Why *ARE* Americans still debating evolution?

[fossten]

Reprinted from NewsMax.com

Debunking Evolution
Steve Farrell
Saturday, Jan. 14, 2006
Some humorous insight on the Intelligent Design vs. Evolution debate from Liberty Letters staff writer Tom Grafanino.

Come now, children....
Read about Her!
Scientism's Lovely Queen!
She explodes!....A Cloud of Gases....
Textbook Flatulence Pristine!
Yes, The Goddess has erupted...
Then with No Design in Mind,
Life appeared!
A Magik Wonder!
What a Scientific Find!

Quantum Vacuum Fluctuation!
Scientessa waved her wand!
Tiny atoms Bump 'n' Grinding...
Vital Signs!
(Dumb Lucky Bonds!)

No Intelligence was needed...
"Science" waved her Magik Stick!
What religion?
....Man, who needs it!
When She turns her Magik Trick!

Power Priests of Scientessa
Have convinced us that it's TRUE!
Pompous, Mindless Gas from Nowhere
Evolved into me and you!

**********


Trust us......This is NOT religion!
(It's "The Science Paradigm"... )
Gas appeared from out of Nowhere
Making Matter, Space and Time.

That's The Truth!
The Firm Foundation.
On this Magik Rock we'll stand!
It's The Mandatory Lesson:
Viruses becoming....Man!

You can trust this Grand Explosive,
Accidental, Passing Gas;
Scientessa's Priests agree now...
That's how all things came to pass!

We've got Faith in Mindless Matter
That exploded on the scene...
Undesigned and for no purpose...
Bow before The Gaseous Queen!

She says, "Accidents DO happen!"
DNA popped up in space...
Life emerged from Lifeless Gases.
In a Nut-shell....
That's Her case!

**********

Once again, son....
This IS Science!
We've got evidence galore!
And....(wink, wink)...
Son, we can prove it!
(Check your brain there at the door.)

**********


We repeat: No Mind was needed!
Man's a "Stumble in the Dark"!
Science Priests are quite Dog-matic...
(Up this tree they've come to bark!)

It's their Faith!
It's Fundamental!
It's the Wisdom of the Age!
Scientessa's Pilot Program...
Modernism's current rage!

Her Big Bang's The Explanation!
Gas Almighty!
Have you heard?
From now on...
There's No Discussion!
Science Priests, please....
Spread The Word!

Take The Message to the masses...
Sow The Seed both far and wide!
Goddess Prestidigitation
Takes us to King Darwin's side!

**********

Once again...We must remind you:
This is SCIENCE through and through!
Take The Goddess Great Commission...
Gaseous Gospel Truth
For you!

**********

Now The High Court's in agreement...
Son, we can't allow debate!
Take your superstitions elsewhere
Trust The Queen's Most Gaseous State!

She proclaims what's only Natural...
Naturally... we all agree!
Breaking Winds of Chance have shown us
Naturalism's Reverie!

Yes, we've followed through the desert
All the evidence allowed...
Truth....at last we have discovered
Wrapped in her Green Magik Cloud.

Chance 'n' Time have worked this Magik...
Science-stirred....
A potent brew!
Unintelligent Concoction
Has some great Designs on you!

Yes...Queen "Big Bang" is most worthy
Of the praise we've given her...
Golden Calves don't hold a candle
To her Passing Gases, sir!

Please come dance around her altar;
Make an off'ring....
(What a Gas!)
Modern Man's Creation Story....
Fairy Tales in Physics Class.

**********

Holy Moses!
Stop the presses!
What a story!....Have you heard?
Scientessa's Gas has brought us
To the Threshold of The Word.

Moral Law and Law of Nature,
Somehow hid inside a Cloud;
No one needs now stop at Nebo...
Where Gold Calves still draw a crowd!

You're invited...
Choose your Cloud now;
Follow one....
Just take your pick!
Choose between the Ancient Prophets
Or this Goddess Magik Trick.

**********

Lord, we wander through this desert;
Give us eyes to see, we pray...
We've chased after Scientessa....
Now it seems we've lost our way.

Please, Good Shepherd,
Lead us onward...
We still dance 'round Calves of Gold!
Moloch, Isis...Scientessa
Lured us into this dark fold.

