1 - Hi Rob,
I think your questions are perfectly fair.
First, I never meant to suggest that I was taught in school that the notion of a First Cause was true. As I say, it was implicit. I was taught that science did not, and likely never would, have any mechanism by which to validate or invalidate the existence of a diety. Scientists had no issue with God, pro or con, in my childhood classrooms; they just had no scientific way to engage the issue. I want to bring back a Supreme Being into classrooms only to this degree.
So, generally I agree with you. I don't want teachers to tackle the subject of who or what a Supreme Being may or may not be. At the same time, I don't want the subject of a Supreme Being to be taboo in schools either. If the subject of a Creator comes up during a discussion of evolution - as it quite naturally might - I feel a reasonable educator ought to tackle it in just the way that we are now.
How's that for you and yours?
Best,
Jim

2 - Chris (36) - If you read the entire article, he has simply become a deist - in fact he states:

"I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins," he said. "It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose."

Rock

3 - Chris: I see your point about cherrypicking the Bible. It's a good point theologically, and I wrestle with it as an article of faith in my own life. However, it is one thing to hold this view as a personal conviction and quite another to use this conviction as the basis for teaching young people in a public school science class. We are on the same side when it comes to the teaching of evolution as absolute fact in public schools. I want it taught as theory, a strong theory with certain aspects broadly supported by evidence, but theory nonetheless. However, I can't support the teaching of faith - even a faith I share - as a scientific theory.

4 - Chris (18) - Like you said, the most important thing is to be a parent to your kid. Know what they are reading, who they are hanging out with, etc. Be a big part of their life. That is what this is all about.

You said "It takes more than a village (a.k.a, socialist government that Hillary would like!) to raise a child. It takes a family!"

Amen, brother. Amen.

Rock

5 - Mika - are you referring to the Sumerian text Ud-ri-a - the story of Inanna, the tree and garden, the uncharmable snake, etc? Yeah, like most tales and holidays in Christianity, the story of the Garden of Eden and Genesis in general was lifted from a more ancient group of people.

Actually, that would make a good discussion sometime - explore all of the Judeo-Christian symbolism, parables, stories, and holidays that can be directly related to earlier peoples, tribes, religions, etc. Religious history fascinates me, and that would be a great discussion simply for the learning and exchanging of ideas. Anyone else up for it?

Rock

6 - OK, wow...lots of posts!

@56 Stan - I thought people here were in agreement that when we're talking about Darwinistic evolution that we're referring to macro-evolution and when we're talking about small changes or adaptations we're talking about micro-evolution. There is a difference between the two.

@57 Don - "The Bearded Dude" states in his revealed word that he created man. I think you really may be onto something with virtual education, though. Our system, in USA anyway, is really in shambles. The large district in Charlotte, NC was basically called an educational cesspool (in as many words) by a judge in NC. I've been hearing advertisements for a virtual high school here in the past several weeks. I think it will likely take off like homeschooling has.

@58 Stan - Humans are superior as simple observation can tell. We don't just live in our habitats and adjust. We make our habitats our own and are highly advanced. I haven't seen any other anthropoids create an Internet and computers! =) Are we probably taking it too far? I would say so sometimes. But that's humanity...

@60 Rich - I believe I read that it was 10 to the 340,000,000 that the formation of the smallest possible living organism could just happen randomly. (Kofal and Segraves, The Creation Explanation; Harold Morowitz, Energy Flow in Biology, and Moorehead and Kaplan, Mathematical Challenges to the New-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution)

Re: Difference in physical traits - I was talking about the differences in just humans. Also, I you missed my point that of all the different "evolved" species that the previous ancestors seem to all be extinct currently.

7 - Rob: I have fewer issues with what you write than you might imagine.
For example, I have no problem at all with the possibility that the First Cause simply set the universe in motion, that He/She created the rules and boundaries and allowed the Creation to unfold as it would. That certainly seems possible to me and shakes my faith not a whit.
Conversely, I have no issue with literalist beliefs - a Supreme Being could after all easily have done the whole job in 6 solar days (or would God use sidereal days? Humm...). However, I've never understood the hang up with insisting that it had to have happened that way. For example, what does Time mean to God? Why is it so problematic to accept the possibility that "6 days" was a way for the Creator to explain geological time to people who lacked a frame of reference for it?
Actually, the only issue I have with literalists is their lack of tolerance for people such as me. Not surprisingly, I have the same issue with many atheists, the ones who are religious about the lack of a diety.
This is why I oppose an absolute ban on references to a Supreme Being in public schools. Such a ban feels like the imposition of a religion - The Religion of You're On Your Own Now Get Over It - on me and mine. What's the harm in acknowledging that many people in the world believe in a First Actor, that science has no issue with the concept but cannot prove or disprove it, that it is quite rational to believe in such a First Actor but, again, that the belief can never be raised above the level of faith using the scientific method?
As you might guess, I'm one of those "other" Christians you mention above. My sister, who proudly wears the label "conservative Christian," loves me quite a bit but doesn't consider me a Christian at all.
Sigh. One trusts that God does . . .

8 - Can't we just call it "Stupid Design" and get serious?!?

*snicker*

I should probably be ducking right now, shouldn't I?

9 - First of all, I was going to come here to post that I didn't mean to take us off track from ID yesterday, but it seems we're back on track.

@22 - Rich, so you want some proof? Hopefully these citations will help you see where "we" are coming from:

Before I post a few quotes from High School Textbooks, I would like to point out that I acknowledge, along with many others, that there is a difference between what we will call evolution and what we will call darwinism. The major difference, to put it simply, being that microevolution teaches that small changes occur over time in a species. This is not something that I'm debating. You appear to approach this debate thinking that's the case. I should have stated this ahead of time. However, the quotes I will have below demonstrate that Darwinism is being taught in major textbooks. I will only cite a few of the most egregious examples. The quotes are from the second URL at the end of this post.

Biological Science an Ecological Approach, BSCS Green Version, Kendall/Hunt, 1992.
"Our own group, the hominids, is a subgroup of primates. Ancestors of both humans and apes radiated from early hominidlike primates, evolving into hominids and apes." (p. 594)

Biology (2nd ed), Essenfeld, Gontang, Moore, Addison Wesley, 1996.
"The first animals with backbones to evolve were fish. From these early fish evolved all other vertebrates, including amphibians, reptiles, and even human beings." (p. 552)

Biology, Miller & Levine, Prentice Hall, 1995.
"We know, for example, that humans evolved from common ancestors we share with other living primates such as chimpanzees and apes." (p. 757)

Biology an Everyday Experience, Kasskel, Hummer, Daniel, Glencoe (MacMillan/McGraw-Hill), 1995.
"Primates evolved about 45 million years ago into two main groups. One of these groups was the ancestor of apes and humans. Humans evolved about three million years ago." (p. 624)


Biology the Dynamics of Life, Biggs, Kapicka, Lundgren, Glencoe (MacMillan/McGraw-Hill), 1995.
"But only since 1871 and the publication of Charles Darwin's book, The Descent of Man, have scientists realized the true evolutionary link between monkeys, apes, and humans." (p. 454)

http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/arn/anderson/an_statmnts.htm
http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/arn/anderson/an_statbhs.htm

10 - Chris - what if the description of the creation of man in Genesis was a metaphor to explain evolution in such a way that a man 2000 years ago could understand it?

I draw your attention to Genesis 1:4-7 (NIV):

"4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created. When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens-
5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth, and there was no man to work the ground,
6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground-
7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being."

Why cannot this be a metaphor to explain the evolutionary process - a process started and guided by god?

To this rational mind, it is much more fascinating (and impressive) to say that God created the creatures of the Earth using evolution rather than "snapping his fingers" (or breathing life into a clay figure) and *poof!* there's Adam.

