Say What?
Judge Rejects Georgia School Board Evolution Stand
ATLANTA (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Thursday ordered a Georgia school district to remove stickers challenging the theory of evolution from its textbooks on the grounds that they violated the U.S. Constitution.
In a ruling issued in Atlanta, U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper said Cobb County’s school board had violated the constitutional ban on the separation of church and state when it put the disclaimers on biology books in 2002.
The stickers read: “This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.”
Where in the constitution exactly does it preclude children from thinking?
If we are to teach our children to accept flawed theories without thinking critically about them aren’t we indeed teaching religion?
That’s a good one Sue, I’ll have to think on it. My off the cuff answer is that no, fire isn’t alive, because it doesn’t truly grow or reproduce, and it doesn’t “eat” – I know “consume” is used to describe what a fire does to flammable materials, but in that usage it is not synonomous with “eat”. That isn’t a great explanation by me, but I don’t have time for more. I’ll think on it though.
But you see, the problem I have here, is that with this ruling, the judges are basically telling this school district that they MUST teach evolution (and only evolution) as ABSOLUTE FACT! The sticker did NOT say that ID/Creation was even an alternative. I agree that the science textbook itself should define what a theory is and so on, and beyond that should state what parts of the text are theories, but do you really think this school board would have been able to use that book (which basically said the same thing as the sticker, only in the text) and not have some busybody judge have to rule on it? How do you think the Judge found out? Some parent probably got “offended” when they saw the sticker and didn’t want their child to be taught ANYTHING that would even remotely suggest that evolution might be wrong, and therefore prompt them to think for themselves and where would that lead, to OTHER theories (and yes, I know, I/D is the only other one out there).
As for the comments about how does creation being “wrong” invalidate the message of Jesus? The Bible is not a collection of essays, it is an account of history from Creation to a certain point (sorry I don’t have Old Testament with me) then it is the account of the life of Christ and his apostles and their message. If the O/T is even IN PART untrue, then the prophecies about the Messiah are untrue, and therefore there is no Messiah and every Jewish man, woman, and child are living in a false religion. Also, if Christ isn’t the Messiah, then Christians are doing the same. By even one part of the Bible not being true (after all it is the “word of God”) then the rest of it falls away. I believe creation as the origin of life, but I also believe that when the world was created and life began, that the species (with the exception of humans) looked VERY different, and thus evolved to what we have today, how elses would each species have survived? And, as for the question about the “rapid speciation” after the flood, with my belief in a God that created the planet and all life on it, I believe also that he could guide the speciation of each animal on the ark to happen overnight if he wanted to.
sean wrote:
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but h. sapien has been around for many thousands of years. The “indigenous” people of the Americas arrived via a landbridge some 20,000 years ago. In all that time, why has there been no speciation?
H. sapien has been around for some 100-200,000 years, depending on who you ask. the oldest dates of human occupation in the americas with solid evidence are in the 13,000 year timeline. (see Brian Fagan’s “Ancient North America” ch. 4)
speciation requires a great deal of time, especially for organisms with fairly long life cycles like us. apparently more than 13,000 years is required for humans to speciate.
of course, new finds could completely change all of that.
Sean,
I can only encourage you to think carefully about the fire and crystal examples. But I warn you, these examples have been debated for hundreds of years, and I doubt any of us here are smart enough to think of something that has eluded lots of smart, dedicated people for a long time. As I mentioned above, the usual answer to the fire and crystal examples is that they lack an internal record of their own structure. Thus, the structure of their “offspring” is determined entirely by the disembodied, unchanging laws of physics, not by the particular, local *structure* of the parents.
One thing that strikes me about this whole discussion is that people keep assuming that only a narrow range of positions are possible:
(A) Hard Creationism, Intelligent Design, etc.
(B) Bible says WHY; Science says HOW
(C) Christian ethics is independent of old pastoralists’ metaphors
(D) Dogmatic scientism (I won’t dignify it with the term “science”)
(E) Tentative and self-critical science
There are some radically different other positions. For example, I know a VERY French lady who ridicules Americans for not teaching evolution in high school, but she herself is adamantly anti-evolution! She, and many other Europeans, is extremely put off by the “dogmatic scientism” and heartless brutality of “survival of the fittest”. She, and many other Europeans, strongly believe in the Roussauian nobility of the human spirit, and find Rousseau to be simply incompatible with the vision of evolution she was given.
