Wednesday, December 21, 2005

CNN.com - Judges ask tough questions in evolution sticker case - Dec 16, 2005

: "Jeffrey Bramlett, arguing for the American Civil Liberties Union and parents, cited the book's author, Kenneth Miller, who testified it would be misleading to say evolution is not a fact"
And there you go... Evolutionists don't want ID or Creationism taught "because it's not a fact" - but when someone says evolution is just a theory, they respond with "no - its a fact". Well it isn't. If both sides would stop taking such a hard stand and teach both sides... and let the kids decide religous questions for themselves, things would be much better. IMO.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, they don't want it taught as science, because it is not a scientific theory.

ID is a theory. You can have a 'theory' about anything. As an IT consultant, I have a theory that gremlins cause uncounted problems for my servers. I have no evidence for these gremlins, but that doesn;t mean I can't have a theory. I cannot however, call my theory a scientific theory.

A theory is conjucture without supporting evidence.

A scientific theory is conjecture supported by evidence.

I have yet to see ANY evidence that supports ID. They point to things that evolution cannot explain and then call this lack of explanation evidence for their theory. Huh?

If you want to teach ID in religious studies, philosophy, etc go ahead, more power to you and I have no issue with it. It however, is NOT science, and has no business being applied to scientific theories.

James said...

Actually, they don't want it taught as science, because it is not a scientific theory.

Good point.

A theory is conjucture without supporting evidence.

A scientific theory is conjecture supported by evidence.


Well of course that is open for debate. I know plenty of people that would say there is evidence of God. But I understand your point.

I have yet to see ANY evidence that supports ID. They point to things that evolution cannot explain and then call this lack of explanation evidence for their theory. Huh?

Well yeah. I agree. Lack of evidence for one thing is not proof of another.

If you want to teach ID in religious studies, philosophy, etc go ahead, more power to you and I have no issue with it. It however, is NOT science, and has no business being applied to scientific theories.

And actually I'm OK with that. I've had to think about this a lot lately... and am probably still forming my thoughts on where I stand on all of this. I guess my biggest point is NOT that I think ID or even Creationism should be taught in a science class. My biggest issue - if this makes sense, is that the study of the theory of evolution (as it relates to how we were created), the theory of big bang, etc. - should be stated as just that. Theories. And it should be explained that while they are the current leading "scientific" theories, there are other theories out there. I don't even care that those theories are discussed. As you say, leave those for other classes. I just don't like the slanted viewpoint of "while this is only a theory - it is the only thing that makes intellectual sense, and everything else is just a myth, backwards, and just plain stupid." And that is how it comes across some times.