gungasnake wrote:I don't like using the word "evolution"; evolution to me, the way I've read it and understood it all my life, means creation of new kinds of animals by combinations of mutation and natural selection. That has been shown to be unworkable.
So how do you think these new kinds get created exactly? Do you think God "poof's" them into existence, or do you think he just causes a few mutations and lets them breed?
gunga-all due respect. You need to be consistent. IF you say that you are closer to Intelligent Design , then you
1Believe that the earth is very old
2You believe that the accumulation of mutations and recombination can give rise to new "macro forms" ie 'The E word"
3 Life proceeded ina slow steady pace from simpler to more complex forms punctuated by environmental mass extinctions that led to the opportunistic development of other life forms as terminal species for that ensuing time
4 The fossil record is a real albeit imperfect record of the diversity of life
5 genes record these populational and evolutional changes
The main (and mostly, the only significant difference) between evolution by natural selection and Intelligent Design has to do with the "Starter system"
Oh, come on!
Near-death experience as proof of God.
Far more convincing than dinosaur bones but ,of course, they were only put here by God to confuse us, right?
NDE's? Thats's your proof for God? What do you use to prove hallucinations?
So let's see here, you believe NDE's prove God exists. And you believe that God created the process of evolution, but that the process only does MicroEvolution, not MacroEvolution, because only direct intervention by God can make the MacroEvolution part work.
And you don't believe in MacroEvolution because you despise it. And you think it's been disproven because you
do believe what the creationist sites tell you... and because you despise it.
How in hell do you decide what to believe and what not to believe, because I can't see any pattern to it, except picking what you like and what you don't like.
Regarding the school system, when one looks at the product it is presently producing the only conclusion that can be reached is that something is without a doubt wrong. I believe the blame can be equally shared among the parents, teachers, politically correct nonsense and our permissive society. Of one thing you can be sure it would have never been tolerated in the 30's and 40's.
au1929 -- As I've always regarded you as among my internet friends, I'm not trying to argue with you, but, I do have a question and a consideration.
The question is what is the product of today's educational system that you find to be without merit?
My kids had better instruction in math, foreign language and science than I had, although my science instruction was close to the kids' in quality.
I find the science department here at Arlington High School to be a tad deficit, with the exception of one veteran and a rather impressive newbie.
The consideration is that during the 20s, 30s, and 40s, many people did not remain in school long enough to earn a high school diploma. During the Depression, the drop out rate was high, due both to kids being moved by parents in search of work or going out themselves to ride the rails, and also to schools closing because communities could no longer afford to maintain the buildings and pay teachers' salaries.
For those that remained in school, the curriculum was different than today's. Handwriting was a class. While some might disparage the state of penmenship, I doubt that any parent active in school affairs would want kids practicing writing in school after the third grade: there has been a shift in values and a demand for "more academic" work.
While it is true that there are classes with titles like, "Young Adult Living," you have to understand that the students enrolled in such classes aren't the same kids in Advanced Placement English and Honors Physics. Public schools represent the community and for every kid that writes like a graduate student and will waltz into Yale, there is a kid who spells the first person plural possessive, "o-w-e-r." Furthermore, there were classes that, on the surface, carried as little academic weight as we might judge "YAL" to have, offered in schools early in the 20th C.
kitchen pete -- How do Brits feel about "creationism" and "intelligent design"? Are such matters even considered as worthy to be taught in schools? What is science instruction like in Britain?
rosborne979 wrote:
So how do you think these new kinds get created exactly? Do you think God "poof's" them into existence, or do you think he just causes a few mutations and lets them breed?
The evidence seems to indicate that in past ages, the creation, design, engineering, and re-engineering of complex lifeforms was some sort of an industry or ongoing thing, and that more than one set of hands was involved. There is no reasonable way to believe, for instance, that an all-powerful and well-intentioned God would create mosquitos, biting flies, lampreys, chiggers, ticks, and disease micro-organisms.
The evidence also indicates that all such activity stopped somewhere back in recent prehistory and has remained stopped since then. There is zero evidence that anything resembling evolution is going on NOW.
gungasnake wrote:The evidence seems to indicate that in past ages, the creation, design, engineering, and re-engineering of complex lifeforms was some sort of an industry or ongoing thing, and that more than one set of hands was involved.
Ok, now this is a lot more fun
Can you be more specific, re the "more than one set of hands"?
And can you also be more specific with regard to "an industry".
The incompatability of Religion and education.