We've been taken.....(!)
Through the Black Holes...
By String Theory....strung along;
Now her Quantum Leaps have left us
Singing her Black Magik Song.

 

[RRocket]

The creation of earth is explained in a couple of places in the Old Testament. This is the same Old Testament that says you should stone your rebellious children (or your whole family depending on the circumstance) . I guess I should believe that too because it IS in the Bible, right?

 

[TheDude]

These people were wackos that separated from the Christian church. By the way, NO MENTION of evolution in the Salem witch trials.

Sorry. Wrong again.

Yes, just as the right wing religious wacko's are separated from the Christian church now. They follow their own code of what they see as good Christian conduct. God help this country if someone like Pat Robertson takes control.

Why would evolution have been mentioned during the Salem trials? But to put it in perspective, if the right wing religious wacko's had control and power in this country now, they would be 'burning' people for having opposing views just as the Puritans at that time were burning people for being witches.

 

[fossten]

Yes, just as the right wing religious wacko's are separated from the Christian church now. They follow their own code of what they see as good Christian conduct. God help this country if someone like Pat Robertson takes control.

Why would evolution have been mentioned during the Salem trials? But to put it in perspective, if the right wing religious wacko's had control and power in this country now, they would be 'burning' people for having opposing views just as the Puritans at that time were burning people for being witches.

Once again, YOU'RE the one who used the Salem witch trials as a comparison to Christianity and evolution (see title of this thread).

You haven't even identified what or who you consider to be a 'right wing religious wacko. Are you referring to me? If so, I can tell you that I'm against burning people at the stake, or any reprisal related to believing in a different religion. This is a free country. I doubt that you could find one person who believes that we should burn evolutionists at the stake.

Your argument is absurd and you can't back it up.

 

[barry2952]

I'll confirm it. YOU are the RWW everyone is talking about. In fact you've taken over Bryan's position as Chief Right Wing Whacko.

 

[fossten]

I'll confirm it. YOU are the RWW everyone is talking about. In fact you've taken over Bryan's position as Chief Right Wing Whacko.

(blushing) Why thank you, barry. That's the nicest thing you've ever publicly said to me.

 

[fossten]

Reprinted from NewsMax.com

Darwinism vs. Intelligent Design

Lev Navrozov
Friday, Jan. 13, 2006

The close of 2005 was accompanied by a remarkable event: 11 parents of schoolchildren in Dover, Pa., sued the school board for teaching their children in a public school not only Darwinism but also intelligent design (in evolution). In a 135-page ruling Judge John Jones accused the school board of "disguising their true motives for teaching intelligent design." The sneaky school board actually wanted to smuggle in creationism, that is, religion, which is against the separation of church and state enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

What about Darwinism? There was an evil anti-Soviet joke: "Why is Marx a great scientist? Because he has a big beard." A look at the photograph of Darwin in the BBC News of Dec. 20, 2005, could convince anyone that Darwin's beard was not smaller than that of Marx, and hence he was a scientist through and through, and whatever he said was purely scientific, not religious, and as fit to be taught in public schools as the multiplication tables. Hence the ruling establishing the scientist Darwin in public schools and forbidding intelligent design, sneakily concealing its religious origin and essence.

But let's look at Darwin regardless of his scientific beard. In 1828, the 19-year-old Charles Darwin began to study at Christ's College, Cambridge, from which he graduated in 1831 and went for a six-year voyage on the HMS Beagle. A clergyman? Of course! In the United States today there are fanatics of scientism who suspect everybody of being a cunning religious fanatic. But in England there were "parson naturalists," reading "the Deity's second book of revelation: nature."

What did Darwin read in the Deity's second book?

That nature produces more organisms than the number able to survive. So?

Marx and Engels and hence Soviet propaganda were obsessed with Darwin. In Soviet schools there was a special lesson called "Darwinism," and I remember the explanation of how giraffes evolved. All giraffes could not be born exactly the same. Those who had somewhat longer necks were fitter for survival because they could eat leaves off higher branches of trees. In their longer-neck progeny, some specimens had again longer necks than others. Thus there evolved giraffes with the very long necks by which we recognize a giraffe today. Natural selection! Survival of the fittest! Evolution! Origin of species!