Is it human hubris that prevents many from accepting that man evolved from a common ancestor with primates? Some kind of superiority complex that requires humans to not be in the same league as animals?

Incidentally, I wanted to make it clear that I come from a Southern Baptist upbringing. I went to a Christian school for almost 3 years. I have read the bible cover to cover three times, and continue to pick it up on occasion (although more now for reference). I attended Baptist church regularly, including Wed night prayer service and Thursday visitation. I even worked the "Dial a Prayer" lines for my church, where I witnessed to and prayed with hundreds (thousands?) of people.

I am explaining this because I want everyone to know I don't come from a place of ignorance. I am well versed in scripture and most of the precepts of conservative Christianity. And no, no trauma or tragedy caused me to leave the faith; I simply reached a time where I began to question why I believed what I believed. And I went on a quest - a quest to discover my beliefs, my faith - answers that made sense to me, comforted me, and most importantly made me feel at peace with myself.

Along the way I have become fascinated with religions and religious history, and being a geek by nature I have studied religious history quite a bit over the years (mainly concentrated on Judeo-Christian history, and how it matches up with World history). I finally became introduced to Unitarian Universalism, and found a place where I can be myself, not be a hypocrite, and can openly explore my beliefs and philosophies without fear or persecution. I also have a place where I can raise my kids to in the way I see fit, which includes teaching them about the major religions of the world and to understand and respect those religions. I am even an RE teacher (Religious Education, commonly referred to as "Sunday School") in my congregation, and have been for the last 7 years.

So, as you can see this isn't a flippant decision I have made concerning my religious beliefs (or lack thereof). I am comfortable with my view of the world, religion, and philosophy, and enjoy continuing down the path of knowledge in those areas, including discussions like this with people of differing opinions and faiths.

Sorry for the long diversion - I wanted to provide a little background to give a bit more perspective on where I am coming from.

Rock

11 - The problem we, the citizens of the world, are struggling with today is literalism, on all sides of the political, religious and scientific spectrum.
Before I write more, I want to highlight that what follows are only my opinions, my feelings. I do not offer these thoughts as "true," or "correct" or "valid."
I'd like to point out that each person who has posted thus far has offered only the same. The scientific method, for example, is a reasonable way to go about explaining the world around us. But it does not necessarily reveal "truth." Can we all agree on this?
The reason "those on the right" are offering "Intelligent Design," in my opinion, is because "those on the left" offer evolution and other scientific theories as "proof" that there are no deities and that science and the scientific method offer the only valid way to view the observed world around us.
When I was in school in the 60s and 70s, there was no need for Intelligent Design. Evolution and the scientific method were taught as a logical, sensible way to view the observed world. However, it was also taught that perhaps a logical, sensible way to view the observed world wasn't necessarily the "truth." Perhaps - it was taught in my elementary, junior high and high school - there were unseen "truths." Perhaps there were unknown, unobserved "first causes." Perhaps we were unaware of the forest around us because of all the damned trees.
It is this uncertainty that no longer is taught in a number of schools, I suggest to you. It is this uncertainty that "Intelligent Design" wants to reintroduce to young people today.
In my son's high school, the uncertainty is still offered as a reasonable way of viewing the world. He is not taught that the notion "God created the world and that's the way it is, boy" is equivalent to Evolution. Rather, he is taught that those who believe in creation by a Higher Power may not be wrong because, in the end, a good scientist has to allow for the possibility that the scientific method is itself a flawed way of explaining the world.
I enjoy this give and take tremendously. I hope all of you do, too.

12 - There is no denying that Gould (and Dennett) are as religious in their atheism as any six-day creationist is in his literalism, but it is clear in all of their writing that they discount even the possibility of an external actor. None of the texts you cited above make any such distinction -- they stick to mechanism alone.

13 - Rock, I also don't agree with what is taught nowadays at schools to be the true ID. We all know that Christianity is just an faint anchestor of the original ID theory, created 450000 years ago, and 150000 years ago before the first human walked on earth. Keyword: Sumerians, literal translation. If that can be prooven someday as a hoax, evolution is the only explanation for everything.

14 - By the way, this was in my Religion blogroll for today:

http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=208

Dr. Mohler is the President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

15 - There's nothing specific about the means of the creation of man qua man (in Genesis 1). The sticking point is "in our own image", which I cannot interpret as a physical likeness as much as something more like "reason". And I can see that coming considerably later in the process than the formation of the pysical body. It was Adam that was different, and the difference was inspiration (Genesis 2). It is hard to read the creation aspect of Genesis 2 as anything more than allegory, since it runs contrary to G1 in a number of places (particularly in the order of creation, where Adam seems to come before the other animals) until you examine the Hebrew -- where the tense of the verb indicating the formation of man and animal from the dust of the earth reads more like "having been formed". Literalism is especially dangerous when the language being taken literally is not the original (that's not directed at you so much as at the large number of folks who cannot even recognise that the meanings of English words have changed drastically, sometimes even inverted, since 1608).

But you're right, we're not likely to come to an overall agreement here.

16 - I often engage in these wonderful debates and could argue either side in a pinch. But, I have come to a point in life where I now say, does it really matter?

Neither side knows for absolute sure where we came from or where we are headed. Theory and scientific methods have their merits, but often stretch and bend all that is logic.

As far as what is taught in school, let's stick to fundamentals. Kids can't read, write or add let alone understand the complexities of our existence. Grown adults can't grasp it and will forever debate the topic. Why not focus education on the basics, get that right, then worry about exposing young minds to our own beliefs?

17 - @34 - Were you referring to the text I cited?

@35 - Good article Gregg, thanks.

Also, my good friend just IMed me this article:

http://www.livescience.com/othernews/atheist_philosopher_041210.html

"Atheist Philosopher, 81, Now Believes in God
By Richard N. Ostling
Associated Press

posted: 10 December 2004
09:31 am ET

NEW YORK (AP) _ A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God -- more or less -- based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.

At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England."

18 - Rich - Well said. Your explanation is excellent, and I appreciate you taking the time to post it here.

You rock

Rock

19 - @53 "or, rather, is the ground" Wonderful turn of phrase, Stan!

@54 The pretty cool big number comes from NASA. (Assuming I counted my zeros correctly -- should be 10 to 21st.) I was looking for a number of molecules, but all I could find were the estimated masses of the atmosphere and hydrosphere.

Now, about those Rolexes. Guess what?! There is a non-zero probability that a stack of Rolex parts would assemble themselves into a working Rolex. Given an infinite amount of time and an open system (so we can ignore entropy), it's not merely possible... it will happen! In any finite time-frame, even many billion multiples of the age of the universe, the probability of a self-assembling Rolex is so low that it can safely be ignored. And given the fact of entropy -- please tell me that you don't also dispute the validity of thermodynamics!!! -- we can be quite certain that those parts will actually break apart well before enough time could pass for them to assemble themselves into a watch.

But that brings me to my point -- it's about probabilities, and unlike the infinitessimal probability of the Rolex self-assembling, the probability of atoms randomly combining into complex organic molecules is merely small. Even if it's very, very, very small, it is still much, much, much larger than the probability of a Rolex self-assembling. Nice try, but bad analogy.

Now, let's look at some more realistic numbers. I'm not going to say that they're definitive, but they are far more realistic than your self-assembling Rolex.

Let's assume that over the past 50 years, there has been on avereage one experiment, on 1 kg of building block materials going on continuously. Of course there hasn't, but I'll be generous.

Now, lets' take 500 million years for our timeframe for nature to do its experiments. That means that nature's time for experimentation is 10 to the 7th times longer, and the amount of matter available for experient is 10 to the 21st times larger. So in total, nature had an advantage in it's favor of 10 to the 28th power. We've taken one shot at it for every 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 shots at it that nature took. So for man to have had even a 10% chance of succeeding in duplicating in the lab what nature accomplished, the controls and energy inputs in the lab environment would have to raise the probability of the outcome by a factor of 10 to the 27th. We had to make success 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times more likely than nature just to have a fair chance! Of course, we can do that. We can raise the probabilty by an even larger factor. We can raise the probabilty to one! We know exactly how to synthesize many complex organic molecules. But that's rigging the experiment! That's not what we're trying to do in the lab. We're trying to not rig it and yet still get a result that nature took hundreds of millions of years and monstrous amounts of raw material to get!

