Texas Continues to Fight Science
March 25th, 2009
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“Intelligent Design” is creationism. Creationism is religion, it’s not science. Evolution is universally supported by every reputable scientific body and by volumes of evidence. The United States Constitution precludes the teaching of religion in schools as it violates the separation of church and state. You can’t teach religion in public school. The US court system has unilateraly supported and affirmed this and so there’s nothing more to be said.
But that just doesn’t seem to sit very well in Texas. That damn thing called “The US Constitution” has been ruining all their plans to either ban evolutionary theory or force the teaching of anti-science and creationism-based rhetoric. Texas has tried and tried to do everything possible to side-step the constitution, find a loophole or otherwise force their idiotic ideas onto students, even going as far as firing those in the school board who would dare oppose their vision of religious indoctrination.
According to CNN, they’re at it again:
The Texas Board of Education this week will vote on science standards that critics say seek to cast doubt on the theory of evolution.
The board — considering amendments passed in January — will hear from the public on Wednesday. It will then take votes — an initial one Thursday and the final vote Friday.
“This specific attack on well-established science ignores mountains of evidence and years of research done by experts in a variety of fields,” said Steven Newton, project director at the Oakland California-based National Center for Science Education, a proponent of evolution.
One amendment, critics say, undermines the idea that life on Earth derives from a common ancestry, a major principle in the theory of evolution. It calls for the analysis and evaluation of “the sufficiency or insufficiency” of the common ancestry idea to explain the fossil record.
Newton said the board is considering other amendments casting doubt on well-established ideas in the earth and space sciences — plate tectonics, radioactive decay and how the solar system developed.
School board chairman Don McLeroy has wanted to tackle questions that highlight supposed weaknesses in the theory.
For example, skeptics of evolution point to what they contend are fossil record gaps casting doubt on the scientific evidence of common ancestry.
Oh dear. Now we’re going to have to deal with the anti-science rhetoric going beyond the field of biology and attacking everything from geology to nuclear physics. I wonder how they’re going to try to cast doubt on something like radioactive decay. Perhaps they could put forward the “unstable isotopes are possessed by evil demons and alpha and beta particles come from hell” theory.
Of course, I’m all about skepticism and there’s nothing wrong with teaching students about how scientific theories have been attacked and how some have fallen to the side while others have been supported. Evolution is actually a pretty good example of this. Like any scientific theory, evolutionary theory was called into question and it withstood criticism. Science demands evidence to support a hypothesis before it is accepted and evidence for evolution has been produced consistently. This is why it was accepted and why it continues to be accepted.
Darwin’s concept of evolution by natural selection was not the only explanation formulated for the development of life. Others were postulated including the idea that species could “transmutate” by being altered by their environment or behavior. On the face of it, such hypotheses seemed to make some sense, but when scrutanized they didn’t hold up and evidence to support these ideas could not be produced. What made Darwin’s theory different is simple: he was right. Because Darwin was right, all evidence reinforces evolutionary theory to the point that it is now beyond any dispute by mainstream science.
Really this is just an attempt to try to blunt the obvious fact that this legislation is targeted at evolution. It’s amazing how politicians and elected boards can’t seem to get the concept of just letting the experts and educators decide how to do things. Once again politicians have appointed themselves the experts and decided to micromanage something they don’t have any place to mess with. How about just a law that states that “The science curriculum shall offer information and theory which is consistent with the accepted facts.” if there is any need for more clarity on what the accepted facts are, they can always go to one of the many scientific bodies (The National Science Foundation, National Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science.) I’m sure such esteemed organizations would be more than willing to offer their guidance as to what good scientific content is, and they’re far more qualified than a bunch of politicians on the school board.
And on a related note…
Bill in Texas would allow creationists to grant Masters of Science degrees
If a private college doesn’t receive funds from any governmental organization, should they have to be held to any standards or requirements when they award degrees? No, one Texan lawmaker is insisting.Texas State Representative Leo Berman has proposed House Bill 2800, which would exempt any private non-profit institution that requires students to complete “substantive course work” from having to acquire a certificate of authority from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board(THECB). “If you don’t take any federal funds, if you don’t take any state funds, you can do a lot more than some business that does take state funding or federal funding,” Berman says. “Why should you be regulated if you don’t take any state or federal funding?”