Such people are adamantly anti-evolution, and adamantly anti-religion. You might wish to consider how such people fit into your conceptual scheme. I’ve poked around in various European circles, and I’ve found they are not rare. If this dialog is a debate between religion and science, how can so many people be both “anti-religion” and “anti-science”, when those two are supposed to be (exclusive and exhaustive) opposites?
So I think this whole debate is rather too narrow, as it is based on a set of assumptions (religion vs. evolution) that are not as widely held as some would you believe.
smoke eater:
i dont think that untrue parts of the old testament or new testament automatically falsify christian philosophy, but thats my opinion.
old testament texts have elements that come from other influences. check out the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” a mesopotamian myth that has some very biblical ideas, but PREDATE the old testament. there’s even a boat thats built by the hero, animals are loaded onto it, etc.
my point is that lots of cultures have creation stories, very old creation stories. assuming that ONE version is the only correct version is a little short sighted to me.
i guess what you’re telling me is that christian faith hinges on an absolute literal interpretation of the bible. so “jonah and the whale” is a literal story, or is it metaphorical???
lacoon wrote:
So I think this whole debate is rather too narrow, as it is based on a set of assumptions (religion vs. evolution) that are not as widely held as some would you believe.
Survival of the fittest: that term has been misunderstood and misused in more social darwinist terms by alot of people. many people think that it is some brutal view of “how life works” and that it refers to the survival of the strongest and most brutal. not so.
“fitness” is reproductive success, thats all.
and by all means, open up the debate. i dont think that the debate is about religion vs. evolution, but more about a small sect of christians vs. some scientific ideas. the issue here is whether or not christian texts are to be taken literally or not, and whether they should be taught as scientific theory.
From Sue:
“You presume that Darwinism is helping us progress as a civilization. You confuse Darwinism with the entirety of science and the scientific method which indeed have been instrumental in civilized progress.
I don’t see Darwinism as helping civilization at all. If anything, it has caused much more harm than good. Below are two examples that should illustrate my point.”
Why are you quoting Darwin? I never said anything about Darwin. We’re talking about evolution, not the intricacies of one man of his time who errs into the realm of moral judgement himself.
Don’t assume I trust in everything Darwin says, and I won’t assume all Christians who value the bible also advocate slavery or that eating shellfish curses you in the same way to God as apparently being a Homosexual does. Simple.
From Sue again:
“That would be great. Tell that to those “scientists” like Dennett who want to relocate Christians to reservations, or to those like Darwin who want to kill off those pesky negroes and aborigines.”
Why do so many christians feel persecuted? They are still the huge majority in the states. Do you honestly think you’re in danger of being put into a ‘reservation’ ? And yes, obviously society is about to perform mass genocide on particular ethnic groups becuase they don’t conform to an 18th century or so view of things. We have things called morals and ethics.
The only people who advocate GENOCIDE in North America are Christian Reconstructionists. Look them up. Complete nutjobs.
And a scientist sticks to what he/she does. Science. Anythnig they might say beyond that..well. Being intelligent doesn’t make you wise. Again I think you’re confused.
Sue:
“If the federal judiciary keeps overstepping its bounds, you won’t have to wait very long.
History shows us that governments which destroy religion go after intellectuals soon thereafter.”
Are you comparing Bush to a facist regime? You’re implying they share similar traits there. ( Untrue of course as Bush is NOT destroying religion ) And no one else is either. I assume you must be outraged at how courts and the neocon govt are currently stickingtheir noses into your bedroom and personal lives though. So much for “small govt” there sadly.
BTW, the Fed Judiciary is an arm of govt. You might want to read up on how it works in relation to tempering the other pillars of power. Laws will always need to be interpreted. Sometimes ruling go against what you might personally believe in. Don’t hate them for it, find a better argument to change a ruling or stack the court with people of your view. Don’t worry, that will happen soon.