Afraid to Discuss Evolution
Published: February 4, 2005
The fights in scattered school districts over whether to teach creationism or its rival, called intelligent design, as alternatives to Darwin's theory of evolution may be obscuring a deeper problem: the tendency of many districts to duck controversy by avoiding or soft-pedaling any teaching of evolution at all. Nobody knows the extent of the problem, but an article by Cornelia Dean in Science Times on Tuesday cites ample evidence that even when evolution is theoretically part of the curriculum, it is often ignored or played down in the classroom.
Some teachers duck the subject, lest they get into trouble with school administrators or fundamentalist parents. Others assign a chapter on evolution for reading but avoid any discussion in the classroom. Still others discuss evolutionary concepts without ever mentioning "the E word" to avoid arousing controversy.
Although most state curriculum standards mandate that evolution be taught, and standardized tests typically include questions on evolution, some teachers apparently assume that evolution is a small enough part of the curriculum that their students can get by without mastering the subject. Those students remain ignorant of one of the bedrock theories underlying modern biology.
In some areas of the country, many biology teachers are themselves believers in creationism. A 1998 doctoral dissertation found that 24 percent of the biology teachers sampled in Louisiana said that creationism had a scientific foundation and that 17 percent were not sure. Several surveys have shown that many teachers give at least some instructional time to creationism or intelligent design out of a sense of fairness.
That serves the students and the nation poorly as they enter an age likely to be dominated by biology.
plainoldme wrote:kitchen pete -- How do Brits feel about "creationism" and "intelligent design"? Are such matters even considered as worthy to be taught in schools? What is science instruction like in Britain?
We are aware that certain "crackpots" insist on using the Bible (or other religious/mythological texts) as straight truth...but it is NEVER taught in science classes.
I was taught in a "Public" so I'm not really in a position to comment on the standard of science teaching in state schools.
KP
If Gungasnake thinks a good god would never invent a mosquito, he doesn't evidence much "faith."
What if life on this planet is not the work of a god but of another sort of being?
Again, from my Catholic education, a student once asked whether there really were angels and the reply was that since the world gives evidence of a hierarchy of beings, and, since the gap between man and God is so great, we may posit a series of beings bridging that gap including angels.
Okay. So, inspired by my sons who played Dungeons and Dragons, let us imagine that there are beings of greater skill and knowledge than humans, a staple of science fiction. Suppose these creatures use this planet as giant game of Dungeons and Dragons, and we are supposed to follow the rules they establish and are victimized by the throws of their dice, discovering things like the bones of their early game pieces (dinosaurs . . . who had to be a lot more fun in the short run) at different times in our history and reacting to them in different ways ("giants in the earth;" dragons) at different times.
Now, this theory illustrates a kind of intelligent design but has nothing to do with religion or spirituality, unless said religion is just another throw of the dice! LOL!
plainoldme
There has been article after article relative to the failure of the NY City high schools. Just the other day there was an article relating to the fact that in many of the schools very few if any of the students passed the regents exams and were given diplomas which if you were in service would be called getting discharged under less than honorable conditions.
Is it any different in many of the other large cities of this nation? Not from what I have read.
The High school I went to was in my day one of the best academic schools in the city today it has been broken up into several schools and is merely a place to house students until the graduate or drop out. So too is the school my sons graduated from. The police are there to break up the constant fights and beatings. In fact most people in the neighborhood send, at great expense, their children to parochial schools. Not because they are religious but to assure their children get a good education and are safe.
Your children may as you say are receiving getting a first class education. I would venture a guess you do not live in the inner city.
I've posted this somewhere before:
I've seen (I've given them to local archives meanwhile) a couple of my grandparent's schoolreports:
- grandmother was at a private 'college', run by catholic nuns ... and got excellent notes in 'Darwinism'. (According to her schoolbooks, these nuns saw no difficulty in talking about creatism in 'religious classes' and about 'reality' in science classes.
- grandfather was at a private college as well, non-religious. As far as I could read, he wasn't told about creatism at all.
Grandfather got his certification for university ('Abitur') in 1904, grandmother's books are from around 1910.
au1929 -- No, my kids actually went to school in wealthy suburb. There were thefts there, however, and, racial slurs are sometimes written on the wall and, once, painted on a teacher's car. The two older kids then went to private schools where the atmosphere was even better.
The school where I teach is in a community a notch or two down the socio-economic ladder from the community in which my kids were educated but real problems are few and tend to resemble the above.
There is a 24/hour-a-day school in Manhattan that, supposedly, is doing very well and helping kids. It's run like a social service agency.