What I'm trying to get across here, by the way, is that even if we succeed in lab experiments to generate complex organic molecules from priimeval "soup", it proves nothing beyond the fact that we have made a good guess about duplicating some highly unlikely event that may or may not have been "the" event. It won't prove that it really happened that way, only that it could have. And failure doesn't prove that it couldn't or didn't happen in nature. Failure only proves that we lack the imagination and the time to guess what the unlikely event was and to rig a test to duplicate it!

Now, regarding the flightless birds -- actually, the current theory actually is that they evolved from flying birds. I was not intending to imply that it was the other way around, but I didn't make it clear. All I was doing was showing that non-functional wings can exist. They aren't useless. They don't condemn a species to death. So the idea of some non-winged animals developing wings without flight capability simply can't be discounted. Evolution didn't have to "know" that it was making a wing any more than a penguin has to "know" that its wing used to be able to fly (or that a chicken has to "know" that its wing tastes particularly good with a little teriyaki sauce ) There are many, many examples of animals with seemingly useless features, vestigial in some cases, and proto in others. If those features are not actively harmful, they can continue to be reproduced, and they can possibly evolve into something useful. Who knows... our appendix might someday evolve into WiFi transceiver

On the issue of faith, what I have faith in is numbers. Very, very, large numbers. I have faith that if I go to Vegas and bet that "00" will come up sixteen times in a row on the roulette wheel, I'm going to lose. But if I go to Vegas on 23,000,000,000,000 consecutive days, and make the same bet each day... then the odds are pretty good that I will eventually win. Once. Of course, I'd have to be about four times the age of the universe before that happens. On the other hand, if every one of 5 billion living persons made that bet and spun the wheel 16 times every day, someone would probably win in about 12 and a half years. Nature may have had a much bigger wheel to spin, and it needed a lot more than 16 modestly unlikely individual outcomes, but it was spinning a lot of wheels constantly for a very, very, very long time. That's the way probability works. Even when an individual success is extremely improbable, if you give it enough tries you are going to win eventually. I have complete faith in that.

@55: re "we've basically always looked the same as far back as we can tell". Yeah, for about 29,000 years. Before that, we shared the earth with another hominid species, the neandertals.

re "explain the huge differences in physical traits". According to the latest DNA research, those huge differences are attributable to just a small fraction -- one or two percent -- in genes. That's fact. We share so much DNA with apes, and yet we look so different because even though it's only a few thousand genetic differences that result in a few thousand differences in proteins, many of those proteins participate in more than one biochemical process, and those processes are interdependent so the effect of those few thousand differences multiplies dramatically.

And as for language, there is a great deal of research done on why we have it and apes don't. They lack a few key physiological features that are necessary for the production of the types of sounds that we use for language, but apes have learned rudimentary sign language and in nature they clearly are capable of communicating some basic concepts ("danger!", "food!", "mine!") to each other. If nature had paired the brain of an ape with the vocal physiology of a parrot, they might indeed have a form of spoken language not too unlike our own.

re "there shouldn't be any more apes because man has superseded them" No! No! No! No! No! That is such a basic misunderstanding not just of modern evolutionary theory, but of Darwin that it defies my belief that you could have said it. Darwin was a naturalist. He celebrated diversity. He was well aware of the many, many varieties of many, many closely related species that existed. Yes, Darwin did indeed call natural selection "survival of the fittest", but nowhere did he ever say that only one species within a particular group could be "the fittest". It is abundantly clear, blatantly obvious even, that Darwin did not believe and did not say, and Darwinian evolution does not imply that the great apes should be extinct because man superceded them. Survival of the fittest is a mechanism, not an outcome. It is a mechanism that works in individual generations, and accumulates over time, but it is always subject to being balanced out by changes in circumstance, environment (and even changes in species' culture!) that redefine what "the fittest" means. In a closed system, from which neither apes nor humans could escape and in which they were forced to compete with each other for basic survival needs, indeed there would be just one surviving species -- and by the way, it might not be the humans -- but that's not the case in nature. At least not yet. We haven't wiped out all the species of apes yet. Only deliberate conservation, however, seems likely to prevent that from happening eventually though.

20 - @51 um...yeah....controlled environment versus an uncontrolled environment...Just because you have a bzillion gallons of water, bzillion cubic meters of gases doesn't mean they are eventually come together in the great waltz of life. If that were the case, then it should be reproducible in A LAB under CONTROLLED conditions. Oops, but wait a minute...that brings in Intelligence..dang can't have that. The argument, regardless of the size (that was a pretty cool big number you used), that all of the necessary things might possibly, maybe, perhaps, come together in just the right way to form life and then continue makes almost as much sense as saying that a pile of Rolex watch parts (if left long enough) will eventually be acted on by enough outside forces to produce a working Rolex. Again, if we can't TEST this Theory by reproducing the production of basic life building blocks then I have doubts.

The whole flightless bird thingy...let's go the other way. Perhaps , through Adaptation, these once flight enabled birds, have encountered environments where they no longer have the need to fly.

BTW, arguably means the point is in contention...so therefore, disagreeing that it is arguable is in fact arguing it...hmm, gee that doesn't make sense.

What amazes me throughout this discussion, is that it has become a discussion of Faith. Faith in Evolution versus Faith in anything else. All I'm asking is that folks question Evolution where the weak points are instead of swallowing it hook, line and sinker. (Before you start, yes, I already question my Faith on a regular basis )

21 - I think it's rather brass to just say that the "majority" (Right-wingers for this discussion) just listen to soundbites for news. I think it's a problem with most people and not just those of a particular party.

I don't believe it's up to the schools to teach 5 YEAR OLDS! about the different types of families. They should be learning the "3 R's". It's why, if I have the ability, my child will be in a local Christian school. Tying this in with ID, you do have to admit that schools probably teach evolution as if it was an already proven fact. This is not the case. On both sides of the issue (ID and Evolution) you have scientists approaching it with presuppositions. As has been mentioned here already, we do not know exactly what is right. Nobody has ever seen evolution (only possible vestiges of it in fossil records) just as no one saw the creation of the world. So far the only plausible quasi-scientific alternative to evolution IS ID.

I did know that the book was about the various family units and that's not the point. If my child asks me why little Bobby has 2 dads then I would like to explain it to her in the way I feel best represents the views of my family and not my government.

22 - @Chris -- that's like saying we have all these finches flying around, yet there are still hummingbirds. There is room for more than one kind of anything, including anthropoid apes and hominids. What was good for us, in the circumstances in which we lived, may not have been good for another group living under different circumstances, so they changed in different ways. Long arms and semi-opposable big toes are great for getting around in trees, but not so good for walking across grasslands.

The theory of evolution does not suggest that there is a goal. (In fact, people like Gould and Dennet -- anyone, in fact, that cannot allow for the possibility of a first actor -- are religiously convinced that everything that lives is nothing more than an accident.) Humanity is not, from an evolutionary standpoint, fundamentally superior to any other anthropoid. We just fit our envoronment well, as they fit theirs.

Technology allows us to move beyond that niche. We are not well-suited to even moderate cold, but we have developed removeable artificial fur that allows us to live almost anywhere. We aren't particularly strong, but from rocks and sharp sticks to firearms, we have become King of the Beasts.

An honest look at the world around us today shows us that we are taking this "survival of the fittest" thing to an absurd level. Unless we moderate our behaviour, we who believe ourselves fittest, will become for one brief, shining moment, the only specied that survives. Except, of course, for the mutant wolves and cats we keep by our sides, and the few roaches that Terminix didn't get.

