Doubting Didymus

I think I understand what has happened here.

Zzang showed up, percieving a contradiction in the two arguments: that we can extrapolate microevolution but not magnetism. This is an issue I have also considered.

Percieving him as a YEC, just because we are so used to them, he is mischaracterised.

This gives him the impression that we are overzealous in our defense of evoluton.

Tadaa! This whole thing is a misunderstanding.

Arrowman

Um, the "members and posts" of this board are concerned, among other things, with the fact that creationists are demanding creationism be taught in science classes. And they have made this clear. So why is it not necessary to respond to this?

I can't believe you posted this with a straight face. So - if we teach elementary and high school students that, for example, the laws of thermodynamics prohibit local increases in complexity, and that those laws have some relevance to a loosely defined concept of "information", this will have no effect on universities and colleges? This is not an overturning of science?

You fail to realise just how integrated evolutionary theory (and an old earth) is with all other branches of science. You can't teach with any seriousness that (a) the earth is young and (b) evolution didn't happen, without discarding and denying enormous slabs of science from fields ranging from archaeology to zoology.

Oh - and on the Answers in Genesis web site, Ken Ham refers to our universities as the "wide open gates to hell" because of their secular focus.

The reason creationists focus on schools rather than colleges, is because schools are run by local bodies which are largely uneducated in science - they are soft targets.

Camaban

When you see comments like that, you just have to ask yourself whether people like Ham WANT the next generation of children to grow up to be gas-pumpers because they haven't got the education to be any better.

Sacrificing their futures on the altar of their religious beliefs.

TerryTryon

Why am I so eager to defend evolution against creationism?

It is probably because I have never forgiven my parents and sunday school teachers for lying to me. They told me that it was a settled question and that I shouldn't worry my little mind about such things, because prophets and scholars far smarter than I would ever be had determined through revelation and research that the biblical story was true.

So I wasted half my life following the commands of pompous asses. The evidence supports evolution, so either my parents and teachers were lying about the strength of their position because they had not even looked at the authorities they cited or they had consulted them and told me bald-faced lies about the shape of the world.

When certain people take advantage of the naivite of youth to fill young minds with blatant nonsense, I become very angry. The willful ignorance of the parents is passed on to the children with the very real threat of punishment and ostracism if they don't comply submissively.

It is folly to allow oneself to wallow in self-deception and accept doctrine by fiat, but it is a crime to deceive and threaten children into accepting that folly.

It is not evolution I am defending so much as it is the idea that evidence trumps doctrine, and that the authority of empiricism is more persuasive than authority based on tradition and threats.

galiel

Zzang, ever hear of the Wedge Strategy?

Designed by Creationist Philip Johnson, and organized by the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, the goal of the Wedge Strategy is "nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies."

Here is the document detailing the Strategy.
<a href="http://www.freethought-web.org/ctrl/archive/wedge_document.html" target="_blank">http://www.freethought-web.org/ctrl/archive/wedge_document.html</a>

Think it's a fantasy? They even have a weekly "Wedge Update page on the Discovery Institute site:

<a href="http://www.arn.org/wedge.htm" target="_blank">http://www.arn.org/wedge.htm</a>

Doubting Didymus

Crimony!

Doubting Didymus

Crimony!

Albion

Hasn't Dembski officially ditched Phase I of the Wedge Project in favour of going straight for public opinion? I seem to remember a long and rather aggressive thread about it at teh ARN site.

Albion

Actually, they probably do. I've seen fundamentalists arguing that since there seems to be a correlation between atheism and a higher level of education, the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake should be strongly discouraged because it interferes with people's relationship with Jesus. Makes you wonder why God bothered to give us brains.

Doubting Didymus

How strange!

This must be a problem with knowledge, not Jesus.
I don't see knowledge dying on the cross for me.

Fuck you, knowledge.