Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

SOUTH CAROLINA UPDATE

Quote:

S.C. Education Board Approves Science Textbook, Despite Questions About Evolution
(By The Associated Press, January 10, 2008)

"said board member Trip DuBard of Florence. "If you can't support teaching science to kids, something else is going on."

FLORIDA UPDATE

Quote:

The continued divide in popular opinion frustrates many scientists and educators.

''There should not be a debate,'' said Gerry Meisels, director of the Coalition for Science Literacy at the University of South Florida and member of the drafting committee for the new standards in the state. ``It's very counterproductive for our children, it's counterproductive for our country, it's counterproductive for our future. This is like the Middle Ages.''

that must be some of that alluding.

Simply bears repeating.

Should we just ban dissent altogether? Is this what 'educators' truly think?

The states have even found a way to make us pay for teaching the fairy tales to your home schooled crowd.

Meanwhile, back in the good ole USA, we are still trying to stoke up the Rennaissance and the Enlightenment.

Pray tell fm the source of the money which the states make you pay? What money would you see yourself having in the absence of these states which you claim are ripping you off.

real life wrote:

wandeljw wrote:

FLORIDA UPDATE

Quote:

The continued divide in popular opinion frustrates many scientists and educators.

''There should not be a debate,'' said Gerry Meisels, director of the Coalition for Science Literacy at the University of South Florida and member of the drafting committee for the new standards in the state. ``It's very counterproductive for our children, it's counterproductive for our country, it's counterproductive for our future. This is like the Middle Ages.''

So, stifling debate will be productive?

Should we just ban dissent altogether? Is this what 'educators' truly think?

Instead of persuading others with their arguments, do evolutionists simply prefer to mandate belief?

Another feeble attempt by RL to gain purchase on an overhang that is the peak of the moral high ground. What a pile of manure there RL. Noone has ever stifled the debate. We entertain all sides and move on.

Fundamental flaws in the evolutionary POV make it rather transparent to the man on the street.

For instance, if evolution is occurring today, why don't we see new species forming at a brisk pace?

Foster links Darwin, Hitler
(By RON MATUS and DONNA WINCHESTER, St. Petersburg Times, January 12, 2008)

Darwin's theory of evolution helped fuel the rise of Hitler and contributed to the school-shooting massacre at Columbine, a former St. Petersburg City Council member wrote in a letter urging the Pinellas County School Board to expose students to alternative theories.

"Evolution gives our kids an excuse to believe in natural selection and survival of the fittest, which leads to a belief that they are superior over the weak," Bill Foster wrote board members in a letter received this week. "This is a slippery slope."

He continued: "One of the Columbine shooters wrote on his Web site, 'You know what I love? Natural selection! It's the best thing that ever happened to the Earth. Getting rid of all the stupid and weak organisms.'"

Foster's letter comes in the midst of an increasingly emotional tug-of-war over the state's proposed new science standards, which embrace Charles Darwin's theory as the fundamental pillar of modern biology. The current standards, written in 1996, do not mention the word "evolution."

The state Board of Education is scheduled to vote on the issue Feb. 19.

Foster, who recently stepped down after being term-limited from office, is widely considered to be a leading contender to be St. Petersburg's next mayor in 2009. He said Friday he wrote the letter, which appears on his law firm's stationary, as the concerned parent of a high school student.

"I'm not interested in taking this on as my own personal crusade," Foster said. "I just wanted them to hear from the parent of someone they're teaching that I would appreciate it if they would tolerate another view."

Foster isn't the first Darwin critic to attempt to link evolutionary theory to violence and racism, but he is the first public figure in the Florida debate to do so.

After the Columbine shooting in 1999, then-U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay cited Darwin's theory as a contributing factor, reading a letter into the Congressional Record that said public schools "teach the children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial soup of mud." This summer, Fort Lauderdale's Coral Ridge Ministries aired a TV special on Christian cable called Darwin's Deadly Legacy.

"To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler," said the group's late founder, D. James Kennedy.

Foster echoed those words in his letter: "Adolf Hitler duped an entire generation using Darwin's evolution," he wrote. "He sought to preserve the 'favored' race in the struggle for survival."

That notion is a selective reading of science and history, said Florida State University professor Michael Ruse, an authority on the history and philosophy of science.

Ruse said Nazi ideologues were motivated by many factors, including "social Darwinism," a movement that tried to apply natural concepts like "survival of the fittest" to human society. But the Nazis later distanced themselves from Darwin because rather than promoting racial superiority, evolution showed "Aryans and Jews and Gypsies and Slavs were all one stem," he said.

Ruse also noted that during the Civil War, both supporters and opponents of slavery cited the Bible to back their positions. "In the name of Darwin, just like in the name of Jesus, we find contradictory philosophies," he said.

In his letter, Foster asked board members to consider allowing the discussion of alternative theories in the classroom.

"I think that's what's been lacking," he said Friday. "I'm not asking the school board to teach the Genesis account. I'm asking simply that they allow discussion on it."

He continued: "They have been teaching evolution as a hard and scientific fact. Some of the kids end up going to church and synagogue and they learn about the creator and they say, 'Wait a minute.'"

