It's a Sad Day For the Future Of American Children.

keith63What do you propose is an alternative to evolution?

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I'm not sure which part of the constitution says you can't teach anything religious in public schools.

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Constitutional law is usually put up for interpretation based on the original intent of the authors of the constitution. For instance, the first amendment only says that Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech. It doesn't say anything about state government. But it's fairly obvious that the intent was a blanket protection of free speech, so that's how the law is interpreted. Even though there's nothing in the constitution that says the mayor of Chicago can't pass a law forbidding the Tribune from running a negative opinion piece about him, he's still not allowed to do so.With religious teaching in schools, we have to go to the other writings of the constitutional authors at the time. The founding fathers make it abundantly clear in their various writings that their intent was a blanket separation of church and state. Therefore, the courts have interpreted the portions of the first amendment which relate to religion to mean just that.Mind you, a separation of church and state doesn't just protect the state from the church; it works the other way around, too. So not only can creation not be taught in public schools, but the government also can't insist that Christian churches allow gay priests. That's why I'm amazed when religious people want to do away with the church/state barrier, and open up their religion to all sorts of government regulations.

If that alternative is Creation by the Christian God, that's exactly what they're doing, don't you think?

Dan CarrolLike taxes?

I think I know where you're going with this one... 16th amendment?If so, what's your point? We interpreted the law according to how it originally stood, didn't agree, and so we had to change it.Same deal here. If we suddenly decided that we didn't want separation of church and state, we would be free to amend the constitution. But if we're going to keep the law on the books as it stands now, the original intent is clear.

I thought what he meant was that an establishment of religion would open churches to taxation, which most people don't want.

Ohhh.Well then, yeah. I agree. That's another reason religious folks should want separation of church and state.

I don't propose and alternative to evolution. I simply think that any errors in the theory should be pointed out and explored. I am a biology teacher and in the biology textbook we use "Miller/Levine by Prentice Hall" It says on page 6 "science is an ongoing process, not the discovery of an unchanging, absolute truth. Scientists findings are always subject to revision as new evidence is developed." It further says that a desired quality of a scientist is to be skeptical and "A skeptical person continues to ask questions and looks for alternative explanations."Now when it comes to evolution the scientific community doesn't seem to follow it's own advise. In the recent debate about textbooks in Texas The Discovery Institute pointed out several outdated or outright incorrect information in 11 textbooks that were up for adoption by the State Board of Education. But instead of being skeptical and changing in light of this evidence. Many acknowledged to incorrect data but still wanted the Board to adapt the books without correction. Others attacked the Discovery Institute and said it wanted to "water down" education. Now correct me if I am wrong but does removing, or correcting, incorrect evidence sound like watering down the curriculum? I think to leave out the most up to date evidence is watering down the curriculum.I think presenting both sides of view will teach students to use their brains and critically (Oh my) think about the evidence. If Intelligent design is as bad as evolutionists make it out to be then what are they afraid of anyway? Developing critical thinking students!!What really makes me mad about the whole thing is the way evolutionists make up their own definition about science so that it automatically excludes any intelligent design. As soon as you say the word they say "that's religion and doesn't have a place in science." Then they say "ID people don't propose an alternative to evolution." They have written a definition which doesn't allow an alternative and then they threaten and refuse to publish anything that goes against the theory of evolution. Now maybe I don't understand this but aren’t statistics, fossil records, geology, carbon 14 dating, all scientific? I have found research using all of these which points to a deliberate intelligence.Let me ask this. How can scientists look to the stars and say that if they hear a nonrandom code say there is proof of an intelligence, and then ignore the fact that in every living cell of every living thing there is a language, written with four letters, spelling 20 or more words, and more complex than our most intricate computer program? Perhaps the writer of Romans was talking about our time when he said "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen by being understood by the things that are made,... so that they are without excuse."{Inserted blank lines between paragraphs - AM}[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 11-17-2003]