23 - @25 - Jim: I ask the same thing I asked Chris: what's your evidence? In all the times I've seen or heard from christian conservatives about this subject, I've never seen or heard one specific and verifiable example given of a curriculum, a school, or even an individual teacher who stridently claims that the scientific method in general and human evolution in particular is the truth, the whole truth, the only truth and nothing but the truth.

If there's a problem in the teaching of science, I'm all in favor of correcting it by requiring teachers to admit the limitations of science. That can be done without any mention of any particular philosophical or religious belief. Easily. It can be done without denying the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution by mutation and natural selection while still allowing that the evolution of the human species is only a scientific inference, not a proven scientific fact.

But I'm not in favor of correcting a problem in the teaching of science by teaching bad science and holding it up as having equal standing with good science. Intelligent Design is bad science. It is perfectly good theology or philosophy, but bad science.

-rich

24 - Gerco - I agree wholeheartedly that it is fine to teach ID, or Biblical History, or any other treatments of various religions, religious beliefs, etc. - but not as a science. Comparative religions, philosophy, etc. would be great, as it would teach people to have respect for other's beliefs. However this isn't about teaching about a belief system - it is about teaching a belief system, or a tenet thereof, as fact - and that's what I have a problem with.

As for the assault, I have no doubt it is a matter of perspective. However I am a fairly strict interpreter of the Establishment clause, and I feel that the separation of church and state is being assaulted.

Mika - I have no problems with the belief in ID in and of itself. In fact, as a Unitarian Universalist I support and defend the right of anyone to believe that which they hold true. However, as I stated when responding to Gerco, I do have a problem when ID, or any variant thereof, is being taught in schools as the equivalent to evolution.

Rock

25 - Chris (14) - yeah, and the "majority" also relies on soundbites for news (if any hard news at all), keeps shows like "Cops" and "Jerry Springer" on the air, and generally are sheep. Jefferson had the right idea behind the Electoral College...

As for the "Who's in a Family?" book - the entire book was NOT about homosexual families, you realize that right?

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/188367266X

It talks about ALL types of families, beginning with the "traditional" nuclear family, and then covering all other types - homosexual couples being just one of them. I see NOTHING wrong with this, and to "hide" the fact that most kids (especially in larger schools) probably already interact with a kid from a nontraditional (including homosexual couples) family makes them question what is "wrong" with that type of family that their parents would want to hide it from them.

Whether you agree with allowing homosexuals to form a family unit and adopt kids is beside the point. Homosexual families are a fact of life, and children should be taught to accept those children as what they are - children who come from a loving family. Doing anything other than that simply teaches prejudice and hatred - and what wonderful qualities to instill at such a young age...

Rock

26 - Who is to say that the Bearded Dude in the Sky didn't set evolution in motion as part of his intelligent design?

I take no personal stance on the issue of "where did we come from" because it is ultimately unknowable. However, I do think it is a subject worthy of some reflection for a few minutes each day. I like to approach the subject like a five year old would: why? why? why?

For example, where did the Bearded Dude come from? Or, where did the first carbon atom come from. Where did the big bang happen. Who set it off. Where were they standing when they set it off. Where did the place they were standing come from...

Same conclusion every time. It is basically an infinite loop. Which if you think about the implications, is truly mind-boggling. And that is why people grasp at and cling to religion.

Now, as for as what is going on in the public schools go... I am not even gonna start except to say that it is FUBAR and virtual education will become one of the hottest private industries in the not-so-distant future.

Mark my words. The current system is unsustainable.

27 - @31 -- Thanks. Good quotes. If that's all those books say about the subject, then I agree that they are inaccurate and they should be sacked. I followed your link though, and I see that they've just published the quotes that they don't like. That's understandable since the site clearly promotes an agenda, but if those same books also include a proper introduction, then I have no problem with any of them except the last. That one goes too far to say "the true evolutionary link..." but the other statements are fine even when they say "We know that..." or "humans evolved...". Why? Because that is scientific inference, backed by overwhelming scientific evidence and contradicted by none. These are science books. They are supposed to teach scientific inference, and they are supposed to teach that scientific inference should be treated as knowledge. It goes to far to refer to it as "true" or "truth" in absolute terms, though. And they should state up front that they do that. If these books don't state up front that scientific knowledge includes inference, if they don't give students the intellectual tools to understand and differentiate between scientifc proof and scientific inference, then they are bad science texts and should be corrected. If they don't make it clear that Darwinian evolution is scientific inference, that it is knowledge because it is supported by an overwhelming body of evidence and contradicted by none, but that it could someday be discredited by scientifically conducted observation of contradictory evidence, then they should be corrected. I just can't tell whether or not that is the case from a selection of isolated quotes. The books I've seen do, IMHO, a proper job but as Jim (@28) pointed out -- my own evidence is clearly anecdotal and a small sample. Guilty as charged on that.

Hey... I've got an idea. Let's build a Wiki and get together and write a science textbook! just kidding Hmm... what does Wikipedia have to say about this, anyhow? It looks like it has many articles about both sides of the story, and anyone who disagrees about their objectivity has the opportunity to contribute. In science, majority does not rule. Consensus of credentialed researchers does rule on inferences, but only after extensive investigation, publication and debate. A wiki can't quite duplicate that, but for those who find the scientific system of concensus to be lacking, or who tolerate the viewpoint that it might be lacking, it might be ideal. (Note, all, how I have not so subtly turned this thread to the subject of collaboration

-rich

28 - I've looked up some info on the Condylarth and Eohippus. To say they're descendents of each other and ancestors of the horse is a really big stretch. I think I even read at one site that said the eohippus was the closest ancestor to the Elephant. It does take an aweful lot of faith to believe that...

29 - Didn't we just talk about this at Volker's site?

@2 and @11 - I tend to agree with these statements. No matter how you slice it, there are questionable things being taught in public schools. I think we need to focus more on the basics than anything else.

And also remember that the majority DID re-elect W as well as electing many more Senators that are Republicans, and even replacing the Senate minority leader with a Republican! So you have to keep in mind that you're not talking about what a minority would want, but the majority has spoken. Do you want to know what "we" are concerned about?

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45594

The dispute began last spring when Parker's then-5-year-old son brought home a book to be shared with his parents titled, "Who's in a Family?" The optional reading material, which came in a "Diversity Book Bag," depicted at least two households led by homosexual partners.

Come on, this is KINDERGARTEN. Homosexuals are a relatively small group of people (1-2% of population) yet they wield such a large influence on our society. This is ridiculous.

http://traditionalvalues.org/urban/two.php

In footnote 42 on page 16 of this legal brief, 31 homosexual and pro-homosexual groups admitted the following: "The most widely accepted study of sexual practices in the United States is the National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS). The NHSLS found that 2.8% of the male, and 1.4% of the female, population identify themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. See Laumann, et al, The Social Organization of Sex: Sexual Practices in the United States (1994). This amounts to nearly 4 million openly gay men and 2 million women who identify as lesbian."

30 - I agree. The problem we have here is what is commonly referred to as the gaps in our knowledge, or "the gaps" for short. Science has gaps - gaps in our knowledge and understanding of the world around us, and we even allow for gaps in the things we already believe we understand. The problem, I fear, goes back to humanity's innate drive to explain everything. And different people choose different ways to account for the "gaps".

And religion is a perfectly fine way to explain the gaps (sometimes referred to as "the god of the gaps"). However using a god to fill in the gaps is not science, even though it is a fine way to explain them. It is religion, or philosophy, but not science. Scientists tend to be those individuals who can't accept a divine answer to the gaps; they are driven to find plausible, provable explanations for what they observe.

