Backwards in Tennessee, Creationism Creeps Into Classrooms (ethic, radical, dollars)

[Rhenzanite]

Originally Posted by Harrier

I am not an agnostic.

Well, then how can you be completely immune to the effect of faith on your arguments? One would think you would have to be completely neutral to both sides (faith and fact) to make that decision, and generally that would require agnosticism.

If you are indeed a faithful person, your beliefs can and will affect your reasoning.

[Harrier]

Originally Posted by JetJockey

Like I said earlier, there are thousands of volumes of information out there. There are people who have taken years to write PhD theses on evolution of gnats and genetic mutations in mice... would you honestly think a person on a message board could summarize evolution any better than has already been done here?

They brush you off because it's been a field of study for quite some time, and to explain it correctly would require hours of writing and multiple posts. Like I said earlier, if you want to study it, GO OUT THERE AND DO IT. Don't expect randoms on a message board to regurgitate information so you don't have to do the legwork.

Besides, I wouldn't take the time and energy to put together a fairly layman explanation (which I have done a few times in the past in the religion forum) only to have someone plug their ears and say LALALALALALA. Why would I bother?

GuyInTexas had no problem constructing a concise defense of the anti-evolution position. He did it in response to evolutionist requests for a refutation - just as I am asking for a defense for your position.

I realize it will take a long post or a series of posts to lay out the case - but it can be done. It would make you seem much more credible - then continuing to repeat the mantra "evolution is fact".

As for your saying that I am asking for the "legwork" to be done for me - not so. I will repeat this - I already have studied evolution - what I am looking for is a persuasive defense of the theory - not an explanation of what it is.

[MiamiRob]

There is scientific evidence for Evolution. There is none for Creationism except for religious beliefs. Seperation of Church & State!

[Harrier]

Originally Posted by JetJockey

Well, then how can you be completely immune to the effect of faith on your arguments? One would think you would have to be completely neutral to both sides (faith and fact) to make that decision, and generally that would require agnosticism.

If you are indeed a faithful person, your beliefs can and will affect your reasoning.

No - my faith has nothing to do with the invalidity of evolution. I believe that a creator set the universe in motion - but I could just as easily believe in another explanation. You cannot support one theory by proving that another is not true. Evolution either stands or fails on its own merits. Pointing to an evolution opponents religious beliefs is a red herring argument.

[Harrier]

Originally Posted by MiamiRob

There is scientific evidence for Evolution. There is none for Creationism except for religious beliefs.

Well said!

[Rhenzanite]

Originally Posted by Harrier

GuyInTexas had no problem constructing a concise defense of the anti-evolution position. He did it in response to evolutionist requests for a refutation - just as I am asking for a defense for your position.

I realize it will take a long post or a series of posts to lay out the case - but it can be done. It would make you seem much more credible - then continuing to repeat the mantra "evolution is fact".

As for your saying that I am asking for the "legwork" to be done for me - not so. I will repeat this - I already have studied evolution - what I am looking for is a persuasive defense of the theory - not an explanation of what it is.

No, he didn't... in fact, HistorianDude did a very good argument against his and I believe many ignored it. I don't need to be credible, the studies speak for themselves and they explain it far better than I ever would. You ARE asking for the legwork to be done for you, because if you honestly wanted to know, you'd go out and look it up yourself. You say you've studied evolution...to what level? I would love to sit here and defend the theory, but there are people who spend years doing just that. Why would I do it so that some random message board person could be satiated?

Go look at a poster named 'rifleman' on the religion board... he as written numerous defenses of evolution that are absolutely incredible and much better than I could articulate.

[Harrier]

Originally Posted by JetJockey

Go look at a poster named 'rifleman' on the religion board... he as written numerous defenses of evolution that are absolutely incredible and much better than I could articulate.

I am satisfied if you feel that you are not able to articulate your positiuon as well as another -someone will pick up the ball - or maybe they won't.

[sanspeur]

Originally Posted by JetJockey

No, he didn't... in fact, HistorianDude did a very good argument against his and I believe many ignored it. I don't need to be credible, the studies speak for themselves and they explain it far better than I ever would. You ARE asking for the legwork to be done for you, because if you honestly wanted to know, you'd go out and look it up yourself. You say you've studied evolution...to what level? I would love to sit here and defend the theory, but there are people who spend years doing just that. Why would I do it so that some random message board person could be satiated?