This seems to me why there may need to be a legal recognition of the DIFFERENCE between Bibilical Creationism and Scientific Creationism. First there must be a show of how all science (regardless of what in the power of any state it has a right to prohibit) is benefited and not merely impacted. Wise's use of Remine's terms provides the BIBILICAL creationist the motivation but unless this set theory logic is used to show how strictly evolutionary vicariance vs dispersal hypothesis testing if less error prone by use of a version of Scientific Creationism getting LEGAL REGUALTION of an INTEREPRETATION of the constitution IS likely difficult to doubtful. So I see Dan's point.The problem is that a politician is not expected to think he/she will find the SCIENCE of getting TO this point an issue and I take it that was what the Supreme Court judges thought no matter their words. But THAT is the problem we are at as is witnessed day in and out on this board. We have a hard time getting scienists to even see that the DIFFERNCE of BIBLICAL CREATIONISM from Scientific Creationism vs Creation Science not only benefits the understanding of nature but also does more than simply imply changes to the way science(evolution) teaching has been done.With a more organized secular response to the BIBLICAL end it is obvious that Creationists may need to use the SEPERATION merely to survivie but that would be wrong. I suspect my own reading that DOES involve our constitution however would be the case in this case. Just how the LAW will work as the science is developed I dont know but it would be something other than an issue about taxes.Since however "
project steve" and attempts to DO SCIENCE anti-creationism THIS however is likely what will come to the political action before simply providing the funds to do the kinds of things I have been suggsting for years materializes as it takes advances in both creation and evolution populations to bring in the change as the change already is without tokenizing the reissue.

No I don't. I think they are pointing out that there are flaws in the evolutionary theory that should be explored. The schools are not congress. And they are not establishing a national religion which is what the founding fathers were trying to avoid. You would really have to stretch to say discussing other theories is the same as requiring everyone in the country to join your local baptist church under penalty of law.

Sure. It is science, after all. But I assume that the flaws in relativity don't lead you to believe that gravity works by God pushing down on everything. Why should the flaws in the ToE lead us to teach that the Christian God did it? The schools are public entities that receive mandates from the government. As such any establishment of religion in schools is the government establishing religion.If you teach kids that the Christian God did it, that's establishing a religion based on Christian mythology. No, they just bring the church to your kids. It's the same thing. Anyway, "god did it" isn't a theory. Unless you can tell me what predictive value it has?

The problem is that the textbook authors DO change their books when genuine problems are brought up. Miller and Levine stopped using an illustration derived from Haeckel's diagrams when this is brought to their attention. What the Discovery Institute is prepared to settle for- for now - is a weakening of the presentation of genuine evidence for evolution.And ID is not ruled out a priori - they just don't have much of a case. So we see a lot of bluster and complaints about "unfairness" and "presecution" to cover up that fact. Dembski's attitude is that if we can't reconstruct the course of evolution in every detail then we should assume design instead - regardless of the fact that evolution is a better explanation of the evidence we do have.

But in an advanced course the difficulties are taught are they not? The levels where the details remaind to be thrashed out are a bit much for a high school student to get into.My kids school is teaching some evolutionary theory at both the grad 9 and 11 level. They are learning something about older ideas (lamarke for example) and there is even a mention of the idea of a "creator".They don't spend nearly enough time on it to get into the subtleties and details. If they don't spend that time then they can't start to discuss any interesting parts.Again, what would someone suggest be taught? The contents of something like AIG? A joke! If you disagree pick pieces and be prepared to defend them.If a general discussion of "other theories" is desired please list those theories and why each should be included. How many are there? I think there are probably some 10's of "faith based" (evidence-less) "theories" and one evidence based one. Could you list these in order of priority giving the amount of classroom time that should alloted, the major points that each should have made about it and *why* this one and those points should be made.

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The schools are not congress.

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You might wanna go back and read my post. There are one or two subtle points you might have missed.

Actually the law on the books right now allows "an open and broad discussion on origin in the classroom as long as it doesn't exclud evolution."