The above example sounded to us, schoolchildren, at least plausible, since genetics was forbidden in Stalin's Russia. Now I know that the evolution of the giraffe's neck is as much nonsense as the whole reading by the Christ's College graduate Darwin of nature as the Deity's second book of revelation. Genetics (the word appeared in 1906) was unknown to Darwin, who did not understand that when a giraffe was born with a somewhat longer neck, this variation had to become genetic in order to be inherited by the giraffe's progeny.

But the rest of Darwin's science did not seem even plausible to those of us who thought, and not just memorized.

Evolution implies development from the simplest to the most complex. Its first hypothetical stage is the transition from inanimate matter to unicellular organisms – the origin of the most primitive life. But how could even the most primitive life evolve according to Darwin if it is less fit for survival than inanimate matter? The more evolved, developed, sophisticated an organism is, the more it is vulnerable, demanding, exigent – and hence less fit for survival.

We hear calls for the preservation of an endangered species. This is not a unicellular organism, but an animal with a digestive tract, a blood system, lungs, a brain, etc. Darwin's evolution is not just wrong, but is the opposite of reality: In the real nature, billions of microbes can generate at a terrific speed, while the survival of just one higher animal may be a problem.

What about man? In the time of Darwin (who died in 1882) an Englishman could imagine himself to be the fittest for survival: The territory of the British Empire exceeded 91 times that of England itself. But the 20th century demonstrated that man is able to develop weapons that can reduce England to atoms. The evolution of weapons may yet destroy mankind, not just convert it to world slavery.

Yes, the neck of the giraffe could become long if its elongations had been genetic. But what about the origin of an eye that even an insect has?

It was only in the 19th century that man's brain invented, constructed, created a photocamera. An intelligent design! But what about the eye, an organic photocamera having automatic accommodation and protection and connected to the brain? It is ridiculous to imagine that the eye could evolve by tiny, accidental, incremental changes like elongations of the giraffe's neck that ensure a greater fitness for survival. And what about the brain?

When Henri Bergson (Nobel Prize in 1927) published his "L'Évolution Creátrice" in 1907, it was immediately translated into English ("Creative Evolution") and all other major languages of Europe. Every Russian intellectual read it either in French or in Russian. Predictably, the Nobel Prize winner made mincemeat out of Darwinism. But in the argument in the United States about a century later it does not seem that any worshiper of Darwin has ever heard of Bergson.

On Dec. 20, 2005, on Time.com (page 1) Michael Lemonick begins his article "Darwin Victorious" in a key of triumph resembling such articles at the dawn of Soviet Russia when Bergson had been discarded, and Darwinism, besung by Marx and Engels, became the Light of science victorious over the Darkness of religion:

"Breathtaking inanity" [!] is how U.S. District Judge John Jones characterized the Dover, PA school board attempts to cast doubt on the theory of evolution – but in fairness, the recently ousted members of the board were relative unsophisticates, snookered [!] by the intellectual scam [!] that calls itself "intelligent design," or ID.

Thank God (or shall I say "thank Darwin"?) these were "relative unsophisticates." Can you imagine a sophisticate's "attempt to cast doubt on the theory of evolution"? This is like an attempt in the 17th century to cast doubt on the geocentric theory! It is a pity that those who cast doubt on Darwinism are not burned at the stake under the scientific auspices of Michael Lemonick of Time magazine. What about any controversy over Darwin? The Discovery Institute? Intelligent Design (ID)? The "scam"!

The Discovery Institute, a pro-ID think tank, favors teaching the controversy over evolution, but that's the scam [!]. There is no controversy, or at least, not the scientific controversy. Discovery says there is [the insolence!].

True, Lemonick admits that there is "a tiny [!] handful [!] of actual [!] scientists who back ID." But "the vast [!] majority [!] of biologists say nonsense." Perhaps Time magazine should take a vote among biologists and thus establish once and for all that Darwinism is the Science beyond all controversy (which is religious nonsense and hence to be kept from public schools). The only trouble is that if scientific issues were decided by majorities, we would still think that the Sun revolved around the Earth, and that Einstein was an insane clerk in a patent office.

 

[TheDude]

Reagardless, expain how Adam & Eve populated the entire planet to its current 6+ billion? Explain how two people spawned so many diverse ethnicities?

 

[TheDude]

Once again, YOU'RE the one who used the Salem witch trials as a comparison to Christianity and evolution (see title of this thread).