Very well, Sue, but allow[ing] them to be taught in a fashion that the majority of parents in that district want them to be taught is not a benefit for the students. You are right however, the jackasses in question can do anything they want in that school district, including, apparently using state funds to purchase any textbook for their local school system. While the two ideas cannot be taught alongside each other, why not a proposal for optional after school study of one or the other?
Obviously, I don’t really know the answer to this, but if the school board has to indicate that any textbook has to be carefully considered with a sticker, and that actually pleases, in this case a handful of creationist parents as Elisa pointed out, I’ve got a problem with that because there is seemingly no end to this. The creationist parents/school board should have gone a different route. A sticker? I still don’t buy it.
I’m not trying to be snarky about it – and it’s a difficult issue, but to me it reeks of activist parents like Newdow who don’t really care about the way that this type action impacts their own kids.
I am also enjoying this discussion and especially the interpretations of the order, which is in no way using the mask of creationism for religious purposes – right?
You people have to stop. This is more critical thinking than the courts wanted.
Enough already. If one reads all the earlier posts, including two of my own, then one can see we are talking about science class. Guess what they teach there? They teach Science, not religion. If you want religion taught, add a religion class, or for that mater a philosophy class. Of course, to add such a class would be a waste of tax payer money. High school is collage prep. The questions and comments that everyone raises are meant to be tackled in Collage, and they are, not junior high or high school.
Every criticism that has been leveled can be aimed at every scientific principal. The teachers understand this. They explain the scientific method in class. You can’t single out one item. Maybe you don’t want science taught? Then every other country will bury us economically. American diplomas won’t be worth the paper they are printed on.
Do you want someone coming into church and placing warning labels on religious text books? Of course not. You say school is different? Well if you can interfere there, shouldn’t someone be able to interfere with Sunday school or bible school?
Science and religion are not opposed, (see my earlier post). Intelligent design is not a theory, nor should it be taught.
Why is our sight so bad? Other animals have great sight. Why is our hearing so bad? Our land speed? Our ability to jump? Climb? Fly? Other animals have advantages in these areas also. Is the addition of aids, flu, strep, ect., such an intelligent idea?
When God created the Universe, there was a process. We call finding that process that God used Science. Therefore, when we talk about the formation of life, the universe and everything, we are talking about the process that God used to create the universe. Metaphorically, science is the process of locking into Gods eye.
We might be able to create a sun some day. However, if we could, that still wouldn’t disprove God.
When God gave us the qualities that make us human, they were in his image. He was able to limit them. We can see, but not for 500 hundred miles. We can hear, but not a pin drop three miles away. You get the picture. There was however one quality that he could not limit. That endowment is free will.
There is no way to limit free will. Therefore, we have the whole enchilada. Since we have free will, God can not interfere. If he intervened, we would not have free will.
Do you have free will? If you do there is a God. If you believe there is no God, only science, then you have no free will. You are only responding to a complex set of stimuli that have caused you to respond the way that you have. In that case, in the future, we will identify all the stimuli that affect you. Then we will tell you how your entire life will unfold.
After all, if it is just a complex system, like the weather, humanity will one day figure it out.
This is my last post on the subject. Please reference my two earlier posts.
Rusty
Drew wrote:
Why are you quoting Darwin? I never said anything about Darwin. We’re talking about evolution, not the intricacies of one man of his time who errs into the realm of moral judgement himself.
Someone who can connect religion to a sticker not mentioning religion cannot connect Darwin to evolution.
Why am I not surprised?
Don’t assume I trust in everything Darwin says, and I won’t assume all Christians who value the bible also advocate slavery or that eating shellfish curses you in the same way to God as apparently being a Homosexual does. Simple.
I’m sure Christians will thank you for not assuming that.
Why do so many christians feel persecuted?
Maybe because there are people who have implied that they want Christianity (and all other religion, for that matter) eliminated, and mainstream opinion doesn’t call them nutjobs. Instead, they have supposedly sane people defending them – fanatically.
They are still the huge majority in the states. Do you honestly think you’re in danger of being put into a ‘reservation’ ?
My people were put into camps once. One would have thought that six million or so of us would have been enough to stop it from happening. One would have been wrong. It took armies consisting of mostly Christians to stop it. Thank God for the Christians.
