Louisiana rolls back The Enlightenment.

Guy-jin

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At risk of repeating what JA's said:

I do have a problem with "Intelligent Design" and creationism being taught as scientific theories because they aren't theories. Theories utilize facts to draw conclusions. Both Intelligent Design and creationism fundamentally use something non-factual--that there is a God--as the crux of their descriptions.

Moreover, a very strict requirement of a theory is that it's something that can be refuted if certain properties are met. For example, if you see a housecat spontaneously evolve into a lion, you've just disproved Darwin's Theory of Evolution. However, "Intelligent Design" and creationism aren't refutable because, if you accept God as fact, there's no way to prove they aren't real. If you see your housecat spontaneously evolve into a lion, "Intelligent Design" says there was some kind of divine purposeful force behind it.

Anyway, to me these issues always lead back to religious legislature trying to infuse the Christian God as fact into schools. The moment you allow "Intelligent Design" and creationism to be taught in school as scientific theories, you must then permit that the Christian God is fact. That's the actual goal here and why it can't be allowed to happen in America.
 

Calboner

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You must not know have read the thread that tells us that Tom friedman blows.

Anyway, the place to look is here:

The Flat Earth Society -- Home

I thought that that site was for real until I read this disclaimer on the front page:

The Flat Earth Society is not in any way responsible for the failure of the French to repel the Germans at the Maginot Line during WWII. Nor is the Flat Earth Society responsible for the recent yeti sightings outside the Vatican, or for the unfortunate enslavement of the Nabisco Inc. factory employees by a rogue hamster insurrectionist group. Furthermore, we are not responsible for the loss of one or more of the following, which may possibly occur as the result of exposing one's self to the dogmatic and dangerously subversive statements made within: life, limb, vision, Francois Mitterand, hearing, taste, smell, touch, thumb, Aunt Mildred, citizenship, spleen, bedrock, cloves, I Love Lucy reruns, toaster, pine derby racer, toy duck, antelope, horseradish, prosthetic ankle, double-cheeseburger, tin foil, limestone, watermelon-scented air freshner, sanity, paprika, German to Pig Latin dictionary, dish towel, pet Chihuahua, pogo stick, Golf Digest subscription, floor tile, upper torso or halibut.
 

BIGBULL29

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Phil, you have stated yourself that it is a theory. So, teach it as a theory. I've taken too many classes where theories were taught as fact.
If you had your way, everybody would have to believe as you do. However, this would result in great boredom, and your life would have no meaning because you'd have nobody with whom to argue.

God cannot be disproven. So, creationism is just as valid as a theory as non-creationism.

How ironic that religion is not taught in school in a non-bias way. I cannot think of more relevant subject for secondary school students to study. It is a fundamental aspect of the human condition, having shaped the cultures of all societies.

In America, Christo-Judean values are played out every day without any thought given to their origins. Our society's mainstream views on nudity, murder, stealing, and sexuality did not come about out of thin air; they were the result of religious values imposed on our society a long time ago. The religious persecution of many Europeans led to their emigration to the New World (America), where they spread their religious beliefs across the land. That is why we are a most Protestant and Puritanical nation today.

Nothing has caused more wars, conflicts, persecution, and deaths than religion.

All public schools should teach philosophy and religion at the secondary level. Get kids to think about the meaning of life at a young age before they go to university!!!!!
 
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JustAsking

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Immensely well said, JustAsking.

...Some religious speaker came on campus last semester and he said that his proof for thinking God created the planet in its entirety as is came from the marvel at the human eye. That we have an organ of such size that functions in its complexity is somehow "proof" that an omnipotent Designer created it. Human engineers, technologists, and electricians can make marvelous equipment that we could verify has a creation process. The eye does too with the adaptive changes needed for it to function as it does.

The one thing that makes evolution a bit complicated regarding scientific rigor is that Homo sapiens sapiens has yet to undergo a significant evolutionary change. Our environment has been relatively stable for, what, tens of thousands of years now. Environmental changes have yet to be so drastic that it would depend physiological adaption. What we do know and can see and could replicate in the laboratory are the much smaller genetic adaptations (see Wikipedia). Even as scientists concede that we still have much progress to make toward evolution, nothing rigorous or scientific about Intelligent Design could fill those gaps, and to claim that it can is far-fetched at the least.