You haven't even identified what or who you consider to be a 'right wing religious wacko. Are you referring to me? If so, I can tell you that I'm against burning people at the stake, or any reprisal related to believing in a different religion. This is a free country. I doubt that you could find one person who believes that we should burn evolutionists at the stake.

Your argument is absurd and you can't back it up.

When I said "burn people at the stake" it was a metaphor. you took it literally. Pat Robertson, a 'right wing religious wacko' as an example, in his case, he just might be willing to kill people with opposing views, that guy has said some wack-job comments in the past. I don't know you well enough to know how religiously wacko you are, some of your post are way out on the wacko right field, but that's not enough for me to label you a 'right wing religious wacko'.

 

[fossten]

When I said "burn people at the stake" it was a metaphor. you took it literally. Pat Robertson, a 'right wing religious wacko' as an example, in his case, he just might be willing to kill people with opposing views, that guy has said some wack-job comments in the past. I don't know you well enough to know how religiously wacko you are, some of your post are way out on the wacko right field, but that's not enough for me to label you a 'right wing religious wacko'.

Well. That's FIVE 'wack' or 'wacko' uses in the same paragraph. Do you know how to do anything besides ad hominem?

If you were exaggerating, then explain what you meant by 'burning.'

Could you mean:

1. The way liberals are 'burning' Bush at the stake for defending our country?
2. The way liberals are 'burning' Alito at the stake for being nominated?
3. The way John Kerry 'burned' our troops at the stake for being sent to Iraq?
4. The way Murtha 'burned' our troops at the stake for the same reason?
5. The way Ronnie Earle is 'burning' Tom DeLay at the stake for being an effective Conservative?
6. The way the ACLU 'burns' Christians at the stake on a regular basis?

Or did you mean something else?

 

[fossten]

Reagardless, expain how Adam & Eve populated the entire planet to its current 6+ billion? Explain how two people spawned so many diverse ethnicities?

I don't have to explain that to you, since I know that your question is facetious. You have the burden of proof in this thread to convince people that I'm wrong and that evolution is true. Asking loaded questions won't help your case.

 

[TheDude]

I don't have to explain that to you, since I know that your question is facetious. You have the burden of proof in this thread to convince people that I'm wrong and that evolution is true. Asking loaded questions won't help your case.

Why is it you can discredit evolution on the notion (one example) that the eye is far to complex to have occured randomly in nature. But I cannot discredit creation on the basis that two humans couldn't proliferate 6+ billion people?

 

[fossten]

Why is it you can discredit evolution on the notion (one example) that the eye is far to complex to have occured randomly in nature. But I cannot discredit creation on the basis that two humans could proliferate 6+ billion people?

Don't tell me you don't remember how to debate. You know how to do this. If you don't think it's possible that that could have happened, POST YOUR FACTS that support your position. PROVE YOUR CASE. Otherwise, you're just making EMPTY ASSERTIONS.

Geez.

 

[TheDude]

Well. That's FIVE 'wack' or 'wacko' uses in the same paragraph. Do you know how to do anything besides ad hominem?

If you were exaggerating, then explain what you meant by 'burning.'

Could you mean:

1. The way liberals are 'burning' Bush at the stake for defending our country?
2. The way liberals are 'burning' Alito at the stake for being nominated?
3. The way John Kerry 'burned' our troops at the stake for being sent to Iraq?
4. The way Murtha 'burned' our troops at the stake for the same reason?
5. The way Ronnie Earle is 'burning' Tom DeLay at the stake for being an effective Conservative?
6. The way the ACLU 'burns' Christians at the stake on a regular basis?

Or did you mean something else?

I meant putdown, oppress, subjugate etc. etc.

 

[TheDude]

Don't tell me you don't remember how to debate. You know how to do this. If you don't think it's possible that that could have happened, POST YOUR FACTS that support your position. PROVE YOUR CASE. Otherwise, you're just making EMPTY ASSERTIONS.

Geez.

That is my case, one man and one woman cannot produce a viable population. The severe inbreeding would eventually produce nothing but heavily disfigured and/or dead babies in a few generations. Humans would of gone extinct long before the great flood.

So I ask you, how did Adam & Eve populate the planet let alone produce so many ethnicities?

 

[fossten]

Ethnicities is another question which I will answer later, but which has been answered before. Here is a snip that answers your question.