I know that's how I am. Do the religious among you realize that many people like me ardently desire to be able to accept the god of the gaps? It would make going through life, and especially living in this country, much easier. However I am not wired that way. I seek out a rational explanation for everything - I feel compelled, driven to do so. Part of that is why I am such a geek - I have to understand everything I can about everything I do. But I am fully cognizant of the place - the need - for religion in society. I am a fan of faith-based religion, I am just not a participant in it (well, except for being UU), and I feel that it, like everything else in life, has its proper place - and there are also places where it shouldn't be - such as a science classrom.

Rock

31 - Jim (32): I have no doubt that if you and I were both serving on a local school board, we'd have no issues. I'd be happy to have my kids in a school system that you were in charge of. I'm equally sure, though, that some (including Chris W., above) would still have a problem even with the even-handed approach we've been discussing.

People who believe that Genesis is literally true, rather than an allegory or mythology evolved out of oral tradition, will never accept the scientific approach to biology, archaeology and genetics. The problem is that, by scientific principles, evolution at both the macro and micro levels is the only legitimate explanation for the evidence around us. Why is this a problem? If evolution is valid, Genesis cannot be literally true. Period. Now, I didn't say anything about first causes or Creators (as I've said on my own blog, what's wrong with the idea that God designed evolution? Might not God have been the Big Bang?), I'm simply talking about the Book of Genesis.

Personally, I have trouble taking the literalists seriously. In order to believe in a Creator who literally created the world as described in Genesis, one would also have to believe that said Creator deliberately created false physical evidence and violated the laws of physics He Himself designed. Now, maybe God did all of those things, and intends the misleading evidence of archaeology, genetics, biology, physics et al to be a test of our faith. But that's way too bizarre. Occam's razor.

The universe obeys laws. Those laws have scientific properties, and they interrelate in ways that explain things we once considered mysterious, but nothing about those explanations rules out Divinity. They may rule out articles of a particular faith, perhaps. But not Divinity itself. That is why those who say evolution requires us to become atheists are simply mistaken. They haven't thought it all the way through. Nothing about evolution precludes a Deity. There is no way to prove that there is not a God. I say this as an atheist, even. There is also no way to prove that there is a God. That's why they call it faith.

Rock, when you talked about 'gaps' above, you hit an important issue. Centuries, and even decades, years and sometimes days in the past, we knew much less about our universe. The more we learn, the smaller those gaps become. Religions, historically, existed to fill in the gaps. People worshipped sun gods when they didn't understand the solar system, because they were afraid the sun wouldn't rise every day. People worshipped meddling, vengeful gods (Hera and Zeus, for example) as they struggled to justify tragedies. As the gaps grow ever smaller, the realm over which religion rules shrinks as well. I think some people are - not consciously - afraid that the advance of knowledge will ultimately contradict their faith. In some cases, as with evolution, it already has. What happens when a tenet of your faith becomes provably false? How do you prevent such a thing from happening? Perhaps by discrediting the branch of science in question? Or by inventing your own version of a science, no matter how twisted your definition of the term becomes?

Ultimately, though, those gaps are never going to go away completely. There will always be something that is unexplained, even if it is only the eternal question of the afterlife. Religions that refuse to adapt the our growing knowledge of the universe, the shrinking of those gaps, will not survive. Those that grow with us, will. The Roman Catholic Church used to teach that the Bible required the earth to be the center of the universe. Heard anyone claim that lately?

32 - Whatever- there have been arguments about this crap since 18..whatever year it was when Evolution came around and meanwhile every kid in my son's Pre-K class (except him, thank you very much) peed in their pants the other day and most of them can't say their name, much less spell it.

People (not you, Rocky- I know from experience that your kids are stellar and brought up right) are all worried about what the country's kids are going to learn at school, but they can't even potty train their own.

Look around next time you're at the grocery store at the kids running full tilt through the aisles, screaming at their mothers because they want a particular cereal or a cookie from the bakery and watch the parents wilt and give in to the child's rants and tantrums, ignore the kid's rude behavior to others and generally "drop the ball" as a parent.

I know parents who say stuff like "oh, but it's so hard to say no when he cries," or "I just gave it to her to shut her up." You know them too, probably. They are the parents of most kids these days- taking the path of least resistance (which ends up being the most painful). When you have a wildly popular show called Nanny 911 where some woman has to come in and teach you to simply say "no" and set rules for your children, there is a bigger problem than the question of what to tell kids about where we came from millions of years ago.

That's what is going to mess things up, not whether kids learn about Evolution and God-Did-It or just Evolution.

Teach them some respect and to say "thank you" etc. and they'll be prepared to make an informed decision for the rest by themselves.

33 - What the interviewer didn't ask, is wether it should be taught in science, or in a philosophy kind of class. Certainly in the second one, I think that ID could be mentioned as an alternative theory.

In that sense, the president is right: in an educational setting, young people should be exposed to different schools of thought. That's not the same as "teaching ID as a scientific fact", I think.

btw, I've been reading up on ID recently, and the one pro ID book I read, advocated other ideas than the ones you quote above, on suspending the natures of law. But I'm no expert on the matter, so I won't go there.

As a christian, it's kind of funny to read about "the war being waged by conservative christians on the school system". From conversations with them, I think that conservative christians in America would agree with you that there's an assault going on, but they seem to think it's going the other way around.

It seems you all have some issues to solve

34 - @47 Amino acids. Hmmmm... let's see.... 50 years of occasional controlled experiments, conducted on tabletops in a few small labs, with a few kilograms of liquid and gaseous matter. Versus hundreds of millions of years of natural experiments, conducted on a modest sized rocky planet with sizeable oceans and a miles thick atmosphere, with somewhat over 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms of liquid and gaseous matter. Not exactly a fair comparison, is it?

Irreducible compexity... Hmmm... there are living flightless birds, with wings. Not a lot of species, granted. But evolution of the wing without flight only had to happen in one species to eventually lead to the development of a variety of flying species, so the small number of flightless bird species is irrelevant. Their existence -- and the variety of subspecies within those species -- prove that non-functional wings do not necessarily condemn a species to failure before that species can evolve. Furthermore, I disagree that non-functional wings are "arguably useless". Birds use wings for things other than flight. Some species use them for putting on mating displays. Others use them as a means of appearing larger or more threatening to predators. And some species of bird are able to use their wings to help them stay airborne for a few seconds even though they do not have full flight capability.

As for bats, I understand that evolutionary biologists aren't particulary sure of their evolutionary path. They are one of the well-known "gaps", and due to the delicate nature of their bones and the types of environments that they tend to inhabit we might never fill in the gaps with a fully convincing fossil record. There are, however, modern species of gliding rodents, so the idea of a bat ancestor with a membrane suitable for gliding, which became larger and eventually developed into a basic wing that could still only glide, and then developed into a fully functional wing doesn't surprise me at all. And who ever said that the bats' immediate antecedents had to have lived on the ground? There are plenty of tree-dwelling species of animals.

35 - Oh the irony.... if there were ever proof that man evolved from apes, Bush is it!

36 - @61 Chris: re physical trait differences.... I'm not sure that I understand the point you are trying to make about this. It has been more than 5000 generations having passed since small bands of homo sapiens left Africa, dividing and subdividing into communities that went their separate ways and then lived in isolation from each other, separated for hundreds or thousands of generations by geographic changes that cut off routes previously traveled. We are able to manipulate a wide variety of physical traits of animal species through selective breeding in a matter of a few dozen generations. With many more generations than that for nature to work with in the various communities of humans, and accounting for the fact that every few generations a dominant male in a given community undoubtedly produced more than his "fair share" of offspring and thereby amplified the presence of certain genes within a particular community (and that factor is suspected even in recent history, with one study of 2000+ Asian males showing that 8% are descended from the same male ancestor within the past 1000 years), I don't find either the diversity of human physical traits worldwide or the regional clustering of various traits to be surprising at all.