Dee,
Yes, I can understand anyone having a problem believing that something like the eye evolved slowly over time. This is a common argument people use in trying to refute evolution. However, this kind of argument doesn't contribute to the science of it. Scientists call it argument from personal incredulity. Its like saying that X can't be true, because I personally find X to be incredible.

This is the amazing thing about the scientific process is that it takes us into knowing things that are far beyond our everyday imagination. For example, who would have guessed that continents move in respect to each other. Or that the mass of an object is proportional to its velocity. And so on. Personal incredulity is challenged everywhere one looks in science these days. Even in applied science do we find things that are incredible, such as the computing power of the piece of beach sand that comprises the CPU in your computer.

As for human evolution, enough of it has taken place such that we can actually trace the origins of one's DNA to different locations in the world. We can see human evolution taking place over the last 5,000 - 10,000 years when different populations switched over from hunter-gatherers to agriculture and animal husbandry.

Since it was not quite long enough for the whole population to adapt, those of us whose ancestors came from areas to make the conversion later than that others, find ourselves with such things as lactose intolerance, and grain intolerance in our digestive system. Whereas, those whose ancestors changed much earlier have more complete adaptation to the change in diet.


God cannot be disproven. So, creationism is just as valid as a theory as non-creationism....

No, this is where you are wrong, bull. If that were a valid argument, you could say the same thing about the theory of FSM. Although FSM is a kind of joke, the point of it is to show the fallacy of introducing any supernatural explanations into science. If God can be invoked as a cause, so can Zeus or Thor of anything you can imagine that you say is undetectable or unprovable.

And like I said in a previous posting, falsifiability is one of the criteria of a scientific theory. In other words, if you can't devise a test for it, it is not a scientific theory. A theory that is untestable is useless, because it has no predictive powers. Prediction and falsifiability are two sides of the same coin.

Finally, there is nothing in the theory of evolution that speaks to the origin of life. That the universe was created by God is not incompatible with evolution, because evolution tries only to explain the diversity of life on the planet, not the origins of life. Faith in God and acknowledging that evolution is the best explanation for the diversity of life are not incompatible notions.

In fact, 80% of the world's Christians belong to denominations whose official doctrines embrace science and specifically evolution. Those denominations would also say that a literal interpretation of Genesis that demands that all species were created at once is heresy. You can count me amongst those who believe God created the universe, but that universe is full of natural processes that can be characterized by science.

By the way, I would agree with your idea that a comparative religions class should be taught in public school if I trusted the fact that it would not turn into an opportunity for proseletyzing by some teachers.
 

b.c.

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As i stated earlier, much ado about nothing imo. I personally have no problem with teachers having the option of exploring various theories (scientific or otherwise) regarding how we (in fact, everything) came to be, so long as it is offered as just what it is...theory.
 

morsecode

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hootie,
I think you missed the point. You are conflating the definition of a scientific theory with the colloquial use of the term theory. Colloquially, we misuse the term 'theory' when we mean a hypothesis. In other words, one person might have a hypothesis that team A will win the game tonight, and another person might have a theory that team B will win. Each person might have good reasons for their hypothesis, but they are just guesses.

There is part of the theory of evolution that is considered as much of a fact as gravitational attraction. The fact of evolution is called 'descent with modification'. This means that any organism is descended from its parent and is genetically different from its parent in one way or another. It is descended from its parents and it is a modified version of its parents.

The theory part of evolution is the explanation of how these modifications come about, and what forces harness those variations generation after generation to produce novel traits and new species.

A scientific theory has a much stronger status than a simple fact. It is an explanation that unifies the observation of millions of facts. A good scientific theory does that so well, that it predicts future observations over and over again with incredible accuracy.

A scientific theory, in order to have that kind of power, must make extremely bold and audacious assertions. The value and power of a theory is in what it forbids, because this allows it to be easily falsified. For example, if I say that some objects are not attracted to the earth, it is a weak theory because it forbids almost nothing. It doesn't actually forbid any particular object from being attracted to the earth, because of the use of the word 'some'. Therefore, it make no predictions on any particular objects attractiveness to the earth. And therefore, it is unfalsifiable. It turns out that in scientific theories, predictive power and falsifiability are two sides of the same coin.

Whereas, if I say that any (this means 'any' with no exception) two masses in the universe are attracted to each other by a force equal to g(M1 * M2)/(R * R), then I have a really good scientific theory. It is a good one because it forbids any object in the universe from violating that formula. Therefore it could easily be falsified by any two objects if it were not true. This theory makes a prediction on every object that has ever existed and every object that will exist. It has massive predictive power, and conversely it is easily falsified.

