, which are hallmarks of creation anywhere else in science, we are forbidden to even suggest "Errr, maybe these cells were manufactured?" because it has become a heresy. As long as no deviation from the paradigm is allowed, and anyone who questions becomes the target of vicious ad-homs and ostracism and EEO violations, you are going to end up stifling the very scientific development you claim to be safe-guarding.

[Silat]

Originally posted by Seagoon

The long term effects on our society, of refusing to acknowledge God, biblical ethics, the concept of absolute truth, or the concept that there will indeed be a final judgment, is making western society a progressively more horrible place in which to raise children.

 

Whose truth? Acknowledge whose God? What final judgement? Whose Bible? Who interprets it?
Sounds like a theocracy to me Seagoon.

[detch01]

Originally posted by Seagoon
StSanta, the Neo-Darwinian community wants to frame the argument as being heroic scientists standing up to mindless believers, but what is actually going on at the moment is that the Neo-Darwinians have become the lock-step believers and will do anything to prevent the theory from being questioned. At this point, scientists could discover "MADE BY ALIENS FROM BETELGEUSE, GREETINGS EARTHLINGS" in tiny letters at the heart of the DNA Helix and they'd get to work trying to figure out how evolution created such an odd combination - no other course would be available to them unless they wanted to be permanently out of work and doing interviews on the Art Bell show for the rest of their lives.

"This looks like" has an entirely different meaning than "this is".
It seems to me as soon as someone stood up and said, "wait a minute, where's your proof?" the accusations of the grand neo-darwinian conspiracy started getting thrown about.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs. That there may be information coded into DNA that we haven't yet deciphered, or for that matter been widely accepted as true is hardly proof of anything, let alone the extraordinary proof that the extraordinary claim "god did it" requires. Until it has been thoroughly researched and it has been proven that god's hand was indeed involved you haven't got a rational leg to stand on. And just because you are not aware of any current research into the question doesn't mean that it isn't happening or it isn't going to happen. Where there is an interesting question there is generally someone asking it and looking for the answers. If you can have faith in some magical unseen being, you should be able to muster up a little faith in the natural, and known, curiosity of the human species.
Art Bell indeed.

asw

[detch01]

Originally posted by detch01
woops- wrong button - apologies....

asw

[midnight Target]

http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/?uc_full_date=20051218

[ChickenHawk]

Originally posted by midnight Target
http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/?uc_full_date=20051218

We've already been over this.  Creationists don't have any problem with existing DNA changing and evolving.  It's new DNA appearing out of thin air without Devine intervention that presents problems.

Worlds apart.

[midnight Target]

Originally posted by ChickenHawk
We've already been over this.  Creationists don't have any problem with existing DNA changing and evolving.  It's new DNA appearing out of thin air without Devine intervention that presents problems.

Worlds apart.

OK, lets assume for a minute that God created DNA.

You have NO problem believing that you and an oak tree have a distant common ancestor? Right?

I mean it (DNA) can change and evolve right?


(no "got wood" jokes... too easy.)

[ChickenHawk]

Originally posted by midnight Target
OK, lets assume for a minute that God created DNA.

You have NO problem believing that you and an oak tree have a distant common ancestor? Right?

I mean it (DNA) can change and evolve right?


(no "got wood" jokes... too easy.)

Not sure what your getting at.

A tree can change it's rate of growth, root depth, number of leave, ect...  But a tree is still a tree and will never be a human.  That would require additional DNA, not merely redirecting of existing DNA.  There was never a common ancestor.

The problem with the comic you posted is that it perpetuates the myth that creationists are stupid and don't believe that any organism, bacteria in this case, can change and evolve.  There might be a couple quacks out there that don't believe in anything, even that we've landed on the moon, but by and large that just isn't true.

Inter species changes are a well documented fact that can be replicated in the lab.  One species evolving into another has never been observed in any condition and never will no matter how many millions of years you throw at it.

That a popular comic writer is perpetuating this myth is sad but not really surprising.  Creationists by and large have learned to grow a thick skin when it comes to unfounded accusations.

[midnight Target]

Oh for crying out loud... If a single instance of speciation is presented your argument becomes null and void. You want to google it?

[ChickenHawk]

Originally posted by midnight Target
Oh for crying out loud... If a single instance of speciation is presented your argument becomes null and void. You want to google it?

I don't have any problem with speciation.  It too is a well documented fact.

I can only assume that you hold the belief that given enough time, speciation will give rise to a new and different life form.

I disagree.  For that to occur would require new DNA.  To my knowledge, science has not proven that new DNA can be added to existing to create a new species.

If that day ever comes, I'll be all ears.

[midnight Target]

Sorry CH but you are wrong. New DNA would not be required. In fact the code for a protien in an oak tree is the same as the code for a protien in a human. The series of nucleotides may change but the basic DNA in an oak tree and in a human is the same.