Cain’s brothers and sisters
Cain was the first child of Adam and Eve recorded in Scripture (Genesis 4:1). His brothers, Abel (Genesis 4:2) and Seth (Genesis 4:25), were part of the first generation of children ever born on this Earth.

Even though only these three males are mentioned by name, Adam and Eve had other children. In Genesis 5:4 a statement sums up the life of Adam and Eve—‘And the days of Adam after he had fathered Seth were eight hundred years. And he fathered sons and daughters.’ This does not say when they were born. Many could have been born in the 130 years (Genesis 5:3) before Seth was born.

During their lives, Adam and Eve had a number of male and female children. The Jewish historian Josephus wrote that, ‘The number of Adam’s children, as says the old tradition, was thirty-three sons and twenty-three daughters.’11

The Bible does not tell us how many children were born to Adam and Eve. However, considering their long life spans (Adam lived for 930 years—Genesis 5:5), it would seem reasonable to suggest there were many! Remember, they were commanded to ‘Be fruitful, and multiply’ (Genesis 1:28).

The wife
If we now work totally from Scripture, without any personal prejudices or other extra-Biblical ideas, then back at the beginning, when there was only the first generation, brothers would have had to have married sisters or there would be no more generations!

We are not told when Cain married or any of the details of other marriages and children, but we can say for certain that some brothers had to marry their sisters at the beginning of human history.

Objections
God’s laws
Many people immediately reject the conclusion that Adam and Eve’s sons and daughters married each other by appealing to the law against brother-sister intermarriage. Some say that you cannot marry your relation. Actually, if you don’t marry your relation, you don’t marry a human! A wife is related to her husband even before they marry because all people are descendants of Adam and Eve—all are of ‘one blood.’ The law forbidding marriage between close relatives was not given until the time of Moses (Leviticus 18–20). Provided marriage was one man to one woman for life (based on Genesis 1 and 2), there was no disobedience to God’s law originally when close relatives (even brothers and sisters) married each other.

Remember that Abraham married his half-sister (Genesis 20:12). God blessed this union to produce the Hebrew people through Isaac and Jacob. It was not until some 400 years later that God gave Moses laws that forbade such marriages.

Biological deformities
Today, brothers and sisters (and half-brothers and half-sisters, etc.) are not permitted by law to marry because their children have an unacceptably high risk of being deformed. The more closely the parents are related, the more likely it is that any offspring will be deformed.

There is a very sound genetic reason for such laws that is easy to understand. Every person has two sets of genes that specify how a person is put together and functions. Each person inherits one gene of each pair from each parent. Unfortunately, genes today contain many mistakes (because of sin and the Curse), and these mistakes show up in a variety of ways. For instance, some people let their hair grow over their ears to hide the fact that one ear is lower than the other—or perhaps someone’s nose is not quite in the middle of his or her face, or someone’s jaw is a little out of shape—and so on. Let’s face it, the main reason we call each other normal is because of our common agreement to do so!

The more distantly related parents are, the more likely it is that they will have different mistakes in their genes. Children, inheriting one set of genes from each parent, are likely to end up with pairs of genes containing a maximum of one bad gene in each pair. The good gene tends to override the bad so that a deformity (a serious one, anyway) does not occur. Instead of having totally deformed ears, for instance, a person may only have crooked ones! (Overall, though, the human race is slowly degenerating as mistakes accumulate, generation after generation.)

However, the more closely related two people are, the more likely it is that they will have similar mistakes in their genes, since these have been inherited from the same parents. Therefore, a brother and a sister are more likely to have similar mistakes in their genes. A child of a union between such siblings could inherit the same bad gene on the same gene pair from both, resulting in two bad copies of the gene and serious defects.

However, Adam and Eve did not have accumulated genetic mistakes. When the first two people were created, they were physically perfect. Everything God made was ‘very good’ (Genesis 1:31), so their genes were perfect—no mistakes! But, when sin entered the world (because of Adam—Genesis 3:6ff, Romans 5:12), God cursed the world so that the perfect creation then began to degenerate, that is, suffer death and decay (Romans 8:22). Over thousands of years, this degeneration has produced all sorts of genetic mistakes in living things.

