tgamble

I'll take your word on that but I wouldn't count on it as being an argument. After all, what does "there are no transitional fossils", "evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics", "Embryology is a fraud because of Heakel" etc have to do with religion? Not to mention (inaccurate, but when has that stopped cretinists?) claims about the bombardier beetle. They are purely secular claims and the only connection to religion is the fact that only cretinist religious assholes think they're accurate claims.

It could be that they'll only attack evolution with secular arguments (not even a mention of design) and that is probably allowed. Try and stop it and you'll be giving cretinists a major propaganda campaign.

best thing to do is find references that show that what is claimed to have been refuted hasn't been refuted at all. Toss in a few examples of cretinist use of out of context quotes and frauds.

In short, provide evidence for evolution and evidence against cretinists being a reliable source of info.

tgamble

That might not work if she's just attacking evolution without mentioning an alternative. She might just mention that information is available on the web. "Check out Kent Hovind's excellent fact filled site..." <img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" /> <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

That's not pushing religious dogma really. As I said, the best thing to do IMO is just provide lots of factual information. For evolution and against cretinist credibility. Try and have the whole thing stopped and cretinists will be screaming conspiracy and how the evilutionists are afraid to have their dogma questioned. Stupid yes. But then, so is creationism.

Automaton

I'd prefer to debate the teacher in private myself. It would be easier to convince the simpleton of the error of her ways that way.

Kevin Dorner

As someone noted, a creationist can tell enough lies in a hour for an educated researcher to spend years debunking. The reason that "equal time" was struck down where it was tried in court is that: how are high school students supposed to do this in a debate setting?

It used to be thought that angels whirred the planets in their orbits around the earth. Newton proposed: gravity (and Copernicus heliocentricism.) Suppose I don't like gravity... angels are more emotionally appealing.

So let's have a debate in physics class, instead of learning anything. Subject: Cold Naturalistic Gravity vs. Emotionally Stimulating Angels As The Motive Force Of The Solar System. Not only will some promising future scientists determine that science must be half-baked to have a challenger as silly as flying people moving worlds around and decide to seek a different career, but... oh oh, by not exerting enough emotional appeal, the gravity side has lost the debate! Gravity has been decided by the loss to not exist! The school and all the students are floating into space! What a tragedy!

[ February 27, 2002: Message edited by: Kevin Dorner ]</p>

tgamble

You don't. give a few examples of transitional fossils, explain how molecular biology offers evidence for evolution (pointing out one or two lies from cretinists on the subject) and show a few photographs of embryos to show how they offer support. Pointing out that they have nothing to do with Heakel.

Then toss out some info on cretinist dishonesty, their frauds, misinformation and out of context quotes. Point out how they reject peer review and toss out a couple of quotes showing their real motivation.

"Bible-believing students of the biological sciences possess a guide for their interpretation of the available data, the Biblical record of Divine Creation contained in Genesis." --Robert Kofahl and Kelly Segraves (Kofahl and Segraves, 1975, p. 69)


"The Christian student of origins approaches the evidence from geology and paleontology with the Biblical record in mind, interpreting that evidence in accord with the facts divinely revealed in the Bible" --Robert Kofahl and Kelly Segraves (Kofahl and Segraves, 1975, p. 40)


"Creation science begins with wholly Biblical presuppositions and interprets data from all of reality, including science, within that framework." --Donald Chittick (Rohr, 1988, p. 156)


"If the Bible is the Word of God--and it is--and if Jesus Christ is the infallible and omniscient Creator--and He is--then it must be firmly believed that the world and all things in it were created in six natural days and that the long geological ages of evolutionary history never really took place at all." -- Henry Morris (Morris, Scientific Creationism, 1974, 251)


"It is precisely because Biblical revelation is absolutely authoritative and perspicuous that the scientific facts, rightly interpreted, will give the same testimony as that of Scripture." -- Henry Morris (Morris, Scientific Creationism, 1974, p. 15)


"It is more productive to take the Bible literally and then to interpret the actual facts of science within its revelatory framework."--Henry Morris (Morris, Troubled Waters of Evolution, 1974, p. 184)


"While as scientists creationists must study as objectively as possible the actual data of geology, as Bible-believing Christians, we must also insist that those be correlated within the framework of Biblical revelation." --Henry Morris (Morris, Creation Research Society Quarterly, December 1974, p. 173, cited in Plaintiff's Pre- Trial Brief, McLean v Arkansas, 1981)


"We are completely limited to what God has seen fit to tell us, and this information is His written Word. This is our textbook on the science of Creation." -- Henry Morris (Morris, 1966, p. 114)


