Looks like Kansas is going to re-enter the 21st Century. I first got the news here.
Most interesting quote:
Well, if truth is part of the liberal agenda, I must be a dyed-in-the-wool liberal!
(mods: I wasn’t sure whether this was MPSIMS or GD stuff, but seeing as most of the Evolution vs. Creationism stuff is here…)
It’s a real shame Truth isn’t part of that agenda though. =]
There’s nothing wrong with teaching creationism in school…“Sunday” school that is, or religious history at best. The idea of evolution being substituted for creationism in SCIENCE class is laughable.
Ted wrote:
I assume that by capitalizing “Truth,” you really mean “Christianity,” right?
Wouldn’t that make it easier to argue with me?
But nope, I’m not. I’m refering to an ultimate concept of Truth that reveals itself via. itself, and not through some other type method. Wheter that be the scientific method, or someone telling you about god.
I’m not for realitivism, which claims that all truths are equal. (except for itself of course because it’s making a universal statment that superceedes all other claims of Truth)
Nor am I for any system that claims it’s found the truth, and it proves it via any particular means.
I belive in a Truth that exists outside the bounds of argument. Now if this particular Truth is impersonal, I can never know it fully, for it would never reveal itself to me. But if it has a will of it’s own then I have a chance to know it.
Any truth that claims it’s True through a method that isn’t True can’t for certian be the Truth.
It’s nothing to do with Christianity, just the idea of Truth. Of course any of these truths might be the Truth, it’s just that i won’t know it until they reveal themselves through themselves.
get it?
(of course all of this is merely a method of truth as well… it’s just that I hold it as a higher truth than others)
Let’s not forget that what we commonly call “creationism” is just one creation myth, namely the Christian one. But given the standards a “scientific” theory has to pass among some of our more religious friends, then I see no reason why I can’t suppose my own creation theory.
In the beginning, there was a vulture, flying in mist. And the vulture said, “I need a goddamn nest.” So vulture flew through the mist, and shortly thereafter, he met a serpent, and the serpent said, “I will give you what you want vulture, but first we must play twister.” This made the vulture happy, and after the game of twister (which the snake won obviously), the vulture found himself on a great tree over a motionless land. The mist was thick, so the vulture began to beat his wings, clearing away the mist, and animating the land with life. So the vulture made his nest in the great tree, and layed millions of eggs, of which all species were born.
Does this not meet all of the “scientific” criteria? I say evolution is wrong, and that my concept is right. Further, I can prove the validity of my creation, because My Word is the only true and correct Word. And my God is the only true God.
Q.E.D.
**
It wasn’t a vulture it was a Chicken Hawk. If you persist in your lies then I shall call a Jyhad and put the smack dab on your heretical ass.
Archbishop Marc keeper of the sacred Dead Sea Squirrels
MGibson,
You and your chicken hawk will perish from the earth. My vulture will peck at your eyes and gnaw at your liver. I think its absolutely clear to any reasonable person that the vulture is the one true god, and thanks to your little remark, I don’t think he likes you. Recant now or the eternal flame shall swallow your soul.
Ren: Yes, this is the proper forum.
Lastgasp, you said in your first message of this thread:
Considering the other things you’ve said here, I presume you accidentally got this reversed?
That might be news to our Jewish and Muslim friends.
Though quite a few of the major points DO correspond, Lib, you would still have to admit that there is more than one “Creation” myth out there, which I believe is the point that was trying to be made.
One more time:
Science=gathering all the information possible and trying to find the best possible answer that fits most, if not all, of the evidence. When more evidence comes in, science is capable of change.
Creationism=forming the conclusion, than gathering only those facts that will fit into the conclusion.
I fail to understand why fundies believe that accepting evolution is equivalent to atheism. It has always seemed to me that the truth of Christianity stands or falls on the nature of Jesus and the Resurrection. Shouldn’t devout Christians simply teach about the redeeming power of the Atonement and God’s love and not worry themselves over such tangential matters? There is nothing really incompatible with learning about science and being a believing Christian.
When the fundies mistake ignorance for piety, they do their faith and their God a disservice.
Simple, goboy.
Fundies are scared.
Yer pal,
Satan
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Possibly. But the three, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim are identical. All points correspond, not just a few.
Actually, I think what the Creationists do (at least what they say they do) is posit “models” based on predictions, and then examine which model they believe the data fits with the fewest complications. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Per se.
You are far too generous to those people. Creationists use dishonest tactics, obfuscation, and outright lies to put across their message. In addition, they clearly have no idea what science is or how the scientific method works.
Dishonesty-Duane Gish, for example claims that there are no fossils in the Pre-Cambrian layers, even though he knows it is false. Creationists have misquoted scientists to make it appear that the fact of evolution is in question.
Creationists do not have proper credentials and do not publish papers in refereed professional journals. They make no observations nor do they test hypotheses. They have dressed up a religious doctrine in the trappings of science to make it more palatable to the public. They fit the classic definition of scientific cranks.