The madman who masterminded it wrote a book years before implying that such a thing needed to be done. People defended him too, saying he was misunderstood and misinterpreted.
And yes, obviously society is about to perform mass genocide on particular ethnic groups becuase they don’t conform to an 18th century or so view of things. We have things called morals and ethics.
When there is no God, there is only Man and Man’s law. What they did to my ancestors was perfectly legal. They made the laws, then rushed off to implement them.
Some would say their only mistake was that they went too fast.
The only people who advocate GENOCIDE in North America are Christian Reconstructionists. Look them up. Complete nutjobs.
If these people were being held up as the brightest and most forward-thinking minds of our time, I would be worried about them. I’m not.
And it’s funny that how much you’re assuming here. You assume I’m a Christian, then you think you’re insulting me by painting Christians with a broad brush – the very thing you warned me against.
And a scientist sticks to what he/she does. Science. Anythnig they might say beyond that..well. Being intelligent doesn’t make you wise. Again I think you’re confused.
How is advocating racial genocide “sticking to science?” How is applying Darwinism to culture and society “sticking to science?”
It’s not. That’s my main complaint. If you want a fair demilitarized zone between scientists and religion, then a lot of scientists should stop invading.
Are you comparing Bush to a facist regime? You’re implying they share similar traits there. ( Untrue of course as Bush is NOT destroying religion ) And no one else is either. I assume you must be outraged at how courts and the neocon govt are currently stickingtheir noses into your bedroom and personal lives though. So much for “small govt” there sadly.
Bush is not the judiciary. You’re all over the place here. You also sound like a leftist. I also hope the little “neocon” snipe there isn’t what I think it is.
BTW, the Fed Judiciary is an arm of govt. You might want to read up on how it works in relation to tempering the other pillars of power. Laws will always need to be interpreted.
BAHAHAHAHAAAA! You crack me up. First you can’t connect Darwin to evolution, now you think that it’s okay for the judicial branch to create laws from nothing while misnaming it interpretation.
Sometimes ruling go against what you might personally believe in. Don’t hate them for it, find a better argument to change a ruling or stack the court with people of your view. Don’t worry, that will happen soon.
What’s my view again? You seem to know it better than me. Oh right, that’s that assumption thing again.
Thanks for the entertainment! This is the most fun I’ve had in months.
Shit, sorry Drew, my bad. I meant Rob Hackney.
A lot of comments center on the premise that the stickers were put there by religious fundamentalists to promote creationism at the expense of evolution. Is it not also plausible that many promote evolution as an immutable truth not because of “facts”, but in an effort to discard creationism? Let’s not be naive and think that only one side might have impure motives.
OK, in order to save my inbox and also to save my own sanity (or what’s left of it), I am going to open a pure discussion thread separate from this one. This thread was started because of a sticker, and turned into a discussion of “science vs. religion” which by the way, is NOT a real fight. The “Church” (meaning pretty much ALL faiths) embrace science because there are things that must be studied, and so on, but to say that “there is no God” or “we came from monkeys” or “life started from a big bang” is NOT true science, because those things CAN NOT be proven beyond all doubt. But, as I said, I am going to start a thread at Science Vs Religion and I’ve also put the URL below so you can copy and paste as well. Anyone with other topic ideas please leave a comment on the post at the top of the page and I’ll get back to you on those if I need further info.
http://science-vs-religion.blogspot.com/
“fitness” is reproductive success, thats all.
Actually, fitness refers to an animals ability to adapt to its surroundings. You may have meant that with “reproductive success”, but your term sounds like success at mating alone.
sean-
success at mating is a good way of measuring how well an organism has adapted to a specific environment.
Quote from Jason: Septeus7, I believe Paul asked for speciation events. These were provided. Now you want me to provide something else, changes in “major body plans”.Didn’t I ask quite clearly not to move goalposts?
Thats assumes there was an agreed upon goalpost. You’re examples are just playing semantics with the taxnomical catagories and you know it. You know perfectly well the “reproductive isolation” is a relative concept so don’t appeal to it as objective.
Quote: If I went around asking “derive the mass of the electron from first principles”, I wouldn’t get very far, would I?