Go look at a poster named 'rifleman' on the religion board... he as written numerous defenses of evolution that are absolutely incredible and much better than I could articulate.

LOL...Anybody who thinks evolution says that a cow evolved into a whale, likely "studied" evolution on creationist sites.

[Rhenzanite]

Originally Posted by Harrier

I am satisfied if you feel that you are not able to articulate your positiuon as well as another -someone will pick up the ball - or maybe they won't.

Perhaps because I understand that I am not articulate enough to explain it properly? There is so much information about it that every time I try to explain it properly, it comes across as muddled and disorganized. That is why I usually pass it on to someone else that can explain it better than I can. Why is that such an issue?

I know my weaknesses, I know my faults and I can work with them. One of my weaknesses is explaining things succinctly and simply...I am just not good at it and believe me, when I was getting my engineering degree it was a huge hurdle I had to overcome.

Seriously though... if you want to learn, the information is out there and it's put together far better than I could ever do it.

[rifleman]

Originally Posted by saltine

Has anyone proven where/how life originated?

Unrelated to science class. Science class teaches the Scientific Method. (Let's call it The SM for short, OK? I'm not sure you can remember it, because you so willfully forget other important facts... but we'lll press on regardless.Or as you might say: "irregardless...")

Originally Posted by Georgiafrog

Must I really obtain a list of where creationism and observation diverge, or would you mind just Googling it?

Yes, I'd like to see that as well.

Originally Posted by Harrier

Read the story - there would be no "lesson plan". The teacher cannot initiate or present a lecture about creationism. They have to allow a discussion if the subject is brought up.

This is a good thing. Alternate views should be encouraged - I find it very odd that anyone would want to suppress a climate of inquiry. High school students should learn to think critically - this can't happen if one is only exposed to one sided dogma (i.e. evolution).

Sorry but... even "alternate ideas" have to stay within the specific subject matter of the course being presented. You simply cannot "conject" about the best patterns of Lasagna pasta overlays in a course on English literature. Neither can you "conject" about the philosophical ideas of a non-evidentiary subject like Creationism for which there is literally no evidence. It's purely conjecture! Therefore it rightly belongs in a course marked "comparative Religion".

But I understand why you so desperately can't stand the idea of a proven and substantiated idea like Evolution (which is not abiogenesis, btw...) being presented wihtout your need to yowl in protest.

sorrY: Comparative religion is two doors down, on the left, with Professor Obtusicus!

By comparison, the true SM shows us how to set up a research project, complete with all the key and agreed-on components. Such thinking and a logical step-wise approach is totally absent on "conjective" religion, as witnessed by the total absence of the SM's use by Christians, ever, to rebuke our deductions. Go ahead: do the study you disagree with yourself! Rebuke away! We totally invite and appreciate it!

That's the beauty and absolute value of the SM. We scientists who use it in coming to our positive and negative, or neutral, deduction and conclusions are taught that process. It must be followed, essentially without fail, so that even if scientists (not "science", which is not a living evil entity!) make too wild a claim, it is always corrected from within.

But then the dogmatic Christians, sensing some supposed imagined internal disarray, pounce on it like a pack of rabid wolves onto an injured rabbit.

"See! Science is wrong, as always! See: They're wrong and they are fighting! See!???"

Originally Posted by HistorianDude

Well... sadly for you the fossils say otherwise. In fact the transition of whales from land mammals to seagoing creatures is spectacularly well documented.

Originally Posted by SityData

Something very wonderful happens when you begin to............obey God's Word - The promises HE made begin to happen just as HE SAID THEY WOULD.

Thanks for YOUR WONDERFUL WORD Lord of ALL CREATION! The simplest proof there is!!

And yet, we have all this conflicting unemotional evidence that totally refutes your claims that "there is no evidence for Evolution!"

You have a lot of individual elements to argue with, esp. if you want us to believe that, especially when taken in total, they don't raise even one suspicious eyebrow on your non-critically thinking forehead.

The list (growing monthly, btw...) for Evolution and it's compadrés in the development of his planet over time are simply too many for me to bother with this afternoon, but a simple summary list of them begins here:
geology,

artifact dating techniques,

the fossil record,

the geological column,

the timing of unfolding universal events,

plate tectonics, and now, in a master class all on it's own, and TOTALLY IRREFUTABLE by you:

DNA lineage mapping over time, continents and across different, but now proven to be related, species.