-rich

37 - Gee.... how did I ever miss this topic! Boy, that's what's happens when you fall behind in your blog reading... you miss all the good stuff!

This is a fantastic topic and is well worth the read! I'm going to have to spend some more time going over each and every response.

Just wanted to add a little something to the mix (I don't have the exact reference quotes here so I'm going by memory)...

Up to a couple of hundred years ago there wasn't as much heated debate over the role of religious belief (theology) and scientific belief (science). In fact, the two used to complement each other. Science teaches us the What and the How where theology teaches us Who and Why.

The problems between the two groups started when they tried to start answering the other person's questions. Religious theology can NEVER explain the details of "how" the universe and everything was created. Theology doesn't explain the details of "what" the universe and life is made of. Just like science can never answer the question "why" life is here or if a "who" had anything to do with it.

I think if both sides would come back to an understanding that they simply cannot answer the other groups question then the debate would seem a little less miltant

38 - "Yes, we have little horses, medium horses and later big horses (but they are still horses)."

The journey from Condylarth, through Eohippus to modern horses (both domestic and wild) involves just a wee bit more than a change in size. There are a number of wholesale structural changes to take into account as well.

Setting up a strawman called Science to knock it down (without actually looking long and hard at the evidence that has actually been collected) is no less an egregious error than "proving" that there can be no God(s) by taking potshots at a child's Sunday School colouring-book pictures of a tall but otherwise unremarkable bearded man in the sky.

39 - Rock

Well done for highlighting this. Scarily, we're beginniing to see the same debate emerge in the UK.

As an aetheist theology graduate, I have no problems with ID being studied in schools, provided, as said upthread, it's as part of a theological/philosophical course. The interactions between scientific theory and theology have been cause for study and discussion for hundreds of years (you could almost say they were the spark behind modern science), but they must be kept in the appropriate sphere.

Dave

40 - @61 -- I must have missed the contract-signing, Chris. I made no such agreement, and, as I said, special evolution occurs, or it does not. "Micro" and "macro" are artificial boundaries put in place by people who can see the evidence before them, but who somehow cannot allow that a huge number of tiny changes over a very long period of time can look an awful lot like one big change.

Nor am I willing to impose limitations on how a supreme being may have created me and mine -- "extending classes" from a base of "life" would seem to me a pretty good way of making sure that most things can eat most other things and derive sustenance from them. That, though, is a supposition of purpose. I seems to me to be a smart way to go about it, especially if you're in a "one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day" situation relative to your creation (which I read as "time, as you know it, is pretty much meaningless to Me"). I see nothing in there that actually runs contrary to scripture unless you feel the need to put limits on how a Creator would form His creation. I don't know about you, but I have never drawn Leviathan out with an hook. I can't say what God can and cannot do (that is religion), but I can look at the world around me, see what bits are lying around on the workbench and make some educated, logically testable guesses as to what He did or did not do (that is science).

(And it would appear that I have given away my stance on Purpose. In my case, at least, you are not arguing with an atheist, or even with an agnostic.)

As for the superiority of humans (in terms of fitness for competition with other species), that's a matter of technology. In an evolutionary scenario, we would not have sprang forth equipped with a full set of tools and an encyclopedia of knowledge. That all takes time; time to find out that the right kind of broken rock can reliably be used as a substitute for teeth, that a pointy stick makes a better "claw" than fingernails do, that some kinds of stick will get you killed faster than they'll get you a meal, that the inedible hide of an animal should be preserved in the largest pieces possible so it can be made into clothing and shelter and so forth. Before we learned any of that, we were as much at the mercy of our surroundings as any other creature.

But that is not really the point -- the point is that we were not in direct competition with apes. We were not competing in the same environment for the same resources -- the mountain gorilla, for instance, was considered nothing more than a legend until October 17, 1902. The first species, the lowland gorilla, was discovered to be more than a tribal totem a mere 45 years earlier. They lived where they lived and ate what they ate in nearly complete isolation from humans. The odd encounter with a giant, hairy "man" at the verges of nearly-impassible mountain forests were treated like ghost stories. In their habitat, they were the fittest. Modern, mechanized Man has been steadily encroaching on their habitat since then, though, and the unfair competition could well mean the gorilla's extinction. Had we been living side-by-side with them thousands of years ago, which of us survived would have depended entirely on how far our technology had advanced at that point. We don't have a 1200-pound arm pull or inch-and-a-half canine teeth and a two-ton bite force. (Then again, they might not have had them at the time, either.)

Now, about those odds -- there is a one-in-thirty-six chance of rolling snake eyes. That does not mean you need to roll the dice thirty-six times before losing your money. You can roll a two on your first toss. You can also roll the dice a thousand times without ever hitting a two. Statistical probability is not a guarantee. (And it assumes that nobody has loaded the dice .) And when applied to something like the likelyhood of life spontaneously occurring and sustaining itself, one has to take into account that the numbers used in arriving at the statistical probability are really just wild guesses -- allow for a couple of orders of magnitude in each individual factor considered, and you wind up with overall probabilities ranging from nearly one to nearly zero. The only people who can put a definitive probability forward are those who say it is precisely zero. Any other number means that there is a chance.

41 - @53 - It's not that I'm looking for a half-man/half-ape. Just that there is nothing to really explain why the apes that exist now are so much different than the humans. I know that probably doesn't make sense (I've been in the sun all day...), but what I'm saying is that we still have all of these different species of apes/monkeys and then we have people.

Now, adaptation can explain a lot of things, but looking at the human species, we've basically always looked the same as far back as we can tell. Look at the body structure and physical appearance of groups of people who live all over the world and name the multitude of differences in how the human species has adapted to live where they do. The only physical adaptation trait is skin color. I don't want to stray too far, but if mankind truly evolved from ape then what can explain the huge differences in physical traits. If part of science is truly observation, then observe some of the differences - amount of hair, or lackthereof (even among humans who share the same general habitat as apes), body size and general structure, and perhaps the most amazing difference being that of full language systems among the humans.

Further, when Darwinists cite other examples of macro-evolution such as when a small rodent-like creature evolves later into a horse or elephant, what happens to the previous ancestors? They simply vanish from the face of the earth. As a side, I was looking for graphics of man's evolution and found this somewhat funny one:

http://www.msc-loehne.de/4images/data/media/5/ch_evolution_of_man_and_woman.jpg

Back to the topic, there are still many different sub-species of ape that exist. Judging from the past consistencies of the evolution of other species, there shouldn't be any more apes because man has superseded them according to Darwinistic evolution.

Further, as far as genetics go, such drastic macro-evolution would have to mean that gene structure either changed wildly or there was a mutation. Looking at other cases, you can see that when plants are intentionally cross-breeded for mutation purposes that once introduced out of a controlled environment into the wild. Yet we're talking about the origins of a highly specialized breed of animal called homo-sapien and Darwinists are left to fill the gap in their theory and deal with why multiple mutations continue to persist even when science (the basis of the theory) can't force specialized plants to thrive in the wild.

"Darwinists are left saying that it must have happened because it happened." (Wayne Grudem Systematic Theology, p. 281)

@54 - Greg, aren't labs the way that many scientific theories are proven. But now we're told that lab work is suspect because it cannot duplicate the natural environment 100%! I think this really is boiling down to a faith discussioin...

Good point about questioning our faith. Greg and I have been through a lot together that would make most people question why they should even keep going in faith at all! Much less dealing with something as minor as this. I really don't care what you believe in regards to evolution. Though there are some points at which I cannot accept divergence from literal Biblical interpration (a strictly literal 6 days is one that could be argued, though only because of how we humans scientifically observe what we can do in six days...), I'm not sure what I would say about evolutionary belief.

Sorry to be long winded and I hope you could somewhat follow me - I promise I don't code like that!!