Nice try, that is a catagory error because 1. mass like force is a primative concept (i.e. it derives from the equivalence principle which is primary) and 2. the unit
measurement of an object is something that is raw data not a mechanism to be explained. Theories are explainations of things and every mechanism of every theory of science can be derived from the first principles except for MS; maybe because its to complex or maybe MS doesn’t work but please don’t pretend that anything in biology is comparable to physics.
Quote: A Nevertheless, I can still introduce you to some voltage across the nipples should you suddenly have a heart attack. There are problems with the theory, although we can provide you with a measured mass of the electron.
Thats no theory, thats a very imprecise measurement protocol. Do you even know that you are talking about?
Quote: Gene alleles change over time. I can’t show you fish crawling onto land and devloping lungs and legs, but I can show you other things, from fossils, gene sequences, comparative morphology and developmental biology.
Please, I could should you that my teaspoon looks my handled measuring cup which looks like my frying pan, which looks like my kettle. It doesn’t follow that my teaspoon’s descendants evolved into modern kettles. Morphology and developmental biology can show nothing about true biological relationships. Its just an example of the interpetative construct being imposed apriori.
Fossils show complex hierarchies which could be interpeted many ways. The Evoluationary prediction record regarding the fossil has been terrible which is why you decided to introduce punkEk. You know perfectly well it is spurtz and statis which Darwin didn’t predict.
Quote from the idiot Jason: It might surprise you to know that there is more evidence for evolution than there is for electromagnetic theory. If you want to set the same standard for the standard model that you want to apply for evolution, I suggest you break out some stickers and plaster them all over your monitor, because it’s all running on theory shakier than evolution.
Really? Tell that to a physists. Here’s the website of a random engineer ….http://mrminority.blogspot.com/ *Snickers* Its the quality of the evidence my friend not volume that counts in Science. If the evidence is so good please derive MS mechanisms from first principles. I’m still waiting…
Quote: I suspect I’ll get a lot of flack for that last paragraph, but so what? Gene alleles change over time. Is this in dispute?
No, its not it disputed and it has NOTHING to do with the “origins of livings things” Learn to read.
Quote: Crying about body design and quibbling over what is considered change in information (variations or change? Please!) is not evidence to the contrary, I’m afraid.
No its evidence that you didn’t show any evidence in the first place. It is you theory buddy, defend it with actual evidence next time.
I’m just going by the intro to Origin of Species.
Someone please explain to me why the origins of life are excluded from the theory of evolution. I just don’t understand that. The theory revolves around species changing over time from less complex to more complex. Why does the theory stop at the first one-celled organism? Doesn’t the theory include how that organism came into being? If not, why not?
smoke Eater asserts: The “Church” (meaning pretty much ALL faiths) embrace science because there are things that must be studied, and so on, but to say that “there is no God” or “we came from monkeys” or “life started from a big bang” is NOT true science, because those things CAN NOT be proven beyond all doubt.
There is absolutely and exactly NOTHING that can be proven beyond all doubt. Ever. Don’t believe me? Prove to me that you exits, and stand by….because this will be the thread that never dies.
Then again, only if anyone could prove that it existed in the first place, I reckon.
By the way, there is no standard that something must be ‘proven beyond all doubt’ for it to be ‘true science.’ In fact, in science, there is absolutely and exactly NOTHING that is considered to be proven beyond ALL doubt. You are confusing science with faith. They are two completely different things.
Jinx McHue requests: Someone please explain to me why the origins of life are excluded from the theory of evolution. I just don’t understand that. The theory revolves around species changing over time from less complex to more complex. Why does the theory stop at the first one-celled organism? Doesn’t the theory include how that organism came into being? If not, why not?
Two problems here. First one is easy, because you answer it yourself: “The theory revolves around species changing over time …” Evolution has nothing to do with the creation of the first species. If there is no species, then it cannot change. Abiogenesis is the study of how life can come from lifeless matter. Until the life is there to be a species, it cannot change. In case you skipped the class, the literalist Christian theory regarding abiogenesis is that God said “Let there be tubeworms,” and lo! tubeworms were manifest.