But then, when all these things are independently corroborated by independent scientific research teams, all apparently in on some Vast Global Conspiracy, and they coincidentally time all the necessary key elements of Evolution to near-identical points in time and locale, [as we predcited...] what then do you yowl, right on cue?

"There's absolutely NO EVIDENCE at all for the Fantasy of Evolution!"

Welllllll now... uhmmm.... right you are. And this REALLY improves our impression of your scientific accumen, I gotta tell you!

So! Is THAT what they tell you to yowl over on Answers in Genesis or The Institute for Creation Research? Hmmm.. I'd be lookin' for a far more reputable info-source than them if I were you: it's so easy to prove they are scientific buffoons, or abject liars, or worse: both. and hiding under the loin cloth of the Jessus myth to boot....

I recently read one of their so-called rebukes of the seminal 2008 pub-date work of Dr. Richard Lenski, Univ. of Chicago I believe, on his witnessed and also, technically IRREFUTABLE work that shows DNA mutations, all recorded OVER 22 YEARS of painstaking research and documentation.

In essence, those pikers, desperately afraid, proceeded to make all their concerns up, or exaggerate the very minor corrections that Dr. Lenski had himself made in his conservative conclusions. NOTE: Any good scientist always includes statements on what could be improved in subsequent work, and in fact, Lenski's grad students have made all those research design corrections.

They all fought for the scraps of that wounded rabbit, for sure! But there were literally no actual valid objections.

So what does the creative but increasingly desperate IDT'r do? They make it up of course. [Intransigent Dogmo-Theist, fyi!]

It's an ongoing evolutionary (small "e" here...) process, built in to The SM's design. Science is always improving things, unlike the process of denials of any fundamentalist crowd with only one dimension to their thinking, and only one story to go on.!

So... what do you suppose his next publication will inargably PROVE?
Very Ethical behavior, Chrisitan fellows!

Originally Posted by SityData

where is the name of the artist that drew this? I want to point out some facts about this imposter - i.e. a drawing is not proof!!

THAT BUNCH OF B.S. IS NOT DOCUMENTED it is someone's imagination!! (GONE WILD).

Nope: Neither is this painting...

http://images.search.yahoo.com/image...mb=uoan860n.Cy

...or this out-of-date old myths book...

Image Detail for - http://thisfragiletent.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/bible.jpg

Originally Posted by SityData

The design process is spectacular in all living things. NOTHING? - CREATED everything!

PROVE IT ?- you can't!

There are only TWO choices - just two - no other choices exist in this world.

Jesus Christ was a bigger liar than Obama

Jesus Christ was who HE CLAIMED HE WAS.

He either told the truth or.............he lied about everything.

No other choices exist.

Too many people wrote about HIM 'outside' of the bible! He is indeed a historical figure of fact; The apostle Paul is an historical figure also in fact: And more books are written about paul than any other person on this earth. EXPLAIN THAT -

All my children believe - because of what they have experienced!! I believe because of what I have experienced.

Jesus said in John chapter 10 My sheep know my voice... I call my sheep by name!!

Ahhh yes: your sheeple kids. I feel so very sorry for the one-dimensional education you're giving them. I'll bet you totally deny Evolution and won't speak a positive word about it in your home, and yet you'd like to force the public school system (that I pay for with my tax dollars..) to ram it's mythology down everyone's throat as an "alternate" but totally conjecture-based hypothesis? when there's so many other possibilites, like the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Unicorns & tree-dancing mushroom-dwelling faeries or pet T-Rexs or Noah's Ark...

How generous and fair-minded of you!

Originally Posted by Harrier

I agree with the above post 100%. If you really do also - then I sincerely hope that you are not one of those who makes inane statements like "evolution is an indisputable fact". There are individuals in this forum who say that - and based on what you wrote - they are not true scientists.

Here: Let me help you (PS: I'm a rather well educated [at real universities, btw, not some vastly hyper-biased Christian 2-year college that is NOT accredited anywhere, by anyone with any credentials.."Our Lord's College of Christian Values")[/b]:

"Evolution is an indisputable fact!"

Let's face it realists everywhere: given the loads and masses and tonnage of validated, repeated and highly questioned, but then re-validated, and peer-reviewed and then published, research covering several dozen independently-verifiable fields and disciplines, available to anyone to test for themselves.

Go for it, Harrier. Show us your mettle! Prove us all wrong!

Or shush!