Because creationism isn’t science, critics argue.
Berman admits that his ‘inspiration’ for the bill was the Institute for Creation Research Graduate School, a Young Earth Creationism institution that has been trying to achieve certification in Texas for two years. Young Earth Creationism, much more popular than the recent Intelligent Design Creationism, is essentially Biblical literalism – Earth is 10,000 years old, Noah’s Flood occurred, Adam and Eve were real people. ICRGS insists that they teach more than just “Biblical Creationism,” which is based only on the word of the Bible; they also have incorporated tenets of “Scientific Creationism” into their bylaws. Most of these relate to origins of Earth and the evolution of species. Originally the creationist research branch of Christian Heritage College in San Diego, the ICRGS was forced to split from that college when California regulators threatened to take away its certification. Now, the ICRGS operates mostly online, and its Masters of Science Degree is recognized by California and federal law. According to its website, however, Texas residents cannot receive a degree.
Well there ya go. If you’re not going to hold the public educational institutions to any kind of standard for scientific value and accuracy why hold the private ones either? and since you can’t explicitly say that this is just for creationism-related anti-science, the only way to do it is to attack all areas of science with equal fever, right? Sure.
I’d like to add that Depleted Cranium doesn’t get any state or federal money and therefore, I’m going to declare this a fully accredited institution of higher education. Please contact us for information on how to get your own Ph.D. in the field of assclownery. Leo Berman will be offered an honorary degree as well as the title of Grand Master Scholar Of Assclownery.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 at 8:41 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Education, Politics, religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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March 26th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Jason said:
That’s not the issue. Science should be taught in school for what it is and the evidence presented. The legislature is explicitly saying that there must be a certain slanted curriculum taught because they, the politicians have decided so.
They’re not calling for open discussion in science class, they’re deciding ahead of time what issue should be discredited and saying how to do it.
Jason said:
Heliocentric was proven through observations. When first proposed it didn’t gain universal acceptance because, as you say, the observations were not compelling and it didn’t provide any kind of benefit of accuracy. Eventually it did.
The evidence mounted over the years. During the times of Gallelo you could probably make a descent case that it was not proven.
At this point, however, we’ve mapped the solar system so accurately that we’re able to use the gravitational fields of planets to assist the navigation of our space probes which visit them – I’d kinda tend to think it’s pretty well proven.
If you want to legislate that classrooms be required to teach “Both sides” of the solarsystem debate then you probably live in texas…
Jason said:
God, you have no idea how ridiculous that “TM” thing is. I’m not the one truying to legislate the side that science teachers take.
Evolution is the way it is and I’m not going to explain all the evidence to you because honestly, I have not the time and I don’t even have enough server space to put it all up. Others have done so so I’m not going to reinvent the wheel and make a list of all the reasons evolution is real.
It would be as dumb as legislating that science teachers teach the “alternative explanations” for the solar system’s structure. Or teach the “discourse and debate” over radioactive decay. OH WAIT! They did say that!
Jason said:
There aren’t two sides to this. This is not a philosophical issue.
nick said:
Okay… now here’s the problem with this. There are “creation scientists” who claim to use science and show that the world is 6000 years old or that life can’t arise from non-living matter or that the universe can’t be as old as it is said to be. They present formulas and mathmatics and evidence that they say proves the point.
The problem is that, without any exceptions, their “science” and “evidence” is full of glaring errors or inaccuracies. If they presented a paper which said the earth is 6000 years old and it had valid scientific evidence, then we would have to take it seriously and look at it.
If there was evidence presented to show this was the case, then it would be published in journals. The reason this is not published is not because of the conclusion but every time it’s looked at, there’s some horrible atrocious error. The only studies that ever come to this conclusion always are based on a core formula where someone forgot the decimal point or where they accidentally put in the wrong half-life or where something is not taken into account of.
So why is this? Why on earth is it that they only seem to come up with a reason to refute evolution or modern science when they have the wrong numbers?
Perhaps it’s because they’re wrong…
It’s like the whole RF radiation/Cancer thing. Many many many many studies done. A handful of them show a link, but without failure, the ones that show a link, are always the ones with flawed methodology. They’re not bad science because of their conclusion. They’re bad science becasue of their bad procedure
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March 26th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
nick said:
I never suggested that those who blow this crap all over the place be put in concentration camps. I suggested that those of us who know better point at them and laugh.