42 - Hi Richard,
Your point about teaching "bad science" is a good one. I wasn't advocating Intelligent Design, actually. I simply was offering my opinion as to why there is a push for it by some people.
As for my "proof," about how evolution is taught in many schools today, well, let's get on an equal footing. You demand from me what you do not offer to me. You offer ancedotal observations and suggest that my offering of the same fails to measure up. I suggest that you have no more proof than I do, and that my ancedotal data is just as good - or poor - as yours.
My observation is that the notion of a Supreme Being is increasingly unwelcome in today's schools. Can I "prove" this? Well, no, of course not, anymore than you can "prove" that my observation is incorrect.
I believe however that initiatives such as Intelligent Design stem from this lack of welcome for a First Cause. As I said previously, there was no need for Creationism or Intelligent Design when I was in school. A Supreme Being was implicit in all that was taught.
So, let's not have Intelligent Design as it's being offered today. It's bad science, just as you say. However, let's reopen the door to the possibility of a Creator in schools. It's my opinion that this is all Intelligent Design advocates want anyway.
For the record, no one ever has accused me of being a conservative Christian before. I'm not sure if you were labeling me as such, but I thought it might help the conversation along to point out that the label doesn't fit me. I do believe in a Supreme Being, that is true, but I have no interest in suggesting that others must share my beliefs. I just want my beliefs to be welcome and not subjected to scorn or ridicule, at my son's school or elsewhere.
Actually, I'm a journalist who enjoys debate and who is especially fond of jumping into a conversation when people profess to be sure of themselves about an issue about which they cannot be sure. I enjoy being challenged and I enjoy challenging.
Best,
Jim

43 - Chris (16) - You read something into my use of the word "majority" that I didn't intend. I used the word "majority" at face value - the majority of US citizens are soundbite-fed sheep who are led by whatever crap is fed to them, regardless of religion, race, creed, or political party affiliation. It may be a cynical view, but I also believe it to be true. The US population, by and large, is fairly ignorant on the country, much less the world they in which they live.

As for teaching your kids the "3 Rs", of course that is paramount. But, to me, it is also paramount to teach them to understand the world around them. I see many families, who tend to be conservative Christians, that do their best to shelter their kids from the "real world" - they insulate them from whatever they find unsatisfactory. IMHO this does not help them deal with the world they live in, and when they encounter things that they have not been guided on by their parents, teachers, etc. (and it is not a matter of "if" - it is a matter of when)they are left to fend for themselves and draw their own conclusions. That's the main problem with these kids that are so heavily influenced by the media - there has been no guidance from parents and role models in their lives.

I am of the other mind - I want my kids to be cognizant of the world they live in. I want them to understand that it is a huge, wild, diverse world full of a plethora of new and different things - and that some of those things are BAD and are to be avoided, but also that Different != BAD.

Now don't go off on a tangent and start screaming "So you're exposing your kids to smut! Pornography! Graphic Violence!" or whatever. Of COURSE I'm not. But by the same token I want them to be properly prepared if/when they encounter people who are different from them, strangers, or even nudity, sexual situations, violence, etc. I want them to remember what I teach them about each of these things - and yes, we talk about these topics with all five of them, even with my 6 year old (in the proper context of course).

I can't be around my kids 24-7, although I submit that I am with my kids more than most (the blessing of working at home). And on those occasions when they are off without me (i.e. spending the night at a friends, a birthday party, whatever) I want them to be prepared as much as possible to handle anything they encounter and think to themselves "oh yeah, dad and I talked about this. I should handle it this way..." Situations have already arisen in the past with some of my five kids, and this approach has served them (and my wife and I) well.

So, in the case of this book, I would not be upset at the school; instead I would view it as an opportunity to discuss the topic with my kids, and make sure they understand our beliefs on the subject. This is better than waiting for my kid to encounter a homosexual family (or any other family different than ours), have questions about it, and hope he asks me about it (no guarantees there, no matter how you raise them). I find it much easier and healthier to be a proactive parent rather than a reactive one.

Rock

44 - Actually the Humans are a combination of Intelligent Design and Evolution. Maybe that's the reason why people still argue about it, which it is, because it's neither alone.

45 - @62 - Thanks Stan. I tend to agree with you about the notion of time not really having a meaning for God - that's why I'm not a strict literalist on the length of the "days" in Genesis 1. The only problem I have with the line of reasoning that some have proposed (whereby God just kind of kicked things into motion and sat back idly to let it run its course, including evolution) is that we are told in specific terms that God created man after creating the other animals. The Bible was even so specific about this that Genesis 2 is a more thorough explanation of how man was created. This is not only a historical text for me. I believe it's God's revelation to man regarding how we got here in a manner that was different than that of the other animals. I also believe that this aspect of creation should be core to the faith of all believers. There are indeed some things that can be argued, but the unique place of man among the other animals is not one of them.

We're probably not really getting anywhere with all of this - other than just having a great discussion. So, I believe I will make this my last post in this thread. From me, thanks to all for the discussion!

46 - You don't get to have it both ways. Either special evolution occurs, or it does not. Merely capitalizing the word "adaptation" does not allow one to draw a line between one instance of evolution and another in terms of credibility. If advantageous changes propagate at all, then species will change over time. If different populations of the same species propagate different changes due to differing environmental circumstances, then they will, over time, become less and less alike. If you can believe that at all, then you simply cannot place artificial limits on the kinds of changes that may occur given sufficient time. Some will be disadvantageous, perhaps even immediately fatal, and thus will go nowhere fast. Some will be neither particularly helpful nor particularly harmful at a given point in time. Some will be achieve immediate star status, but represent such a specific adaptation that any major change in the environment will lead to catastrophe for the species.

"Where evolution is weak" boils down altogether to an incomplete record. That is, we do not have fossil (or otherwise preserved) examples of every species that has ever existed. We don't even have a complete catalogue of all of the species that are alive right now. We do, though, have considerable evidence of special evolution occuring during the period since the idea was proposed. We have forced a considerable amount of it ourselves through the use and abuse of antibiotics and various whatever-icides over the past century.

This applies particularly to the earliest life forms on Earth, whatever they may have been. Without evidence of where and how they lived, we cannot do more than hypothesize. The Miller experiment was based on the hypothesis that life arose in a shallow puddle of chemical soup in close contact with an (again, hypothesized) atmosphere largely composed of methane, ammonia, molecular hydrogen and water vapour. Geological evidence, though, suggests that the atmosphere used in the Miller experiment was a wee bit off the mark (it was not likely to have been composed entirely of reductive gases). A number of other experiments (notably Oro) have shown that it is much easier to create organic chemicals -- no need for all of that lightening and stuff -- including peptides. Do any of these prove that life spontaneously erupted at time X in location Y? Of course not, and nobody who can call himself (or herself) a scientist while keeping a straight face will tell you that it does. It merely means that the possibility cannot be discounted, at least not yet. (Nor, by the way, can it prove that there could not have been an external inflluence at work.)

I'm sure there are people out there who take evolution on faith, much as they take Amarillo, Texas on faith. They have no direct, personal evidence of either. I grew up in an area (the Canadian Shield, not too very far north of the Great Lakes) where fossils were everywhere, where different aeons were discernable in the rock strata, and where the changes in living beings over time were obvious to anyone interested in looking. And I was interested from a very young age. I've been to the Badlands of Alberta. I have spent a considerable amount of time in museums. And yes, I have relied on the work of others (and always with a sharp eye for the influence of pet theories on the conclusions they have drawn -- I pay far more attention to the objective evidence). It is not merely a matter of faith (unlike, say, my spiritual inclinations).

47 - The discussion seems to be dying down, but I'd like to highlight a point from post 63.

Chris wants to bring the bible into a scientific discussion. He seems to give what he finds there priority over what scientists have learned about the physical world. This is, I think, the core of the disagreement here.