So if after a couple of hundred years of experimentation no one has been able to falsify it, one can see why the theory of Universal Gravitation is more powerful than a simple fact. You can also see that it predicts future events, such as the future position of planets or the path a rocket should take to get to the moon.

The modern theory of evolution enjoys this same kind of support. It says absolute things like, "any two organisms, living or dead, are related by a common ancestor." So far, this has held up for 150 years of concentrated rigorous reasearch and not only did it survive the discovery of molecular biology and genetics, but it anticipated them and is vindicated by them. The anatomical, molecular, and genetic maps of the evolution of the generations of an organism overlay beautifully and support each other completely.

Intelligent Design, on the other hand has never even been stated as a scientific theory, let alone supported by a shred of evidence. I defy you or anyone to actually find a definition of Intelligent Design that makes a positive assertion. (In other words, not stated as simply a negative statement about evolution).

Since ID has never actually been stated as a theory, it has not yet entered the scientific world. It has no evidence to support it and it has no predictive power. Furthermore, 99.9% of the energy of its proponents go into unsuccessfully refuting evolution.

ID is ultimately a con game. The very fact that an educated person like you still think that there are no transitional fossils is proof of how successful the con game is. I hate to be the one to inform you that since all offspring of a set of parents are genetic variations of each other and their parents, all organisms are transitional organisms and all fossils are transitional fossils.

But if you want dramatic fish with gills and lungs, or reptiles with feathers and wings, or 17 steps in the evolution of the elephant or the modern horse, or a train car full of very different hominid fossils, they all exist and can be easily seen by anyone who is not in a state of denial.

The reason why ID and Creationism do not represent anything like "the other side of the argument" is because they don't actually have any substance to them. They have not entered the world of science and should not be taught in science class. They are no more scientific than astrology. In fact, one of the chief proponents of ID, while questioned under oath in Dover, PA admitted that the definition of science would have to change in order for ID to be admissable, and also admitted that such a change would allow astrology to be considered a science.

Science is a special and powerful way of knowing, that is more powerful than observing a fact. The theory of evolution has been confirmed for so long in so many different ways that we might be more certain about it than any other scientific theory. ID, on the other hand has not even been stated yet as any kind of scientific assertion, so it cannot even enter the courtroom of scientific inquiry. Being unfalsifiable (like my 'some objects are not attracted to the earth' hypothesis), it is not testable, therefore it is not science.

There has never been anything that has been shown to be Intelligently Designed instead of evolved. There are no active research programs anywhere on Intelligent Design, despite the fact that The Discovery Institute (the chief and only proponent of ID) is funded in the $millions every year. They spend none of it on research, since it is nothing but a PR firm focused on lobbying for changes in public policy regarding the teaching of evolution in public schools.

By the way, I happen to be a devout Christian and believe that ultimately God created the universe and is responsible for life. But I don't confuse that with the denial that in the process God created a universe full of natural processes.

before posting people need to read this
 

Phil Ayesho

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Phil, you have stated yourself that it is a theory. So, teach it as a theory. I've taken too many classes where theories were taught as fact.

Actually, I think that statement makes it perfectly clear that you haven't the slightest idea what the relationship between theory and fact even is.

Evolution IS TAUGHT AS THEORY... ALL science is taught as theory.
ALL theory is subject to question, review, correction or falsification.
I promise you that scientific method was covered in your science classes.
And it was explained to you that EVERY idea they presented was subject to PROOF.

in over 100 years of strenuous effort, NO ONE HAS FALISFIED EVOLUTION.
Period. NOT one single iota of contradictory evidence has been presented.

To give you an idea of how remarkable that is... we have more proof refuting Newton than we do Darwin.
Hell, the standard aerodynamic theory of FLIGHT has been widely refuted... and yet planes still fly...

But Evolution? There is no competing theory. There is no evidence that does not agree... it is the single most successful theory in human history...


As to fact versus theory... one more time THEORY is SUPERIOR to fact.

A fact is nothing... a good theory explains an entire BODY of facts and successfully predicts undiscovered facts.

Fact does not make your cell phone work, THEORY DOES.

SO PLEASE... all religious delusionals... please stop whipping out your whine about how its not a 'fact' its "Only a theory"---as if that argument had the SLIGHTEST meaning in the realm of science.