That’s the tough part, isn’t it? If I actually were trying to make it illegal for you to spout this you could claim to be the victim and aruge that you’re being oppressed and kept down.
I want no such thing. I’ll be the first to say that you have the freedom to believe whatever you want. As long as you don’t try to use taxpayer money to advance your hocus-pocus you can sit there are believe and talk about it all you want.
I’ll be here either chuckling or shaking my head in sadness that some things just won’t die… depending on what mood I’m in.
I support your right to be stupid, but if you do it in my house, you’re gona be bitch-slapped. (not literally, I don’t advocate violence.)
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March 26th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
I have an idea: if there are people here who think there is sound science that proves creationism or that there is a creator or something then how about they give it to us? Instead of just saying ‘there is science to show evolution is wrong’ just link some of it? I think ideally it should be good peer revieed stuff, but I doubt they’ll be able to find any of that.
Hows about it? Pony it up!
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March 26th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
yeah, Sure, i know…its the same story every time. your scientists are smarter than our scientists, our science is wrong and yours is right…we got our Ph.D’s from cracker jack boxes…
Give me a fricken break, man! There are enormous amounts of scientific evidence that suggest the earth is not as old as evolution says it is and Im sure youve never read any of it. (RATE project) And the reason those articles dont get ‘peer reviewed’ in your precious journals is because most people are afraid of losing their jobs at the university they teach at if they submit an I.D. article!
There is NO WAY and panel of evolutionists is going to allow an I.D. article to get published regardless of how good the science is, and you know this is true.
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March 26th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
I’ll be the first to say that you have the freedom to believe whatever you want. As long as you don’t try to use taxpayer money to advance your hocus-pocus you can sit there are believe and talk about it all you want.
Yeah, well I definitley dont want my tax dollars teaching the lie of evolution to my kids either, thats why neither should be taught at school
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March 26th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
Giant Pulsating Brain said:
Why dont you use your giant brain and look for it yourself. I can no more prove creationism on here than you can prove evolution. There are many great articles at http://www.icr.org and http://www.answersingenesis.org. Im sure you wont spend the time to read any anyways, but there ya go. And no, its probably not ‘peer reviewed’ for the reasons i gave in a previous posting.
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March 26th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
nick said:
There is no work in ether of the two places that you linked to that has anything other than the same tried nonsense that has been dismissed over and over. This stuff is invalid not because it hasn’t been peer reviewed, it is invalid because the arguments have been dismissed by counter example or have been proven factually wrong.
“Creation science” is a contradiction in terms. A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism–it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms. Religion in all its obnoxious denominations—is illogical, irrational, unreasonable and thus completely unscientific.
If you buy seriously and non-sceptically into a religious view of the world – I’m assuming here a fairly comprehensive one, not just a couple of key doctrines such as “the Abrahamic God exists” – then it’s likely that your whole life will be lived in accordance with a worldview that is, ex hypothesi, fundamentally and pervasively false. In that sense, everything you do and say will be distorted and your life will be structured in accordance with an illusion. I actually think that that’s a pretty bad fate.
Yet adherents seem to have faith that they know many things: the nature of the universe; whether or not an afterlife exists; precisely what to expect from said afterlife; the origin of species; that certain people will burn in everlasting torment who do not believe what they do; and so forth, about anything and everything including the claim to be privy to the infallible word of an omnipotent being.
Such an irrational, superstitious way of thinking has no appeal, nor is the truth found either in the inerrancy of some moldering Bronze Age screed or in the infallibility of someone claiming to know the will of the divine. Both are absurd claims designed not to discover truth but to enforce religious authority and conformity.
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March 27th, 2009 at 12:04 am
Being religious and understanding science are two different things. I find it odd how evolutionists generally want to talk about religion more than the creationists do! I thought we were talking about science?
So you bring up the topic of truth. So tell me, is truth absolute, or is it relative? because if truth is absolute then that means that not all roads lead to Rome. It means there is one reality, and one of us has to be wrong. The question you need to ask yourself is “Am I ok with where Im at, even though I could be wrong about God?” See, youll never know until you die whether or not your worldview is correct, but you can know that there is a God, becuase He’s made a way for you to know for sure, which is why Im here telling you its true. Repent and believe the Gospel and you will be saved, and you will know that God is not a fairy tale.