As far as fights in schools are concerned, remember how the movies and television portrayed high school students during the 50s and early 60s in movies like Blackboard Jungle and Rebel without a Cause and Up the Down Staircase and To Sir, With Love and West Side Story? Consider a classic of American literature like Studs Lonigan, which portrays life in Chicago at the beginning of the 20th C.
plainoldme
I am a product of the NY City school system and so to are both my sons. The problems you refer to were few and far between in those days. And when they occurred they were dealt with. Today because of our permissive society and political correct policies they were allowed to fester and
explode. In addition the teachers union has made it all but impossible to discipline and rid the system of underperforming teachers. And the parents well I will leave that unsaid. We have gone from one of the best to one of the worst school systems in the nation in 40 + years.
Walter Hinteler wrote:
I've seen (I've given them to local archives meanwhile) a couple of my grandparent's schoolreports:
- grandmother was at a private 'college', run by catholic nuns ... and got excellent notes in 'Darwinism'. (According to her schoolbooks, these nuns saw no difficulty in talking about creatism in 'religious classes' and about 'reality' in science classes.
If those nuns didn't see the problem, they were part of the problem. It's not clear to me that anybody here other than myself has read more than the first couple of lines of the original material of this thread. Try actually reading this and then tell me you don't see a problem:
Darwin was no more responsible for the rise of Nazism than is my rooster responsible for the dawn.
The development of a fact of science and its misapropriation are artifacts.
The Klan used a strict fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible as it
evolved" from a purely social club to a sinister racist organization. Shall we, in retrospect, say something to deny the relevance of Christianity?
BESIDES
Quote: 1. Hitler based his ideas not on Darwinism but on a "divine right" philosophy:
Thus, it [the folkish philosophy] by no means believes in an equality of races, but along with their difference it recognizes their higher or lesser value and feels itself obligated, through this knowledge, to promote the victory of the better and stronger, and demand the subordination of the inferior and weaker in accordance with the eternal will that dominates this universe. [Hitler, 1939, p. 383] The first edition of Mein Kampf indicates that Hitler was a young earth creationist at the time of its writing; it says, "[. . .] this planet will, as it did thousands of years ago, move through the ether devoid of men." (p. 65) (The second edition substitutes "millions" for "thousands.") Other passages further support his creationist leanings, for example:
The undermining of the existence of human culture by the destruction of its bearer seems in the eyes of a folkish philosophy the most execrable crime. Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent Creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise. [Hitler, 1939, p. 383] Quotes from Hitler invoking Christianity as a basis for his actions could be multiplied ad nauseam. For example:
Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.
"[T]he task of preserving and advancing the highest humanity, given to this earth by the benevolence of the Almighty, seems a truly high mission. [Hitler, 1939]
A campaign against the "godless movement" and an appeal for Catholic support were launched Wednesday by Chancellor Adolf Hitler's forces. [AP, 1933]
2. Genocide and racism have existed long before Darwin. Obviously, they do not need any contribution from Darwinism. In many instances, such as the Crusades and the Spanish conquest of Central America, religion was explicitly invoked to justify them.
3. Even if the connection between Darwin and Hitler were true, this is the fallacy of Appeal to Consequences - the consequences of a world view are irrelevant to its truth.
1. You are completly wrong, not that your subject could/ could not be argued, but the way you presented it makes this article completly pointless and wrong. You did not state any proving facts, and these article is utterly and completly one sided clearly stating that your religion is the greatest and everything must follow it, you are basing this article from a fantasy point of view and not a from a reality point.
2. You are not misproving the theory of evolution in this article you have hear, and the piece of evidence you put on here in that quote box does not disprove/prove anything.
3. You are again basing your idea that western countries are always completly right in their views of politics, religion, and everything else. They are not. Just like Etruscia said it was the leaders who were bad and took to much out of the power they were invested, rather the ideal of communism is not a bad thing at all. People need some structure in their life. For example: China's dealing with SAR's took very little time, their was huge outbreaks in that country and it was dealt with in a few months, while Canada a country that has a democracy took a lot longer time to get rid of the desease. Also wouldnt you like to let your child grow up in a drug free environment, and let them walk around and go biking wherever they want without the worry of them being raped/killed/kidnapped, while crime does happen in places like China it happens an awful lot less then around here, because of the strict rules.
4. The article you posted relating Hitler to Evolution is also not really proving/disproving anything its more or less hinting at the fact that every german in germany and other surrounding countries at that time were very well educated in the manners of evolution and completly against (as you are implying) their own relgion, therfore this led them to follow his lead and obey every command. This is entirly faulse as well, for the most part germany was having a rough time dealing with the defeat in WW1 and their poor economy, Hitler came up took power, made a great army and economy, went a little to far with his persuction of the jews and taking over of europe, and was kicked out. If he wouldnt have taken over any countries there would still be a nazi party in germany today.
5. I do not see why you bring religion into the mix of this, obviously its two completly different things, and you cant argue/debate something like that, its just two completly opposite views.
Thats just what was on my mind and bothering me.