Cain was in the first generation of children ever born. He (as well as his brothers and sisters) would have received virtually no imperfect genes from Adam or Eve, since the effects of sin and the Curse would have been minimal to start with (it takes time for these copying errors to accumulate). In that situation, brother and sister could have married with God’s approval, without any potential to produce deformed offspring.

By the time of Moses (a few thousand years later), degenerative mistakes would have built up in the human race to such an extent that it was necessary for God to forbid brother-sister (and close relative) marriage (Leviticus 18–20).12 (Also, there were plenty of people on the Earth by now, and there was no reason for close relations to marry.)

 

[97silverlsc]

Reagardless, expain how Adam & Eve populated the entire planet to its current 6+ billion? Explain how two people spawned so many diverse ethnicities?

Think that inbreeding amongst adam and eve's offspring is evidenced by Shrub and the rest of the RWWs.

 

[fossten]

Think that inbreeding amongst adam and eve's offspring is evidenced by Shrub and the rest of the RWWs.

But evolutionary belief goes as follows:

Amoeba-->Slime-->Reptile-->Dinosaur-->Monkey-->Neanderthal-->Modern Day Liberal.

That's pretty believable, now that I think about it.

 

[TheDude]

Cain was in the first generation of children ever born. He (as well as his brothers and sisters) would have received virtually no imperfect genes from Adam or Eve, since the effects of sin and the Curse would have been minimal to start with (it takes time for these copying errors to accumulate). In that situation, brother and sister could have married with God’s approval, without any potential to produce deformed offspring.

Well, it's summed up there and it comes down to faith not science. You either have faith or you don't. Thanks for the article though, I appreciate you posting it (sincerely).

Do post an article or your own personal thoughts on the worlds ethnicities when you have time.

 

[fossten]

Well, it's summed up there and it comes down to faith not science. You either have faith or you don't. Thanks for the article though, I appreciate you posting it (sincerely).

Do post an article or your own personal thoughts on the worlds ethnicities when you have time.

This is exactly what I expected you to do: Attempt to discredit my generous answer to your question by the use of fact-less assertions.

Actually, there is sound scientific doctrine in that article which evidently passed right over your head.

You have no refutation, I noticed, nor do you have an alternative explanation.

 

[TheDude]

This is exactly what I expected you to do: Attempt to discredit my generous answer to your question by the use of fact-less assertions.

The foundation of your article is based on faith. God created Adam from dirt and then created Eve from his rib, believing in that takes faith not scientific reasoning, that is a fact. Am I wrong here?

Actually, there is sound scientific doctrine in that article which evidently passed right over your head. .

The scientific doctrine the article discusses all comes down to if you believe God created the perfect man out of dirt to begin with. Once you have faith that this miracle occurred, then the science takes over, but the foundation is still faith.

You have no refutation, I noticed, nor do you have an alternative explanation.

No, I cannot refute anyone’s faith. Do you really want me to post article after article of evolution theory?

(Don't be so hostile, I thanked you for your post and I was sincere about it.)

 

[JohnnyBz00LS]

From the mouths of babes.........

Clearing up ID, evolution, theory

Rebekah Sims, 15, whose letter appeared Dec. 12, has been selected as last month’s Golden Pen Award winner. In the judgment of the editors, she had the most effective letter to the editor during December.
The daughter of Elizabeth Nygaard and Mike Sims, Rebekah is a sophomore at Homestead High School, where she participates in drama, plays clarinet in orchestra and piano for the show choir back-up band. Outside school, she enjoys reading, writing and her hobby of dollhouse miniatures. She has a 13-year-old sister, Sarah, and a 6-year-old brother, Ben.
She received a gold-plated inscribed pen for her efforts. The Golden Pen Award was established to express our appreciation for the contribution our letter writers make to the editorial page. Here is her letter, which was inspired by lessons on scientific theory in her freshman honors biology class:

Over the past few months, the editorial page has played host to a fiery debate about creationism, evolution, intelligent design and what should be taught in schools.

In the midst of all of the controversy, I have noticed two points in need of clarification. First, there have been no clear definitions of creationism, evolution and intelligent design, and second, most people are either using the word “theory” very loosely or misunderstanding it completely.

Intelligent design is the idea that some biological structures are so complex that they must have been the creation of a superior being and could not possibly have been created by evolution.

Creationism is the literal belief in the biblical story of creation.
The theory of evolution is the scientific theory that life evolved from inanimate matter, with molecules becoming more and more complex.
In the realm of science, a theory is “a set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena” (dictionary.com).