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March 27th, 2009 at 12:28 am
nick said:
Look as long as ’scientific creationism’ and ‘intelligent design’ are going to be used as Trojan Horses for religion, you can bet that it is going to be brought up every time the topic is debated. You morons may have thought you could set the terms of the debate by pretending it was science – it doesn’t mean the rest of us are going to be stupid enough to buy into it.
nick said:
Pascal’s Wager is probably one of the best examples of intellectual cowardliness around.
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March 27th, 2009 at 12:52 am
“youll never know until you die whether or not your worldview is correct, but you can know that there is a God, becuase He’s made a way for you to know for sure, which is why Im here telling you its true.”
But if we die and find there is no god, then what Nick is telling us is a lie.
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March 27th, 2009 at 1:11 am
If creationists stuck to the argument that evolution is true but directed by god that would be a defensible position from a theological point of view. But when they start with “rocks are 6,000 years old” it’s hard to take them cereal. “Its turtles all the way down!”
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March 27th, 2009 at 1:20 am
kensez said:
No… If you die and he’s wrong then you never find out, you just cease to exist. You don’t ever get to say “Ahhah! There is no god, for there is nothing after death” you just stop being. At that point it doesn’t matter but whatever.
nick said:
Oh gawd, I’ve seen all that anti-science bull**** before, it’s so absolutely off the charts for bad science. They’ve been pounding this nonsense about helium in geological deposits for years despite the fact that the original argument was debunked years ago because it was due to a failure to account for seepage rates across rock strata versus other gases. They use inaccurate numbers for rock plasticity and claim things like isotopic analysis that they can’t cite and that seems to have the original data MIA.
It’s all a crock. And the reason it is not peer reviewed is that it would never stand up to peer review. The science is so bad.
Plus, most scientific journals would not want religion and assumptions injected into the experimental conclusions. If the data says the world is 6000 years old (which it doesn’t) then it does not say that god did it! You could be a young earth atheist. I don’t know why you would, but you could. But there is never anyone who claims that the earth is young who does not have a religious agenda. Have you ever seen a secular argument against evolution? No. It’s all religiously motivated!
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March 27th, 2009 at 3:37 am
Metatron said:
Interesting. I’d agree that there are more pressing matters, but still, this post seems to be cooking more than any I’ve seen in a long time. 60+ comments in about a day. I guess some people are getting really worked up over this eh?
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March 27th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Q said:
This is a very important subject because at its roots is the question of just what is going to drive this culture in the future: faith or reason.
There are, as we have seen on this site from the outset, many other areas where belief has overridden logic. If it isn’t the subject of evolution and common origins, then it’s the efficacy of nonsense medical procedures, the unwarranted fear of trace environmental agents or radiation, or any one of a number of topics we have addressed here under Steve’s leadership.
The use of the cognitive crutch that is faith must be discouraged at all levels, or we cannot address the issues that are facing us today. We cannot solve any of these problems while a significant portion of the population holds fantasies based on nothing more than wanting them to be true. It’s a recipe for disaster.
The debate between theism and atheism is not just a conflict between religious and secular views, it is the decisive battleground between faith and reason in all intellectual domains. When a person believes that the universe is run by some external intelligence, who’s hidden motivations are uncritically accepted as being good, irregardless of evidence to the contrary, that person becomes useless at best and dangerous at worse. “It’s the will of God,” is the ultimate dereliction of responsibility for your actions, and such an excuse needs be discredited down to its verry roots.
The debate in Texas is not about the superficial issue of creationism vs evolution, it is about using the school to inculcate the students with a philosophical outlook that faith is just as valid as reason on the path to truth. Once that has been established in the student’s mind, it really doesn’t matter if they believe in creationism, or believe in evolution, because you have indoctrinated them to think that faith is a valid option, and that alone will make them vulnerable to be manipulated further. That’s what this is all about.
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March 27th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Who created the creator?