It doesn't. When people say things like that, scientists LAUGH at them.

Seriously... it is exactly like spouting off that a Ferrari is not a Carburetor... it ONLY a Car.


If you had your way, everybody would have to believe as you do. However, this would result in great boredom, and your life would have no meaning because you'd have nobody with whom to argue.

Good point.... except that I do not derive meaning in my life from arguing, but from understanding.
And I am Not asking anyone to "believe" as I do... because "belief" is a poor substitute for thinking.

I really am sick to death of what anyone 'believes'... as if their belief somehow validates the ideas they hold...

Fuck your and everyone else's 'beliefs'... just what the fuck can you DEMONSTRATE?

All ideas are NOT equal... some are right and some are wrong...
And what I admire is the intellectual honesty demanded by science, that when evidence proves you wrong, you accept it and abandon that idea.


So, give me a cogent argument... or give me evidence in refutation.

You can imagine a sky daddy all you want... pray to him all you want...
But if you want to claim that your sky daddy ANSWERS prayers... THAT is something that CAN be tested, has been tested and has been proven to NOT be true.

If you want to try and pass laws based upon YOUR opinion of what your imaginary Sky Daddy gets upset about... then you had better be prepared to pony up some pretty strong argument or evidence proving Sky Daddy is more than a widely held superstition....

Our technological capabilites are far too advanced for us to allow delusional supertitions to determine our decision making.
 

NCbear

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I remember once reading, when I was a boy, a chronology of "future history" in a science-fiction novel by Robert Heinlein in which it is dryly recorded that a certain state legislature (unfortunately, I don't remember which state it was) at a certain date (and I don't remember what date either; it may be in the past by now) passes a law making pi equal to 3. I've long regretted that I can't remember the details, as it was a wonderful little bit of satire on American hickdom. These people start with a fantastically obtuse and ignorant view of Biblical interpretation, and then, when they find that it leads to conclusions that fly in the face of well-established scientific knowledge, rather than rethink their assumptions they resort to subterfuge to make public education accommodate their dumb-ass ideas.

I think it was Time Enough for Love, but I'll check. Back later (after watching the inauguration).

NCbear (who doesn't agree with everything Heinlein wrote but who loves many aspects of Heinlein's future history framework)
 

sparky11point5

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Just a thought, as we discuss religion in public schools, and certain groups advocate faith-based 'theories'. There are perhaps a half a billion school kids in India and China studying math, physical sciences, engineering, and other topics. I am not saying philosophy and religion are unimportant, but these kids *really want* my kid's future, and we are wasting our time and energy.
 

MarkLondon

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<snip>

In America, Christo-Judean values are played out every day without any thought given to their origins. True.

Our society's mainstream views on nudity, murder, stealing, and sexuality did not come about out of thin air; they were the result of religious values imposed on our society a long time ago. <snip>


Nudity and sexuality, maybe. But not murder and stealing. Those views are are innate to the human mind. Any society or group that freely practiced murder and theft with no moral judgement could not survive long enough to propagate those views. Rogue individuals and psychotics can and do exist, but not societies for any length of time.

I am an atheist, but I have no problem with the six of the ten commandments that relate to moral behaviour, or the one about having a day of rest. And I think you'd be hard pressed to find any society or group of any religion or none that did have a problem with any of those seven commandments.
 

JustAsking

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I think it was Time Enough for Love, but I'll check. Back later (after watching the inauguration).

NCbear (who doesn't agree with everything Heinlein wrote but who loves many aspects of Heinlein's future history framework)

Yes, it was the Louisiana Legislature that almost passed bill #246 in 1897, that attempted to fix pi at some non-irrational value such as 3.2. There were a number of values proposed by the bill leaving it up to the legislature to choose. The idea was to rationalize the number to a rounded one that is easier to understand.

If failed after it was sent to the Committee on Swamp Lands who felt it should be turned over to the Committee on Education.

As for those who are concerned with science that is taught as facts, I need to point out that many things we consider facts are only known through the same way we know things through scientific theories. For example, why do you believe the United States was engaged in a Civil War in the mid 1800s? Were you there to see it yourself? Do you know people who were witness to the event? The answer is no.