The theory of evolution is not a hypothesis, nor is it simply an untested idea with no evidence. A hypothesis is only one part of a theory. The hypothesis must undergo rigorous testing, and evidence supporting the hypothesis must be present before it is considered a theory.

Evolution has evidence in the fossil record as well as the Miller-Urey experiment. This experiment simulated the conditions of the early Earth and found that in these conditions, it was possible that simple compounds could form. Later, similar experiments found that in the conditions of early Earth, amino acids, other carbon compounds, as well as the DNA base adenine. All of these compounds are very important to life on Earth.

The question as to whether one can be both Christian and accept evolution has also played a major part in this debate. It is quite possible. There are many devout Christians who believe that God created the world through evolution. I am one of them.

Currently, the theory of evolution is the only scientifically viable explanation for the origin of life. Why? Because it is the only explanation with a testable, verifiable hypothesis.

There is no possible way to scientifically test for a superior being, so creationism and intelligent design are not science, therefore these explanations for the origin of life have no scientific evidence.

The theory of evolution by natural selection belongs in biology class; Creationism and intelligent design belong in world religions, philosophy, debate or speech classes.

Schools do not give students choice and several explanations for gravity, the water cycle or the process of transpiration in plants. Scientific theories need to be taught in science class. There is plenty of room for other ideas elsewhere.

 

[barry2952]

That was well written.

 

[fossten]

Who's really pushing bad science?

But not well supported. She made a series of assertions without laying any foundation or followup support.



Naturalism, Origin and Operation Science
[Lawrence] Lerner and others claim scientists must practise methodological naturalism, i.e. that natural causes are the only ones allowed, and God, if He exists, did nothing that can be investigated (contrary to Romans 1:18–23). They claim that doesn’t necessarily imply ontological naturalism, i.e. that nature is all that really does exist, and God doesn’t. However, the converse is definitely valid, which is one reason it is promoted by so many atheists — atheists must believe that nature is all there is.

The scare tactic they use to promote methodological naturalism is reasoning like:

‘It is simply not possible to solve a scientific question if one is willing to invoke a supernatural answer, because supernatural answers foreclose further scientific inquiry. As we have already noted, a person who accounts for the motion of the planets by asserting that angels propel them is simply not going to be able to account for Kepler’s laws of planetary motion in any kind of fruitful way.’

This fails to note the distinction between normal (operational) science, and origins or historical science.10 Normal (operational) science deals only with repeatable observable processes in the present, while origins science helps us to make educated guesses about origins in the past.

Operational science has indeed been very successful in understanding the world, and has led to many improvements in the quality of life, e.g. putting men on the moon and curing diseases. As explained above, because creation finished at the end of Day 6, biblical creationists would try to find natural laws for every aspect of operation science, and would not invoke a miracle to explain any repeating event in nature in the present. So a creationist would actually not dispute Lerner’s statement as far as operational science is concerned, despite his best efforts to caricaturize our position. This can be shown in a letter I wrote to an enquirer who believed that atoms had to be held together by miraculous means:

“‘Natural laws’ also help us make predictions about future events. In the case of the atom, the explanation of the electrons staying in their orbitals is the positive electric charge and large mass of the nucleus. This enables us to make predictions about how strongly a particular electron is held by a particular atom, for example, making the science of chemistry possible. While this is certainly an example of Col. 1:17, simply saying ‘God upholds the electron’ doesn’t help us make predictions.”

And in my days as a university teaching assistant before joining AiG, I marked an examination answer wrong because it said ‘God made it so’ for a question about the frequency of infrared spectral lines, instead of discussing atomic masses and force constants.

So Lerner is wrong that creationists are in any way hindered in real operational science research, either in theory or in practice.

In contrast, evolution is a speculation about the unobservable and unrepeatable past. Thus it comes under origins science. Rather than observation, origins science uses the principles of causality (everything that has a beginning has a cause11) and analogy (e.g. we observe that intelligence is needed to generate complex coded information in the present, so we can reasonably assume the same for the past). And because there was no material intelligent designer for life, it is legitimate to invoke a non-material designer for life. Creationists invoke the miraculous only for origins science, and as shown, this does not mean they will invoke it for operational science.