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March 27th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Chuck:
Are you arguing that the Constitution does not apply to the states? That would be a big surprise to everyone ever involved in a court case that went before the Supreme Court of the United States. State laws do have to conform to the US Constitution, which is why the SCOTUS is able to strike them down by ruling them unconstitutional. The 10th Amendment even makes that clear — if something is in the US Constitution, then the federal government has power over it, over and above the states. But if the constitution doesn’t include a particular right or restriction, then the states reserve the right to make their own laws on those subjects.
nick:
Your use of terminology is strange. “As old as evolution claims it is”? You seem to think the age of the Earth is best determined by estimating the age of life on Earth. (The theory of natural selection, which is what most IDers mean when they say “evolution”, can only help us to study life, and the Earth is of course an inanimate object.) The best ways to determine the age of the Earth have nothing to do with life, since it seems very likely that the Earth is much older than life. For that, we must turn to physics, chemistry, geology, and astronomy. You can support inferences about the history of our planet by working between disciplines, and even including paleontology and evolutionary biology, but the best evidence of the Earth’s age is not inferences from evolution. It’s physical evidence — radioisotope ratios, sedimentary strata, continental drift, erosion, etc.
If you think the age of the Earth is arrived at through evolution, how do you think scientists estimate the age of Mars or the Moon? Or the Sun, for that matter? These bodies do not have any life (that we’re aware of) on them, and so we cannot estimate their age by working out the evolutionary “clock” of their residents. I’m sure you know that, so you must be disputing more than just evolution.
This sort of sloppy language has me wondering if you are the sort of person who lumps all sorts of unrelated things together into one big bucket called “evolution” that is composed of various things that you do not consider correct but which otherwise don’t have much to do with one another.
Actually, the efforts to date the Earth are very interesting, and involve many disciplines. The theory of natural selection helped scientists to understand the importance of the question, and to realize that it must be a rather large number, but could not provide the number itself (only some suggestions as to a lower bound for the value). In the end, it became not so much a question of dating the Earth as dating the entire Solar System, a question which really doesn’t involve the theory of natural selection at all.
DV82XL:
Not necessarily. It depends on context. Some will say that it is the will of God that people be punished for their actions. These people find it baffling to be accused of irresponsibility, and indeed, wonder how atheists can take any responsibility for their actions if they don’t believe they are held accountable. They are, of course, missing some very important things with respect to where atheists get their morals, but it’s useful to see how they reached their opinion.
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March 27th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
nick,
I just looked up the RATE project. As I suspected from your use of language, it’s a young-earth creationist group which uses the term “evolution” to mean “things we don’t agree with,” and it’s apparently unconcerned that disciplines unaffected by the theory of natural selection nevertheless find the Earth to be quite ancient.
I also have to admit to finding them weak in faith. It’s right there on their front page: “The age of the earth is an important issue in Christianity today. If the 6 day Genesis account is fallacious, then how can the rest of Scripture be relied upon?” I would put it to you, if a literal truth to the 6 day account is required for you to believe, then how do you feel about Jesus’ parables?
When God became flesh and walked among us, He taught often in parables. I do not understand why Young-Earth Creationists think He would have spoken only literally before that. I also wonder why they hang their faith on the first book of Genesis and not, say, on Luke 24.
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March 27th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Calli Arcale said:
In cases of the type you mentioned it is avoiding the duty of thinking the situation through. Behaving in a certain way because you are in fear of retribution from a god is still as far as I am concerned, avoiding responsibility for your acts.
In the end that is both the appeal and the problem of faith: it alleviates the need for thinking, and avoids accepting the fact the the universe isn’t ‘fair’ in the playground sense that these cases of arrested development want it to be. There isn’t a major religion that doesn’t have this feature of disconnecting the believer from the need to think at one level or another.
Calli Arcale said:
(Or John 3:16 for that matter.)
Biblical inerrancy is the doctrinal position that in its original form, the Bible is totally without error, and free from all contradiction; “referring to the complete accuracy of Scripture, including the historical and scientific parts”. (The Chicago Statement) They have painted themselves in to a doctrinal corner with this Biblical hermeneutic, where they cannot deny ANY part without denying all. The reason that they dwell on Genesis is that is the book most vulnerable to dismissal by science. Science has never addressed The Resurrection, or any of the other spiritual points of Christian faith with anywhere near the volume of material that it has generated over the origin of the universes, and the development of life. They really don’t have any choice but to man the ramparts where they do.
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March 27th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Well, as I have pointed out, although it’s not talked about as much, if the Bible is your absolute truth and trumps any other data to the contrary then you have to believe that the languages of the world did not evolve or come from primitive dialects which evolved separately and then began to borrow and alter words and grammar from each other.