The notion that we fought a Civil War in the USA is not a fact, it is a theory. Much like scientific theories, historical theories are considered 'true' because they are the best explanation for the evidence at hand. And they predict the occurance of future 'facts'. In this case, the evidence for the Civil War is contained in thousands of documents, both governmental, commercial, and personal correspondance. One could make a case that any given document about the Civil War could be a forgery, but to conclude that the Civil War explanation for all the documents and other evidence ithat we have is not the best explanation for their existence would be considered by most people to be perverse.

After reviewing the evidence, the acknowledgement that we fought a Civil War in the mid 1800s is not a matter of 'belief' or faith. It is simply an acknowledgement that the theory of the Civil War is the best explanation given the facts at hand. The Civil War theory is open to challenge by anyone who wants to develop a cogent case against and offer evidence against it. So far if anyone has developed a competing theory it has not held up under professional historical scrutiny.

One doesn't tend to call people who acknowledge that explanation as being the best one, 'Civil Warists' as if they are some kind of dogmatic group supporting a belief. We don't do that because the evidence supports the theory so well that we consider it a historical fact. Furthermore, historians who accept the Civil War explanation do so not because they are dogmatic people defending their professional status quo. We don't claim that the community of professional historians are all involved in a conspiracy to suppress the truth. We don't cry foul that the Civil War is taught as 'fact' in public school.

As it turns out, there is more evidence for the Modern Theory of Evolution than the theory that we fought a Civil War in the mid 1800s in the USA. In both cases the evidence is so overwhelming that we acknowledge the fact that so far (after 150 years of rigorous investigation) no competing theories have enough merit to consider teaching in public school.

You can substitute all kinds of theories for my Civil War example. For example, the theory that the Earth is not flat, but roughly spherica, or the theory of Universal Gravitation, Or that bacteria and viruses are responsible for disease, etc.

So, we consider it a 'fact' that objects are attracted to the earth because we observe it happening. We also consider 'descent with modification' an evolutionary fact, because we observe it anytime a new organism is born. That any given organism is a desdendent of another organism is a scientific fact. That the offspring of an organism are genetic variations of the parent organism is also considered a scientific fact, the same way we consider the earth's gravity a fact. Because we observe it all the time and we have no counter examples.
 

Calboner

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Yes, it was the Louisiana Legislature that almost passed bill #246 in 1897, that attempted to fix pi at some non-irrational value such as 3.2. There were a number of values proposed by the bill leaving it up to the legislature to choose. The idea was to rationalize the number to a rounded one that is easier to understand.

If failed after it was sent to the Committee on Swamp Lands who felt it should be turned over to the Committee on Education.
Are you quite sure of this? More to the point, can you provide references? I ask because Snopes has a page on a canard to the effect that the Alabama state legislature tried, in recent times, to legislate that pi is equal to three (its "Biblical value"), which originated in a piece of satirical writing.
 

JustAsking

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Are you quite sure of this? More to the point, can you provide references? I ask because Snopes has a page on a canard to the effect that the Alabama state legislature tried, in recent times, to legislate that pi is equal to three (its "Biblical value"), which originated in a piece of satirical writing.

No, I was wrong. There was such a bill, but it was Indiana not Louisiana.

ENGROSSED HOUSE BILL
No. 246

A Bill for an act introducing a new mathematical truth and offered


as a contribution to education to be used only by the State of Indiana free of cost by paying any royalties whatever on the same, provided it is accepted and adopted by the official action of the Legislature of 1897.
Section -1- Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Indiana: It has been found that a circular area is to the square on a line equal to the quadrant of the circumference, as the area of an equilateral rectangle is to the square on one side. The diameter employed as the linear unit according to the present rule in computing the circle's area is entirely wrong, as it represents the circle's area one and one-fifth times the area of a square whose perimeter is equal to the circumference of the circle. This is because onefifth of the diameter fails to be represented four times in the circle's circumference. For example: if we multiply the perimeter of a square by one-fourth of any line one-fifth greater than one side, we can in like manner make the square's area to appear one-fifth greater than the fact, as is done by taking the diameter for the linear unit instead of the quadrant of the circle's circumference.

