Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

Candidates: Teach creationism in science classes
(By Russell Lissau, The Daily Herald, February 14, 2011)

Two candidates for the Fremont School District 79 board — including the panel’s current president — believe creationism should be taught alongside evolution in science classes.

The revelations were made Monday morning during candidate interviews at the Daily Herald’s Lake County office.

“I think from a scientific standpoint it can be given as a viewpoint,” board President Sandra Bickley said in the interview. “(It’s) another theory to consider.”

Fellow candidate Kim Hansen had a similar take on the controversial topic.

“It should be presented in a very broad type of curriculum or structure,” said Hansen, a first-time candidate.

Bickley and Hansen were the only candidates who sat with a reporter and a representative of the Daily Herald editorial board for in-person interviews Monday. Two additional candidates, incumbent Teri Herchenbach and challenger Edward Pieklo, were unavailable and did not attend the session.

The four candidates are running for three seats with 4-year terms. District 79 includes much of Mundelein and some surrounding communities.

Creationism is the theory that God created the universe and humankind, typically as described in the biblical book of Genesis. Evolution is the scientific theory that man and other life-forms evolved over the millennia.

Opponents of the public-school teaching of creationism say the Supreme Court has ruled the theory doesn’t belong in science classes.

“The courts have dealt with these issues and found that teaching one’s religious beliefs as science is not permissible,” said Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.

Other groups disagree.

“We believe in parity,” said David Smith, executive director of the Carol Stream-based Illinois Family Institute. “Don’t just select one side of an argument. Present both sides.”

Bickley and Hansen were asked about creationism’s potential role in the school district’s curriculum toward the end of Monday’s candidate interviews.

Bickley called creationism “one set of theory” and thought it should be taught in science classes as part of a unit, although not necessarily promoted.

“It’s something out there,” she said. “I don’t think it’s something that should be ignored.”

Hansen also thought creationism belonged on public-school curriculums.

“There is no right or wrong” when it comes to people’s beliefs, she said.

Hansen suggested the topic be discussed at a community forum. Bickley said she intends to bring the topic to the full board and thought it could be the subject of a survey.

“I think it’s a great topic,” Bickley said.

Reached by telephone afterward, Herchenbach said she did not believe creationism should be taught alongside evolution in school science classes.

She suggested creationism could be mentioned as “a side note” in classes as a way to reflect that some people have a different view of how life came to exist.

Herchenbach called the subject “a huge topic” and said she likely would defer to administrators and teachers if the debate reached the school board.

Pieklo could not be reached for comment.

She suggested creationism could be mentioned as “a side note” in classes as a way to reflect that some people have a different view of how life came to exist.

Evolutionary theory doesn't specify origins; it is not concerned with the origin of life.

These traveling scientists and others should take it to where the buck stops and say that humans ultimately evolved from rudimentary biochemical processes.

It took 1500 years for the Christian Church to abandon it's opposition to autopsies, delaying the development of modern surgery for at least that long.

The religious fought against the use of the iron plow for over 100 years after its invention

The first fully-documented human blood transfusion was performed by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys in 1667. He transfused the blood of a sheep to a boy, who later died. In 1818, British obstetrician and surgeon James Blundell performed the first successful transfusion of human blood to his patient. He performed later 10 transfusions, 5 of which were successful, and invented various transfusion instruments.
http://facts.trendstoday.info/health-and-beauty/blood-transfusion-timeline

By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Vatican urged parents to use caution when deciding not to inoculate their children against infectious diseases when so-called "ethical vaccines" are not yet available.

In a paper, the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life reaffirmed a person's right to abstain from receiving vaccines that were prepared from cells derived from aborted fetuses, but it said such a choice must be made after carefully considering whether refusing the vaccination would pose serious health risks to the child and the larger public.

"We are responsible for all people, not just ourselves," Msgr. Jacques Suaudeau, a medical doctor and official at the Pontifical Academy for Life, told Catholic News Service.
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0504240.htm

Catholic and Anglican missionaries vaccinated Northwest Coast Indians during an 1862 smallpox epidemic.[1]

Iceland in 1816 made the clergy responsible for small pox vaccination and gave them the responsibility of keeping vaccination records for their parishes, Sweden also had similar practices.[2]

When vaccination was introduced into UK public policy, and adoption followed overseas, there was opposition from social cranks and trade unionists, including sectarian ministers and those interested in self help and alternative medicines like homeopathy.[3]
Timothy Dwight

Anti-vaccination proponents were most common in protestant countries; those that were religious often came from minority religious movements outside of mainstream protestantism, including Quakers in England and Baptists in Sweden.[4]

Several Boston clergymen and devout physicians formed the Anti-vaccination Society in 1798, only two years after Jenner's publication of smallpox vaccination. Others complained that the practice was dangerous, going so far as to demand that doctors who carried out these procedures be tried for attempted murder.[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination_and_religion

Water fluoridation

Water fluoridation is the controlled addition of fluoride to a public water supply to reduce tooth decay.[52] Although almost all major health and dental organizations support water fluoridation, or have found no association with adverse effects, efforts to introduce water fluoridation meet considerable opposition whenever it is proposed.[53] Since fluoridation's inception in the 1950s, opponents have drawn on distrust of experts and unease about medicine and science.[54] Conspiracy theories involving fluoridation are common, and include the following:[53]

Claims that:

* Fluoridation is part of a Communist, Fascist or New World Order or Illuminati plot to take over the world. This notion is mentioned, with comical effect, in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove.[53]
* Fluoridation was designed by the military–industrial complex to protect the U.S. atomic weapons program from litigation.[55][56]
* Fluoridation was pioneered by a German chemical company to make people submissive to those in power.[56]
* Fluoridation was used in Russian prison camps and produces schizophrenia.[53]
* Fluoridation is backed by the aluminum or phosphate industries as a means of disposing of some of their industrial waste.[56]
* Fluoridation is a smokescreen to cover failure to provide dental care to the poor.[53]

Fluoridation researchers are accused to be in the pay of corporate or political interests as part of the plot.[53] Specific anti-fluoridation arguments change to match the spirit of the time.[57]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories#Water_fluoridation

evolution is not origin.