The St. Petersburg Times reported Dec. 18 that four of seven Pinellas school board members supported the teaching of alternative theories. But the issue has not come before the board, and board member Janet Clark said she would be surprised if it did, despite Foster's request.

"As an attorney, he should realize there have been court cases on this topic," Clark said. "Encouraging the school district to open what would be a legal can of worms is not very good legal advice."

To date, at least three school boards - in Baker, Taylor and Holmes counties, all in North Florida - have passed resolutions objecting to the proposed standards. And at least one other county, St. John's, is likely to consider doing so.

The Taylor County resolution says the standards should be revised "so that evolution is presented as one of several theories as to how the universe was formed." The Baker County resolution asks for a change "so evolution is not presented as fact."

The draft standards say evolution is "the fundamental concept underlying all of biology." They say students should be able to recognize that "small genetic differences between parents and offspring can accumulate in successive generations so that descendants are very different from their ancestors," and that "fossil evidence is consistent with the idea that human beings evolved from earlier species."

Some polls show a majority of Americans do not believe Darwin's theory, even though the vast majority of scientists consider it sound.

In his letter, Foster said he learned about Darwin in a class at Northeast High School, where a teacher told him, "There is really no scientific evidence to support this theory, but if you want to believe that you descended from monkeys, then feel free to do so."

Becky Steele, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, called those statements embarrassing.

Foster's letter is "Exhibit 1 for why we need to change our science standards, for the profound misunderstandings it reveals," she said.

rl

Quote:

Fundamental flaws in the evolutionary POV make it rather transparent to the man on the street.

For instance, if evolution is occurring today, why don't we see new species forming at a brisk pace?

I dont ask help or opinion from the man in the street on an issue not in his training or experience. No more than Id offer a valid suggestion to a cerified mechanic on fixing a car, if it werent my training .

It is impossible to leave religion out of it Foxy if evolution science is taught. Evolution science, and it's hardly proper science, is being used as a wedge. It won't make the slightest difference to the kids whether that miniscule branch of knowledge is taught or not. It might be taking time and energy away from more important science teaching as it's one of the few science topics the average teacher can understand. Insisting nobody else understands it is one of their superiority gambits.

My school didn't teach evolution theory in science lessons and look how well I turned out.

In one of those polls you linked, RL, is this:

CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll. Sept. 8-11, 2005. N=1,005 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.

"Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings? Human beings have evolved over millions of years from other forms of life and God guided this process. Human beings have evolved over millions of years from other forms of life, but God had no part in this process. OR, God created human beings in their present form exactly the way the Bible describes it." Options rotated

Evolved,God Guided - 31%
Evolved, God Had No Part - 12%
Exactly As Bible Describes - 53%
Other (vol.) - 1%
Unsure - 3%

I would really like to see the demographics of the sample polled on this one. I do not believe a random sampling of Americans would produce a more than a small minority, much less a majority who believe human beings were created exactly as the Bible describes. I think easily 53% would agree that human kind evolved through a process including intelligent design and that the Biblical account is a theological, not scientific, explanation of that.

And despite Wandel's heroic efforts in posting source after source of efforts to teach Creationism as science suggesting a big problem, I cannot believe that more than a small number of fundamentalists would be pushing that. Any broad consensus to that end would be far more likely to be a backlash against a policy of teaching that there is no Intelligent Design.

I believe the very large number of Christians and Jews would not want Intelligent Design to be taught as science, but neither do they want science to pretend to be able to deny the reality of intelligent design. In other words, teach the kids science; even be honest about the theories of Intelligent Design and how science cannot explain all that away; but otherwise leave religion, either pro or con, out of it.

This is a slippery slope."

Adolf Hitler duped an entire generation using Darwin's evolution,"

Ruse said Nazi ideologues were motivated by many factors, including "social Darwinism," a movement that tried to apply natural concepts like "survival of the fittest" to human society. But the Nazis later distanced themselves from Darwin because rather than promoting racial superiority, evolution showed "Aryans and Jews and Gypsies and Slavs were all one stem," he said.

Becky Steele, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, called those statements embarrassing.

spendius wrote:

It is impossible to leave religion out of it Foxy if evolution science is taught. Evolution science, and it's hardly proper science, is being used as a wedge. It won't make the slightest difference to the kids whether that miniscule branch of knowledge is taught or not. It might be taking time and energy away from more important science teaching as it's one of the few science topics the average teacher can understand. Insisting nobody else understands it is one of their superiority gambits.

My school didn't teach evolution theory in science lessons and look how well I turned out.

Well I think there is sufficient evidence for the theory of evolution/natural selection that it is proper to teach it in science class. I also think a well rounded education should include the gaps/problems that still exist in the theory of natural selection so that students are not misled into believing that science has it all figured out and there is nothing left to learn about it.

As for 'teaching evolution being a factor pushing racial/ethnic cleansing and/or triggering events like Columbine as is suggested in the article Wandel posted, I think that's a reeeeeeally long stretch for even most fundamentalists to swallow. I have to believe the writer is sensationalizing it a bit and not providing all sides to that debate.

As for how we turned out, my school did teach evolutionary theories in science class, and here I am. How many of our co-members on this thread do you think approve of me? I'm guessing not many.