The difference between operational and origins science is important for seeing through silly assertions such as the following by Levitt (as quoted by Lerner):

‘… evolution is as thoroughly established as the picture of the solar system due to Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton.’

However, we can observe the motion of the planets, but no-one has ever observed an information-increasing change of one type of organism to another.

To explain further: the laws that govern the operation of a computer are not those that made the computer in the first place. Lerner’s anti-creationist propaganda is like saying that if we concede that a computer had an intelligent designer, then we might not analyse a computer’s workings in terms of natural laws of electron motion through semiconductors, and might think there are little intelligent beings pushing electrons around instead. Similarly, believing that the genetic code was originally designed does not preclude us from believing that it works entirely by the laws of chemistry involving DNA, RNA, proteins, etc. Conversely, the fact that the coding machinery works according to reproducible laws of chemistry does not prove that the laws of chemistry were sufficient to build such a system from a primordial soup. For more information about difficulties with the origin of life from non-life, see Q&A: Origin of Life.



How evolution harms science
A strong case can be made that dogmatic belief in evolution has harmed science, but Lerner downplays and even ignores this.

Teaching discredited evolutionary ‘proofs’ is OK?!
Many textbooks mislead students by teaching discredited ideas. For example, many teach that embryonic development parallels its alleged evolutionary history, also called embryonic recapitulation or ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’, which was based on forged diagrams of embryos by the 19th century proto-Nazi Darwinist Ernst Haeckel — see Ernst Haeckel: Evangelist for Evolution and Apostle of Deceit. Some textbooks don’t go this far, but still teach that embryonic similarity is proof of evolution, although the pictures used are also based on other forged drawings by Haeckel — see Embryonic Fraud Rediscovered. Another favourite ‘evidence’ for evolution is photos of peppered moths differentially camouflaged on tree trunks, although the moths never actually rest there and the photos were faked — see Goodbye, peppered moths.

The biologist Dr Jonathan Wells has performed a different analysis to Lerner, this time on biology textbooks, in his new book Icons of Evolution (see full report). He gives many textbook fail grades, on the far more reasonable ground that by presenting such discredited examples, they are not telling the truth! Dr Wells and Jay Richards wrote a critique of Lerner’s paper, rightly pointing out:

‘But the Lerner report fails to point out that students are being systematically misled about the scientific evidence, and it thereby encourages precisely the sort of bad science it pretends to criticize. …

‘The Lerner report contributes to just the sort of brainwashing Finn criticizes. Lerner wants students to learn Darwinian evolution — without being told that many textbook “evidences” for evolution have been faked. Lerner wants students to be taught scientific misconduct masquerading as good science, instead of being given accurate information and being encouraged to think for themselves.’

Evidently what Lerner called ‘slipshod treatment of biological evolution’ doesn’t include presenting fallacious arguments for it! This should not be surprising, since as shown, evolution is really a pseudo-scientific justification for materialism, regardless of whether the facts support it!

http://answersingenesis.org/news/Lerner_resp.asp [snip]

 

[fossten]

Reprinted from NewsMax.com

Thursday, Jan. 26, 2006 10:41 a.m. EST


BBC: Most Brits Don’t Believe in Evolution

Scientists may sneer at those who question the theory of evolution but a new survey says that most people in the United Kingdom do not accept it as valid.

According to BBC, their survey of 2000 participants in a program "Horizon: A War on Science” showed that "more than half the British population does not accept the theory of evolution.”

The program’s editor Andrew Cohen told Britain’s The Register: "I think that this poll represents our first introduction to the British public's views on this issue. Most people would have expected the public to go for evolution theory, but it seems there are lots of people who appear to believe in an alternative theory for life's origins."

According to The Register, the survey found that while 48 per cent of people opted for evolution as that which "best described their view of the origin and development of life", a majority had either other opinions or none at all with 22 per cent opting for creationism and 17 percent for intelligent design.

Asked which of the three theories should be included in school science lessons, 44 per cent said creationism should be on the agenda, 41 per cent voted for intelligent design, while 69 per cent backed evolution.

The Register notes that survey "participants over 55 were more likely to choose evolution over other groups, while those under 25 were most likely to opt for intelligent design."

This prompted the paper to comment that older people have either come to the "correct conclusion" over time, or are possibly "too old to accept the exciting and irrefutable truth of intelligent design."