Instead, this all comes from a building project that god decided to stop – although not in the obvious way, like by knocking down the tower or even by making the workmen all become too weak to lift the stones or something like that. This is ultimately the reason for the varying dialects of the world. Those involved were all magically made to speak in different tongues and then telephoned to foreign lands.
The fact that the languages of Southern Europe share much of the same gramatical rules or that English and German have the same apparent root or that the family of languages in Eastern Europe also all seem to have a lot in common was clearly done to confuse us and test our faith.
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March 27th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
And then we have:
1 Kings 7:23 – “He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim . . . It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it.” (Pi does not equal 3)
Leviticus 11:20-22 – “All flying insects that walk on all fours are to be detestable to you. There are, however, some winged creatures that walk on all fours that you may eat: those that have jointed legs for hopping on the ground. Of these you may eat any kind of locust, katydid, cricket or grasshopper.” (No insects have four legs)
Psalms 104:5 – “He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.” (The Earth moves)
Matthew 4:8 – “Again the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.” (The Earth isn’t flat)
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March 27th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
DV82XL said:
Well, I’m no fan of religion, I think, it should be ended. But to be fair to them much of that was seen as symbolic from the very start. For example, ancients obviously, knew many insects did not have four legs, its just a reference to not walking on two legs, since man is the only thing that does that. It could have been written, better, I think.
I’m interested on your guys opinion, on Yucca mountain. I think you might like Obama’s stance, since he’s shutting it down and that means that waste could be reprocessed, later. I am against reprocessing though, but I figure, you could support Obama on this.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/goodbye-yucca-obama-budget-nuclear.php
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March 27th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
You make a very poor Biblical apologist Bruce, and you still haven’t gotten the message that you should not hijack any thread you want to discuss whatever topic that is on your mind at the moment.
I is very poor net manners at best, and damned annoying to the rest of us. If you have random nuclear issues you wish to comment on, join the What is Nuclear forum and post there.
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March 27th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Bruce said:
I’m not a fan of religion either, but I don’t think it “should be ended” in the sense that something should do something to end it.
Much as I don’t like religion and superstition, I’ll take religion in society any day if the alternative is to have the government decide what we can and can’t believe. Religion is a personal belief, an ideology, a way of looking at the world, and that is the number one thing that should never be legislated.
If religion dies because the members of a society individually reject it, that’s one thing. But that “It should be ended”
No.. that’s just chilling.
Bruce said:
If you want to know the answer to that please post it in a nuclear related post. Occasionally a comment thread goes off topic and other things are disgused and thats fine – it happens, but can we at least make an effort not to do it on purpose?
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March 27th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Bruce said:
Yeah, nevermind that whole Constitution/Bill of Rights thing.
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March 28th, 2009 at 2:05 am
I’m one of those evangelical christians (but if I lived in the USA I would never have voted for Cheney, whoops! Bush and I would’ve voted for Obama). But, but!, as a knuckle dragging evangelical who has concluded the bible is the word of God as far as I can tell creationism is just a misinterpretation of Gen 1 to 3 and I don’t know why both christians and non christians insist on sticking to such a misinterpretation (clue no 1 guys and gals, it wasn’t written in english). As for intelligent design well thats just both bad science and bad theology.
As a christian, evolution has never held any horrors for me, its a nice theory with lots of great facets and why both christians and nonchristians thinks it precludes a God made and run universe is beyond me.
You really want to take on the creationists – do it by theology, that will stop them but you will have to learn some first.
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March 28th, 2009 at 2:07 am
BTW. DV82XL, if you’re reading this its Mathew, Mark, Luke and John.
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March 28th, 2009 at 2:44 am
Jeremy C said:
This has nothing to do with mainstream Christianity’s interpretation of the Bible, or for that matter any convoluted hermeneutical gymnastics that has been done in an attempt to reconcile the Biblical myth with scientific observations. Christians are welcome to believe what ever they want, and frankly I am not interested in convincing them to change their theology to suit the scientific view. I would prefer to convince them that the whole bloody Bible is nothing but a fairytale, and that it contains no useful information on natural philosophy, history. or anything else of value, and that there is no imaginary friend running things by remote control and finally to use reason and logic to deal with the world.