"The instructed Christian knows that the evidences for full divine inspiration of Scripture are far weightier than the evidences for any fact of science. When confronted with the consistent Biblical testimony to a universal Flood, the believer must certainly accept is as unquestioningly true." -- John Whitcomb and Henry Morris (Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, p. 118)


"The final and conclusive evidence against evolution is the fact that the Bible denies it. The Bible is the Word of God, absolutely inerrant and verbally inspired." --Henry Morris (Morris, 1967, p. 55)


"We believe that the Bible, as the verbally inspired and completely inerrant Word of God, gives us the true framework of historical and scientific interpretation . . . We take this revealed framework of history as our basic dictum, and then try to see how all the pertinent data can be understood in this context." --John Whitcomb and Henry Morris (Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, p. xxvi)


"Even though we emphasize the scientific aspects of creationism-- especially in our debates and campus seminars--we also stress the fact that all true science supports Biblical creationism as well . . . We believe that God's inerrant word must always prevail over the historical speculations of what the Bible calls 'science falsely so called'." --Henry Morris (Morris, Back to Genesis, October 1995)


"The only Bible-believing conclusion is, of course, that Genesis 1- 11 is the actual historical truth, regardless of any scientific or chronological problems thereby entailed." --Henry Morris, (Morris 1972, p. 82)

Then refer them to talkorigins newsgroup or here for additional information and debate.

sure, cretinists can toss out tons of BS in a short time, but if the class is aware that these same pople insist that the bible is the TRUTH regardless of evidence or that people killed a T-rex by ripping it's arms off, maybe they'll be skeptical of the other claims spewed out.

Tim Thompson

"Evolution vs creation" is about as broad as topics get. It could cover young-earth or old-earth creationism, and a host of theistic evolutionism. On the more technical side, it includes just about all of physics, chemistry, biology, and etc. Without a narrower focus, any debate is likely to be very "fuzzy" at best, more a function of where the debators decide to take it, than anything else. That makes detailed preperation nigh onto impossible, since there's no way of knowing in advance, what arguments you will need to counter (or to introduce).

My advice is to stick as close to fundamentals as possible. It's easy to get lost in the details in debates like this, and overlook the fundamental issues. I would say that genetics is the fundamental issue in biolgical evolution. How does the creationist stop a genome from evolving? Gene duplication lengthens genomes, it does not shorten them. Likewise, horizontal gene transfer between species adds to the genome. Frame reading errors during duplication could go either way I guess, that I don't really know.

Peez: Evolution is not about the "big bang" or the origin of the universe, the solar system, or Earth. In fact, it is not even about the origin of life. It is about what happened (and happens) once you have life.

That's certainly true for biological evolution, but I think it's a bad idea to invoke this in any real debate. Creationists of the young-earth variety use the word evolution in the broadest sense, and as far as they are concerned, evolution is all of those things. If you try to follow this line of argument, they just laugh at how you are hiding from them. Let evolution be as much of that as they want it to be. It will only make life harder for them.

On a more general note, I think that teachers need to have the protected right to voice their opinions, and the reasons for them, in class. But they also have to justify what they assert as fact, and what they teach as fact or "science" has to be overseen by the school or district board. I don't know the teachers exact words, verbatim, but if they came out as chaos says they did ("it's all false!"), that's bad. Teachers don't have a right to express their opinions as fact instead of opinion, and to allow such strikes me as a dubious idea. I agree that going after the teacher is in principle a good idea, but whether or not it is practical is something only those on the local scene can answer.

RufusAtticus

I agree that this is a debate that doesn't belong in a science class. Why? Because as far as science is concerned, Evolution is currently to only viable explaination for the diversity of life on this planet. If your side goes first, you should speak first and say what college biology professors say all the time.

"Creation is a religious belief. This is a scientific classroom and we will only entertain scientific explainations. Even the Supreme Court has affirmed what scientists have been saying all along."

If your teacher is being serious, you should really contact the principal or the head of the science department. Many teachers have been repremanded or fired for being as irresponcible as she is. She should be teaching science and not pseudoscience.

-RvFvS

liquid

She says she is a practising catholic?

NO SHE IS NOT

The catholic church has accepted, by decree of the pope, that evolution is correct (although they believe that it is a god-created process and that he might be free to tinker, but they do not dispute common descent).

If she is a creationist, then she is going against the pope, the representative of god on earth, and hence the doctrines of her church, and therefore is standing on excommunication grounds.

I can even dig up the particular encyclical if you like.

Hit her with that...

Jack the Bodiless

If things get really heated, make a list of things you can accuse the teacher of lying about (like being a Catholic) and call her a liar in front of the whole class.

What can she do? Accuse you of undermining her authority? March you off to the Principal's office? I can see the headlines...

If this is just a stunt, it's a reckless one.

Jack the Bodiless

BTW, do you have a small tape recorder?

I strongly advise that you tape this debate.