Creationists do not understand evolutionary biology, or how science works. Tom Willis, president of the Creation Science Association for Mid-America, wrote in yesterday’s Usa Today
that evolution teaches that"fish became lizards over billions of years", and that “evolution created the cosmos”, both completely untrue. They seem to believe that scientists make wild guesses and call them theories, which shows they don’t have the first clue how science actually works.
Back before the LBMB turned itself into an armed fortress to keep out the bad people, (you can still get in, but you have to offer them your firstborn), you could see a number of the issues that frighten them. Among those issues:
Darwin was, himself, an atheist, so obviously anything he put forth was anti-God (and, hence, false).
The Genesis narrative explains that death entered the world through the sin of Adam. If there were critters dying before Adam showed up, then that aspect of the story is not literally true.
If humanity could have arisen through the series of chances and random events that are the basis of speciation in Darwin, then there is no need for God to be involved with the creation of humanity. (Religious believers who acknowledge evolution have no problem accepting that God could have infused some critter in the evolutionary chain with spirituality, but the idea is threatening to people who need for God to have set out with the intent to create humans. Of course, God could also have tweaked certain genetic changes at different times to accomplish the evolution of humanity–this is where Gould’s “rewind and replay the tape” analogy hits a snag, because neither believers nor non-believers will ever be able to prove that God did or did not intervene where He chose.)
Some political history also is involved with the rejection of Darwin. As agnosticism and atheism became more prevalent among the intelligentsia in the eighteen and nineteenth centuries, one practice that doubters took up to show problems with religious (usually Christian) belief was to point out discrepancies and contradictions in the bible. Rather than acknowledging that Scripture provides the embodiment of Jewish and, later, Christian mythology (using myth in the anthropological sense of a story that embodies a group’s understanding of Truth), many religious leaders of the time asserted that the bible was literally true in all its particulars.
One of Darwin’s earliest and loudest supporters, Huxley, had already joined the doubters and when he read Darwin’s works, he realized that he had found outside scientific evidence for the inaccuracy of Scripture. Church people who were already defending against charges of Scriptural discrepancies found themselves having to attack Darwinism as a pre-emptive defense.
I have been very involved in the Kansas school board debacle. The nonprofit political organization I work for put together an educational project called Origins, a compilation of testimony from the Scopes Trial of 1925 and put it on the stage in Lawrence, Kansas. The cast was star-studded.
But more interesting was the discussion that followed. The panel was composed of three scientists (all evolutionists, of course), and two creationists. Both had minor science credentials (bachelor’s degrees, etc), but neither had mastered the subject so much as the evolutionists. At any rate, the ignorance of the creationists was absolutely staggering.
First though, it is important not to misrepresent the Kansas Science Standards instituted by the previous board. The standards never suggest that evolution be stricken from the curriculum and replaced with creationism. Rather they handed the responsibility to evaluate these often competing theories to the local schools. They claimed that since evolution is just a theory, it is no more validity than creationism.
At any rate, the interesting part of the panel discussion was that the scientists and the creationists (one of whom happens to be the leading proponent of that nuisance, Ideal Design Theory), were talking about entirely different things. The evolutionists argued over and over again that they were not trying to look for the origin of all life, for that is an entirely metaphysical question and one ill-suited to be proven or disproven by biology, the fossil record, etc. They were more interested in descent.
The creationists called them liars, and said that they were teaching in schools that man arose from the primeval soup. Since that is as unprovable as creationism, they had no right to teach it in the classroom.
Of course the scientists said that was patently ridiculous. Mr Ideal Design Theory said that since he has evidence that supports his case, it should be taught. One of the scientists tartly pointed out that it doesn’t work that way. First your theory must penetrate the university level, then it actually has to work, and then it gets taught at the high school level. This didn’t shut either of the creationists up. Finally, one of the scientists remarked that Ideal Design Theory was bad metaphysics dressed up in a cheap tuxedo of science. On that note the discussion ended.
It was excellent. 
MR
That’s a little bit disturbing.
As an unbiased observer who happens to believe in both God and natural selection, I can’t help but notice that the very tactics some Evolutionists accuse the Creationist of are used by the Evolutionists themselves. In fact, both sides look silly. “Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!”
What I find disturbing about the quote above is that you pitted three scientists against two theologians, and then make the astonishingly perfunctory statement that the latter two seemed ignorant. But if you staged three theologians against two scientists, and argued about the Categorical Imperative, wouldn’t the two scientists appear to be staggeringly ignorant?
Creationists are not theologians, they are faux biologists, and if you come to a discussion of evolution but haven’t the basic education required to debate, you deserve to lose. “Just like a creationist to bring a knife to a gun fight.”-- not quite Sean Connery in “The Untouchables”.
Neither of them were theologians. Both passed themselves off as scientists. The leading exponent of ID theory is a law professor at UCal Berkeley. The other panelist, the head of a nonprofit organization which promotes the teaching of creationism in schools, was a engineer who now raises blueberries.
As an unbiased observer, why would you assume that they were theologians in the first place?
And I think an intelligent scientist who reads Kant would not appear to be staggeringly ignorant when posed against a poor theologian. And vice versa.
MR