The problem at hand is that there is a group of people that are using their public position to force error into the science curriculum by fiat, because they believe in Biblical inerrancy and see science’s authority on the subject of cosmology in general. and common origins in particular, as a threat to their beliefs.
Jeremy C said:
No. Never. Creationism in all its forms is a degenerate concept that has been thoroughly and completely disproved at evey level. There is no reason that any rational person should have to engage anyone by applying sophistry to scripture to show that it is wrong.
Science rejects scripture as having no truth or value in these matters and before you make the usual remark that I should read it before dismissing it, I suspect that I know more of the Bible in detail than you do. That has been my universal experience with evangelical christians; the depth of their ignorance about the Bible is truly breathtaking. By in large they are a culture of nominal Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it.
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March 28th, 2009 at 2:47 am
Jeremy C said:
I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean by that.
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March 28th, 2009 at 7:22 am
DV82XL said:
Is an all-out assault against religion really wise though? During the Cold War, “Stop the Godless Communists!” was a far more effective war cry than “Defend Capitalism!” Communist antitheism made Christians (and Muslims – think of the Afghan mujahideen) willing to resist Communism to the death. Of course, the other big weakness of the Communist movement was the way “proletarian internationalism” was twisted to mean “serving the interests of the USSR” – this made it easy for anti-communists outside the Soviet Union to equate communism with treason.
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March 28th, 2009 at 7:56 am
George Carty said:
I think you are forgetting which side is on the offensive here. Setting aside the rhetorical position that the practice of science itself is an assault on religion, clearly the public attacks have been mounted by religion against science. The battlegrounds have been education and medical research and practice. At every engagement, it was religion that started the fight.
As I said up-thread, nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA) was an opportunity extended by science for religion to claim a draw and mind its own business unmolested by science. Religion chose to step-up its efforts to undermine science, and this nonsense in Texas and elsewhere is the upshot.
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March 28th, 2009 at 9:00 am
DV82XL, in an early post in this thread you wrote,
“Most self identifying Christians cannot name any of the Gospels”.
So when I posted the following:
” BTW. DV82XL, if you’re reading this its Mathew, Mark, Luke and John”
your reply was:
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean by that”.
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March 28th, 2009 at 9:00 am
Hey, where’d Jason go?
Same place as every crock who get shown the hell up on this site… slinked away in shame and silence.
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March 28th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Fair enough!!
Back to the discussion, about religion. No doubt, many verses in the bible are wrong and so forth. And, I find it insulting that you call me a biblical apologist. I’m not apologizing for the bible or anyone who believes in it. I’m just stating that we need to be careful about the conclusions drawn, because you read those verses literally, when not even ancient people (or the ones who made it up) took the verse, for example, about on all fours literally. At least I don’t think they did.
I looked at the forums on what is nuclear, but there’s not too much discussion there.
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March 28th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Jeremy C said:
I didn’t know you were referring to my prior remark, which was anyways sarcasm.
Bruce said:
Again it was sarcasm, to refer to you as a biblical apologist. At any rate if you had been paying attention to the discussion, you would know we were talking about Biblical inerrancy and Biblical literalism which are the doctrines that everything written in the Bible is literally true and without error and free from all contradiction and acceptance of the explicit and primary sense of words in the text.
Of course it is a nonsensical aproach, that is the point we are making.
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March 28th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
“Again it was sarcasm, to refer to you as a biblical apologist. At any rate if you had been paying attention to the discussion, you would know we were talking about Biblical inerrancy and Biblical literalism which are the doctrines that everything written in the Bible is literally true and without error and free from all contradiction and acceptance of the explicit and primary sense of words in the text.
Of course it is a nonsensical aproach, that is the point we are making.”
Yeah, you have a good point. I didn’t read the whole discussion, these computers have a fifteen minute time limit at this coffee shop, for some reason it blocks a lot of sites as well.
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March 28th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Jeremy C said:
He said “Most” and not “all” and honestly, from what I’ve observed, I think he’s probably correct.
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March 30th, 2009 at 12:22 am
Well I’m a little late to the party but I’ll toss out a little my perspective for DV82XL to enjoy.
First off evolution cannot be proven because it is ultimately untestable given the shortness of the human existence. If we each lived a few million years that statement would be false. That said every mechanism of organism change proven to date firmly supports the theory of evolution.