Section -2- It is impossible to compute the area of a circle on the diameter as the linear unit without trespassing upon the area outside of the circle to the extent of including one-fifth more area than is contained within the circle's circumference, because the square on the diameter produces the side of a square which equals nine when the arc of ninety degrees equals eight. By taking the quadrant of the circle's circumference for the linear unit, we fulfill the requirements of both quadrature and rectification of the circle's circumference. Furthermore, it has revealed the ratio of the chord and arc of ninety degrees, which is as seven to eight, and also the ratio of the diagonal and one side of a square which is as ten to seven, disclosing the fourth important fact, that the ratio of the diameter and circumference is as five-fourths to four; and because of these facts and the further fact that the rule in present use fails to work both ways mathematically, it should be discarded as wholly wanting and misleading in its practical applications.

Section -3- In further proof of the value of the author's proposed contribution to education and offered as a gift to the State of Indiana, is the fact of his solutions of the trisection of the angle, duplication of the cube and quadrature of the circle having been already accepted as contributions to science by the American Mathematical Monthly, the leading exponent of mathematical thought in this country. And be it remembered that these noted problems had been long since given up by scientific bodies as insolvable mysteries and above man's ability to comprehend.

ENGROSSED HOUSE BILL No. 246
Read first time Jany. 18th, 1897
Referred to Committee on
Canals - rep. and referred to Com.
on Education Jany. 19th, 1897
Reported back Feby. 2d, 1897
Read second time Feby. 5th, 1897
Ordered engrossed Feby. 5th, 1897
Read third time Feby. 5th, 1897
Passed February 5th, 1897
Ayes - 67 - Noes -0-

Introduced by Record
IN THE SENATE. Read first time and referred to
com. on Temperence, 2/11/97
Reported favorable 2/12/97
Read second time and indefinitely
postponed 2/12/97
 

BIGBULL29

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Nudity and sexuality, maybe. But not murder and stealing. Those views are are innate to the human mind. Any society or group that freely practiced murder and theft with no moral judgement could not survive long enough to propagate those views. Rogue individuals and psychotics can and do exist, but not societies for any length of time.

I am an atheist, but I have no problem with the six of the ten commandments that relate to moral behaviour, or the one about having a day of rest. And I think you'd be hard pressed to find any society or group of any religion or none that did have a problem with any of those seven commandments.

I never knew that primitive peoples thought that murdering and stealing were that wrong. Uncivilized societies don't really have much of a moral code that corresponds to the Ten Commandments. Murdering may not have been on their agenda everyday, but if the urge came, it came

By the way, if Creationism were taught, schools wouldn't have to specify who the creators or creators were or endorse any religion in doing so; simply say that some people believe that all living things were created by a higher power, contrasting it with the Big Bang theory.
 

JustAsking

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...By the way, if Creationism were taught, schools wouldn't have to specify who the creators or creators were or endorse any religion in doing so; simply say that some people believe that all living things were created by a higher power, contrasting it with the Big Bang theory.

bull,
I think you are onto something there. You are a crafty character. But what is it that you would teach? The Christian creation story minus the Christian God, or the Hindu creation story, minus its God, or the Navaho story? I think you see my point. And finally, why would you teach any of the creation myths at all in science class? Isn't that the exact opposite of science? It's kind of like telling kids that some 'unspecified highly talented life form' comes down the chimney on Christmas Eve and leaves them presents.

Actually, the idea of Intelligent Design was made up to accomplish what you are proposing with the same lack of intellectual honesty that you are also proposing. Although the mission statement of the organization that is proposing ID talks about putting the Christian God into the practice of all disciplines, their claim is that life on the planet shows signs of being designed by an some unspecified intelligent and purposeful agent, rather than having evolved through a natural process.

Their claim is that the identity of the intelligent agent cannot yet be determined and it could easily be an intelligent life form from somewhere else. By avoiding the claim that the agent is supernatural, they think they can introduce ID into the public school curriculum and avoid a Constitutional challenge.

But once again, I ask, why make something up that has no evidence to it and teach it as an alternative scientific theory? That makes as much sense as teaching medical students that babies are flown in by 'unspecified flying creatures' so as to avoid mentioning storks.

And finally, the con game didn't work anyway. The school board in Dover, PA tried to introduce ID into the science curriculum and ended up losing in Federal Court because the judge saw through the ruse. The school board ended up losing the case and owing a million dollars in court fees.

The reason why they lost is that the judge saw through the scam and easily recognized ID as simply warmed over Creationism with God taken out so as to avoid a Constitutional challenge. In his landmark 138 page decision, he called the attempt 'stunningly innane'. And this is a conservative, Bush appointed, Lutheran church going Christian judge who believes as I do that God created the universe.
 
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