Second problem is the bigger one. I clipped your sentence in the first answer, because the rest is based on a misunderstanding. “… from less complex to more complex.” No. That is not it at all. Complexity has nothing to do with it. Fish and other animals who live deep inside sunless caverns derived from critters that had functional eyes. Now they don’t have functional eyes, they are blind. This is an example of an evolutionary path to less ‘complexity.’ Evolution is simply change over time.
Sometimes I think people think too small.
A couple points:
First, the idea of energy from the sun powering the closed system I referred to earlier (the ability of a species to grow beyond it’s specifications; the specifications being the closed system) is analogous to suggesting that a computer can be powered by anything that has energy, regardless of the form.
Try putting coal into your PC box (coking coal, for high calorific value) or gasoline or even electrical current (that is, current rated at other than the 110v/60Hz or 220v/50Hz used by the typical system). Energy, yes. But useable energy for the PC? No. Your PC will only operate when fueled with the electrical current it was designed to operate with.
Some kind of energy force has to make the instruction set of the genome grow beyond its capabilities. Otherwise, you may as well suggest that shining the sun on an organism makes it “evolve”.
Oops, then that means the sun did it…does that then make the sun “god”…?
Second, without complete knowledge of the organism’s genetic structure (assuming there isn’t yet some undiscovered additional mechanism resident at the cellular or subcellular level that controls physical characteristics of developing organisms), one cannot assume that changes attributed to selective breeding or exposure to varying climates or other conditions constitutes “evolution”.
Who is to say that the changes attributed to evolution cannot be just as easily attributed to pre-designed variances in the basic system?
There is only one thing certain in this life, and that is the fact that we will always have to deal with uncertainty. Oh, and that the MSM will always side with the Palestinians against Israel (oops, that makes two…)
Septeus7:
Next time at Starbucks, ask for less foam, there’s a bit of froth on your chin. Lay off the “idiot” label, makes you look like a crank.
Again, I state, Paul asked for speciation events. I provided two. Obviously you don’t like my definition of this, you are entitled to your opinion, but well, I trust the dictionary on definitions. If you want something more, you can always ask nicely, but you aren’t doing that.
Instead, you say something like this: “Morphology and developmental biology can show nothing about true biological relationships. Its just an example of the interpetative construct being imposed apriori” which would come as a complete surprise to any biologist who specializes in developmental biology.
I also note you seem to think the inability of current theory to explain the mass of the electron (or any other fundamental particle) is trivial, when it fact it is not. There is no theory on the books, right now, not superstring or supersymmetry or SU(3) or anything that can derive the mass of the electron from first principles. You try it, and you get infinite mass…very messy. Not just in everyday units, mind you, it’s infinite in grams as it is in other derivative units, such as Planck masses, if you want to be so first order about it. It’s one of the big reasons we can’t unify the forces beyond what we have done, it’s a limiting factor in tying together electroweak, strong interactions and gravity, for crying out loud. At least in biology, you can breed fruit flies to spec and sequence the genome, a luxury denied physicists. There’s an entire world of biology out there, and only a handful of synchrotrons that can probe for Higgs. “Tell that to the physicists”? Haha! That’s what physicists have told me!
Then there was this: “Fossils show complex hierarchies which could be interpeted many ways. The Evoluationary prediction record regarding the fossil has been terrible which is why you decided to introduce punkEk. You know perfectly well it is spurtz and statis which Darwin didn’t predict.”
The evolutionary prediction record is terrible? Did someone find a therapsid living in pre-Cambrian times? No? Tyrannosaurus in Devonian strata? Hmm? Perhaps you think there might be human and dinosaur footprints on a stream bed in Texas. The fossil record isn’t the reasons punctuated equilibrium was proposed, it had to do with population dynamics in existing species. And Darwin couldn’t have said much about the fossil records because, and this may come as a BIG SURPRISE to you…the fossil record hadn’t been studied all that much, certainly not with an eye for what it actually was. There was hardly ANY fossil record at all, because there was no science of paleontology yet. Will you castigate Newton for his laws of motion because he had no means of accelerating objects to near c?
But let’s lay it all to rest. Your last line was: “No its evidence that you didn’t show any evidence in the first place. It is you theory buddy, defend it with actual evidence next time.”
and the line before it was: “No, its not it disputed and it has NOTHING to do with the “origins of livings things” Learn to read.”