Teaching religion in public school is and should always be disallowed. I think that teaching the overall theory of eovolution as fact should be disallowed. I think that they should teach the mechanisms that are proven to change organisms and let the facts lead to the conclusions. Heck, I even think that they should present all the different conclusions and allow the student to decide. A little thinking about the subject instead of regurgitating what their preacher said will probably help eliminate this debate. Sadly I think that there is probably less than 0.01% of the teachers in the U.S. who could actually teach this way.
I grew up in an one of those extremely religious christian environments and was a firm believer until the observed facts contradicted the religion. I tried studying many different religions (even read the Quaran, writings of confucius, + many others) but sadly none of the facts would fit the myth except evolution.
One of the interesting things that I noticed in this thread was the rudimentary attempt to define the reason for the debate.
My personal hypothesis is that a predisposition for a belief in the divine has been highly selected for in human history. Think about all of the heretics who have been killed in our brief written history. How much power has been held in all cultures by the religious elite? Heretics to any religion have routinely been killed or banished from the social group. This of course decrease they probability of them having offspring hence lessening their fitness. Only recently have humans allowed heretics to survive and reproduce (in some parts of the world). Humans are a strongly out-crossing species with severe inbreeding depression. This means that complete elimination of any allele is mathematically improbable. So there have always been individuals born without this predisposition. Hence this conflict is driven by genetic predisposition and an changing balance of power caused by the survival of the previously undesirable individuals.
I recall some identical twin studies of those that had been adopted independently showing many remarkable similarities in personality, spouses, and employment. This is what has lead me to think of genotypes. A little bit of world travel also opened my eyes to the probability.
This is a convoluted bit of inductive logic but by applying it to the current debate it may shed a glimmer of light onto the subject.
First off as pointed out previously (George C – Soviet Union) just telling people to be atheist does not work. It goes against there genetic make-up. It’s like telling a wolf not to bite or a plant not to grow towards the light. So although it is a bunch of malarky, as a society we will always have to make provisions for it. Then again from his previous post I’m sure DV82XL is more than happy to beat his head against this wall. So basically Nick’s abhorrently stupid arguments are because of his genetic history. At another time he could have been President like G. W……
Why the religious groups have chosen such ridiculous areas to debate is simple. They have no others. This is the only area where religion and science overlap where the scientific explanation, by definition, cannot be conclusively proven.
Now I’d just like to point out something to be obnoxious.
Dr buzz — Transmutation by the environment has been partially proven recently, it’s called the epigenome. Funny thing about science is it’s constantly changing. Darwin and Larmarck were both partially right, how about that. Cracks me up personally.
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April 2nd, 2009 at 10:36 am
Something to consider, as the topic seems to have been sidetracked into an evolution vs creationism thread, we’ll get back to the core of what they are trying to do in texas.
Some points:
Can evolution be proven? Irrelevant.
Can religious creationsim be proven? Irrelevant.
Can the existence of (a) god be proven? Irrelevant.
Is the bible or church infallible? Irrelevant.
Is science always 100% correct? Irrelevant
Pretty much everything said in the last 2 pages of posts are infact completely irrelevant to the core of the topic.
Science is basically defined as: a system of acquiring knowledge. This system uses observation and experimentation to describe and explain natural phenomena. The generalised purpose being to produce useful models of reality. This is done via the formation of a hypothesis, predictions of experiments/observations, performing experimentation/observation, and conclusion of results with the hypothesis. Always done multiple times by multiple parties to form cohesive theories and fact.
Religion, is an assertive set of beliefs, based on teachings or writings of others.
Intelligent design/creationism then, by definition, does not fall under the definition of science. It has not been hypothesized about, predicted, experimented on, or formed into cohesive theories. Nor repeated nor reviewed by others.
ID/C is therefore not science by definition. It is infact an assertion.
As such, it does not belong in a science class, and should not be taught as science, since it is not science by definition. They want to teach it in a religious/theology class, go ahead, but it is NOT science. QED, game over, end of story.
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April 2nd, 2009 at 10:49 am
KingBob said:
KingBob, that’s just about as precise a treatment of the logic of the situation as one is likely to get. Bravo!
But as we all know the ID/C supporters are no great fans of logic.
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