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Slap yourself stupid. You call creationism anti-intellectual? How is it intellectual to insult others about their beliefs in God when you believe in gravity and you have never even see it? Your probably one of those people that believe in an invisible thing called love too. Or the air for that matter
your post actually promotes the science side of this debate. "love" is a subjective entity that can not be measured or qualified. much like faith. air ( or oxygen, atmosphere ..... ) can be measured and examined. much like evolution.
I will guess (based on my experience with less than rational school boards) that lots of "science" teachers in the "conservative" universe want to keep their jobs so they compromise on the topic of Evolutionary theory under sheer economic duress. They pay some homage to Intelligent Design in order to keep their jobs. Intellectually dishonest but beats trying to find a teaching job anywhere else until you have paid off the loans.
This is not proper, fair or rational but whenever have the bible thumpers ever been any of these? They are operating the biggest protection racket in the world and desperately do not want anyone to ever question their precept that a person can buy their way out of Hell with cash and belief. Combining Faith with Fear was a brilliant way of imposing social control while amassing a fortune.
BTW – I recently came across a theory whereby a Universe can be created (Big Bang) out of a completely Entropic Universe by some nearly incomprehensible variation of cosmology and quantum theory. Although this still does not answer the question of what is holding up the last turtle in the string it does provide a possible answer of where did the Universe come from.
I am a big believer that science and religion need not be incompatible, but when hard science is presented as a "belief" with intelligent design as a plausible alternative, our science education system is failing. What I would like to know is how the minority who believe in intelligent design have this much influence over what occurs in the classroom.
Even during my childhood days of Christianity, I always saw the Biblical story of creation as an allegory for evolution. The people of that time were childlike thinkers and were incapable of understanding complicated reasoning, so this great story was created for them by those who knew - or suspected - the truth.
It is incomprehensible to me that now, in 2011, with all of the great scientific discoveries that have occurred over the millennia, that there are people who want a fable to be taught as fact. Biblical creationism as an explanation of the workings of our universe is on par with the myths of the Egyptians, Greeks, or Romans, and, if it is to be taught, should be presented as such.
I wonder - I can't see how it relates to my life knowing the right answer. Now if the scientific community could just devote the same mental energy to coming up with a non-squishing mammogram or a self-cleaning toilet...
. Although this still does not answer the question of what is holding up the last turtle in the string....
i'm curious if those promoting ID in this thread would be comfortable with all "creation" stories being taught with the same validity as the christian belief.
How the hell is the theory of evolution fact if it changes all the time?!!! How the HELL do you call a theory FACT if it is not?!! Ok stupid!
Easy... take a seat and learn something.
Facts are the data of the natural world. Theories are the explanatory frameworks that account for those facts. This is an important distinction, so please try to get a handle on this.
Theories and facts are different things. Theories do not become facts, they explain facts.
And the strongest theories are those that best explain the most facts.
Gravity (for example) is both a fact and a theory. There have been many competing theories of gravity over time. Some of us are old enough to have witnessed a better theory of gravity replace an older, less good theory just last century as the Newtonian theory was replaced by Einstein's.
But the fact of gravity persisted through the debate. Apples did not suspend themselves in mid-aware awaiting the outcome.
In the identical way evolution is both a fact and a theory. Neo-Darwinism (genetic mutation and natural selection) is the current theory to explain the fact that all life on this planet is descended by modification from one or very few common ancestors.
In other words... it is a fact that humans and apes (and alligators and apricots) descended from common ancestors... regardless of changes in the theory that explain them.
Social programs that defy evolution? Oh, I can't wait to read that explanation. I just hope you aren't going to embarrass yourself by describe evolutionary theory as being "the survival of the fittest".
Evolution means "a process in which something passes by degrees to a different stage (especially a more advanced or mature stage)".
When people think of evolution, they don't think it is a theory that humanity just changes over time. They generally think that humanity gets "better" over time from some means of selection that weeds out inferiority. I think when he talks about Social programs that defy evolution, he is referring to the dysgenic nature of our public-health system(which saves the people who would otherwise die from genetic health problems), and that the most lazy and unintelligent people tend to have far more children than the hard-working, educated, and intelligent people. Thus, he is stating that social programs have been "anti-evolutionary", because they are not "advancing civilization into a more mature stage". They are actually regressing it to a less advanced stage.
Quote:
Perhaps before you go any further down this line of "reasoning"(sic), you might review the scientific definition of theory. Once you do you will find that Creationism is even a decent hypothesis.
Theory : A tentative insight into the natural world; a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena.
While you might be able to argue that "creationism" is a scientific theory, based on certain aspects of its definition. And you wouldn't be entirely wrong in doing so. I personally wouldn't define "creationism" as a theory, unless creationism can only be narrowed down to the creation of all matter in our universe before the big-bang. But since creationism refers to the creation of man in god's likeness 6,000 years ago, it is not a theory.
Did you even read your links? Or did you just do a google search hoping for "recent evolution". If you had, you might realize that the links you posted are talking about "natural selection" of traits in relatively modern populations(3,000 to 60,000 years in the past), but not of modern populations.
They talk about how a gene for low-oxygen tolerance has "evolved" in Tibet about 3,000+ years ago. They talk about lactose-tolerance in Europe, which also happened 3,000+ years ago. They talk about skin coloration differences, which happened tens of thousands of years ago. One talks about alcohol effects reduction in a gene in southern Chinese, which was caused by natural selection pressures from the "drunks" not having as many children(or no children) compared to the people who were not drunks because they had a much higher level of alcohol tolerance. But that is again, a form of natural selection that happened many thousands of years ago.
The reason why evolution is not truly happening in modern times, is because natural selection has been eliminated. Without natural selection there can't really be evolution into a more superior/adaptive lifeform. There are only demographic changes. And while demographic changes might give the appearance of evolution(obviously the genetic structure of Americans will change rapidly over the next one-hundred years). It simply isn't the same as evolution, because the population isn't changing for purposes of adaptation to their environment. It is changing because stupid people don't seem to understand the implications of indiscriminate breeding, the selfish politicians want votes, and so they leave the door open to countless people from 3rd-world ****holes with their squatty stature, low intelligence, and lactose-interolance to fill in labor positions so their capitalist owners can make more profit. They ignore the cultural and genetic influence this sort of immigration will have, because it gives a short-duration economic boost, which gets them reelected. The corporate masters want obedient workers. They want international trade. They want to exploit the people and resources of people across the world. They control most of the flow of information that you and I see in the news and on the media, which controls our opinions of the world around us.
Don't pretend for a second that any amount of real evolution is going on around you, because in our world it is no longer "survival of the fittest", it is "survival of the weakest, most religiously dogmatic, most sexually promiscuous, and most uneducated". If that is what you call evolution, then you're an idiotic.
Edit : And I find it silly that these liberals who go on about how our population is too large for our resources, and how we need to return to nature, don't seem to want to address in any way the issues of immigration.
Even during my childhood days of Christianity, I always saw the Biblical story of creation as an allegory for evolution. The people of that time were childlike thinkers and were incapable of understanding complicated reasoning, so this great story was created for them by those who knew - or suspected - the truth.
It is incomprehensible to me that now, in 2011, with all of the great scientific discoveries that have occurred over the millennia, that there are people who want a fable to be taught as fact. Biblical creationism as an explanation of the workings of our universe is on par with the myths of the Egyptians, Greeks, or Romans, and, if it is to be taught, should be presented as such.
Excatly!!
Good to see some using their brain instead of their heart when it comes to science.
Casper
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