That’s not my theory. Rather than attempting to criticise me on my literacy, you could benefit from some reading comprehension? Evolutionary theory, as it has been stated time and time again on this thread, has nothing to do with the creation of life. Are you in the business of constructing strawmen? No? Then I’m glad we agree, gene alleles change over time, the very fact that allows us to begin theorizing on the nature of evolution itself.
There’s a word for people who promote the idea that “evolution is about the creation of life” or think it answers the question of ultimate origins. That word is “ignorant”.
And for Sean, who asked a great question on the nature of human evolution: Mostly, it’s time. From a genetic standpoint humans haven’t changed much in the past 20,000 years, mostly because we have a lot of taboos on inbreeding and other such relationship, and the impact of human culture on that is also a great big who the hell knows. The impact of our technology is also a muddling factor…many environmental pressures for evolution have been removed by the use of simple tools and fire…plus, there is the question on how we evolved with our technoligy in a sort of nature vs nurture concept. I’m afraid we just have to answer “we don’t know yet, we have speculations” and that’s as far as we can go with it.
r.a. at January 14, 2005 01:35 PM wrote: i dont know why some christians get so worked up about all this. nobody has all the answers, but some people have some pretty good ones.
r.a., I think that explains in part many creationist attacks on evolution. Their strict constructionist brand of religon does claim to have the answers (at least on this topic). By challenging their “answers”, evolution places their faith in doubt. Or worse.
I’ve noticed as of late that we never see any description preceding judges anymore. For example, it used to be that whenever the MSM reported a ruling from a conservative judge it was “Reagan appointed” or H W Bush Judge Smith and then lead into a case decision. This always hinted to the readers how biased the decision was. Now a day, like the evolution case in Georgia, no “moniker” is used. I’ll bet Judge Clarence Cooper was appointed by a democrat. But I guess there is no bias or prejudice on the left. Just like evolution being taught as fact, the left’s decisions are likewise rooted in truth and grounded in precedent…not
Phil Goodwin alias “cocktailwienies”
Some people claim that evolutionary theory “has nothing to do with the origins of living things'” and those who think it does are “ignorant.”
The theory says all life on earth – whether a tubeworm or a human being – evolved from a single celled common ancestor. This apparently must be accepted as a fact, if you don’t want to be called ignorant.
But, where this magical original creature came from, evolutionary theorists can’t say. They just don’t know and they wouldn’t like to speculate.
So the progression from bacteria to slugs, sharks, alligators, eagles, whales, and humans etc. is an undeniable fact, on a par with the law of gravity, no less.
But the progression from inert matter to the first life form is a mystery. Can’t tell you where it came from and don’t care.
Whatever happened to the primordial soup and the pond scum human beings supposedly arose from? Since the best answer evolutionists came up with was this inadequate “chemical evolution” – a type of spontaneous generation – it looks like the solution was to say evolutionary theory doesn’t have to deal with the origins of life. That’s called abiogenesis, and evolutionary theory “has nothing to do with it.”
Seems to be a devious cop out.
Also, it’s obvious that microevolution (variation within species) takes place. This is as provable as the law of gravity. Consider all the breeds of dogs, for example.
But macroevolution (change between families, orders, classes and phyla) is what evolutionists are teaching.
“There is obviously an enormous difference between the evolution of a color change in a moth’s wing and the evolution of an organ like the human brain; and the differences among the fruit flies of Hawaii, for example, are utterly trivial compared with the differences between a mouse and an elephant or an octupus and a bee.” Michael Denton
It seems kind of arrogant to claim the theory of macroevolution is as proven as the law of gravity.
JESUS PEOPLE!!!!
This is the point:
Where is it written that one can’t believe in God if one believes in ‘evolution’? Where is it written that one can’t believe in science if one believes in Scripture?
The universe is so infinitely and utterly complex that we will likely NEVER fully understand it. Isn’t God just a bit MORE complex than that?
So don’t try to claim you can put God in a box — you evolutionists OR creationists — because neither of you can.
And more importantly, IT DOES NOT MATTER how God chose to create; merely that he did.
Sigh…