I won't say the bible has no place in the discussion. To bring it in, however, raises several points. The first is what about the holy books of other religions? Do they have a place in the discusson? What do they say about creation and evolution? And what does it mean when they disagree with each other?

The next point is that in a scientific discussion, all the evidence should available for scrutiny. If the bible is evidence, then it can be scrutinized too. A vast amount of scholarly work has been done to track the likely origins and authors of the various books of the bible. Likewise, there's been much study of the various translations of the bible over the centuries. Is it quite certain that the original text(s) entirely rules out evolution?

48 - I've been following this thread for some time and wanted to add to the discussion.

First, let me point out that yes, just as everyone else that has posted, I have a bias.

However, the points that I wanted to make are related to the issues I have with Evolutionary Theory. Regardless of other statements, Evolutionary Theory seems to only address the first two stages of the Scientific Method being, 1. Observation of a Problem and 2. Statement of a theorized hypothesis. Scientists continue to attempt to test the hypothesis, but, given the inordinately lengthy time required for "true" evolution, testing becomes problematic. There are a few other issues I have as well.

First, the "early amino acid soup". Several lab experiments have been attempted beginning in the 1950s to reproduce this environment. However, in no observable case (that I have been able to locate), have scientists been able to use gases and chemicals that they agree would have been present at the time to create the base amino acids. In one known experiment (Miller Experiment 1953) where the amino acids were created, gases not believed present on primordial earth were used AND these gases had to be "sparked". If life is merely a chemical process, it should be able to be easily lab produced.

On to other issues. Irreducible complexity. In a nutshell meaning, that these things "cannot be reduced to a desired, simpler or smaller form." Since one of the tenets of evolution is based on small changes over time resulting in the observed today, does this really make sense. For example, what would be the purpose of a partially developed bird or bat wing? Would the animal be able to survive? Are we going to argue that the wing knew what it was to eventually become so it had to go through millions of years of changes to get there and thus hamper the bird or bat with an arguably unuseful appendage during that time? Addressing the bat again, how would a bat in a slightly simpler state survive? If a bat falls to the ground today, it dies. For two reasons. One it's legs are incapable of supporting its weight without breaking. They have tensile strength and not compaction strength. Also, a bat can only fly when it drops into flight.

Ok, on to something else. Limitations of evolutionary changes. Supposition goes...genetic mutations experienced in a population are propagated when two animals with the same genetic mutation meet and mate. Mathematically possible that two animals with the same mutation would be in the same population would meet (at mating time) and then give birth to enough to continue the mutation, given millions of years, maybe. However, modern genetics has shown that mutations to be problematic:

Noble Prize winner H.J. Muller , "it is entirely in line with the accidental nature of natural mutations that extensive tests have agreed in showing the vast majority of them to be detrimental to the organisms in its job of surviving and reproducing, just as changes accidentally introduced into any artificial mechanism are predominantly harmful to its useful operation." French evolutionist Pierre-Paul Grasse noted that, "No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution."

or

French evolutionist Pierre-Paul Grasse "No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution."


Which leads me to small changes over time (micro-evolution). Yes, this happens to a point. I firmly believe in adaptation. Evidence can be seen in isolated island finch populations that become established in areas (due to human migration) where no predators exist. They are much larger and have different diets. Also, this is visible in humans. Our size and life span have increased due to better nutrition and health care. Japanese populations have seen a significant increase in height due to the increase in red meat proteins.

These changes modify a species or lead to enough changes to create an agreed upon sub-species; however, they do not create a new species. Finches are still finches, humans still human, and even when we continually breed dogs...they are still dogs.

Lastly, the fossil record. There is minimal evidence in the fossil record to support evolution. Yes, we have little horses, medium horses and later big horses (but they are still horses). Also, woolly mammoths are normally thought to be big, yet a dwarf mammoth population existed in the Aleutian islands. All evidences of perhaps Adaptation, but no real evolution.

The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution." (Gould, Stephen J., Paleobiology, vol 6(1), p. 127)

Sorry for the long post, but these are the scientific problems I have with Evolution as a Theory. It would seem to me that I would need to have as much Faith to believe in Evolution as I would have to have in any religion. Faith being defined as:

1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.

Thanks for the interesting discourse by the way.

49 - Hey, Rock, here's an ID theory I could get behind:

http://www.venganza.org/

Seems quite as legitimate as the old bearder guy in the sky ID theory, anyway.

Note for the humor impaired: relax - it's a joke...

50 - Taken in isolation, perhaps, and with nothing but gross morphology as shown in tiny pictures to go by. Take some actual time to invesigate (the interval between my posting and yours hardly suggests investigation).

51 - @16: re "you do have to admit that schools probably teach evolution as if it was an already proven fact".

No, I don't have to admit it. And I don't. I don't admit that that is anything other than your subjective interpretation, and I consider it a misinterpretation.

But first, actually, evolution is proven fact. Hear me out on this, please, before you react. Mutation and natural selection have been observed in nature and in the lab -- in a wide variety of species. All schools should and hopefully do teach this.

The Darwinian evolution of the human species, on the other hand, though supported by tremendous amounts of scientific evidence, is not proven fact.

I presume that this is what you were really referring to. But, how many schools have you gone into lately and listened to the lectures about evolution. How many elementary or secondary level science textbooks have you found that state uncategorically that evolution of the human species is proven fact?

Since you said that they "probably" teach evolution as proven fact, I'm guessing that the answer to my questions is "none". Am I right? No more than a few, anyhow. So, on what basis have you made the determination that science teachers are (probably) willfully departing from making the correct distinction that evolution is a fact but human evolution is merely a theory that is supported by lots of evidence and contradicted by none?

I'd like to see the proof -- or any evidence at all for that matter -- of the incompetence of the nation's biology teachers. The teachers that I know are passionate about scientific truth, and they are not part of any secular humanist conspiracy to hide the fact that the scientific method makes no statements about that which can not be observed. Not a one of them would ever say that the evolution of the human species is a proven scientific fact. They will say that it is consistent with the striking evidence of mutation and natural selection in observations of nature, that it is fully consistent with everything we know about the biochemical nature of life, that it is the only explanation for the existence of the human species that is fully consistent with all the principles of scientific thought, and that all of these statements are accepted by overwhelming majority of all working biologists... but there is nothing wrong with that, as these are all true statements. I can remember my own high school science teacher being exceedingly careful about this, and this was 30 years ago, long before conservative christian groups were seeking to pressure school systems about creation or ID. At least in the part of the country where I lived. And I have never seen a science textbook that departs from the distinction between theory and fact. Have you?


I'm quite sure that the problem many religious conservatives have is that when science teachers move past the introduction to evolution as a theory and begin to explore the evidence for evolution of the human species, they don't put "not a proven fact" in parenthesis after every time they say the words "human evolution".

Scientifically there is nothing wrong with going on to study the path of human evolution as if it were a proven fact. That's what the scientific method says you do with a hypothesis -- or in this case with a theory that is the only one that fits the known facts and the principles of science. Doing so does not teach that human evolution is proven fact, or for that matter that biblical creation is wrong. It is no different from exploring the universe in terms of Newtonian mechanics, gravity and relativity even though we know that an as-of-yet undiscovered unified field theory might prove them all wrong.

I can understand studying human evolution as if it were fact creates a misinterpretation amongst those with faith-based belief in creation that human evolution is being taught as fact... but it is a misinterpretation. Having properly introduced the subject of evolution as a theory, science teachers ought not to be required to remind students at every step of the way. And science teachers should definitely not be required to remind students that there are competing non-scientific theories about the human species. That's not their role. Instead, it should be up to religious teachers to clarify the correct interpretation of studying human evolution to children, and to introduce whatever non-scientific faith-based alternatives they want the childern to consider. That's the proper role of religious teachers.

-rich

52 - @39 - Jim, but you have to look at what we Christians believe in as faith. Our worldview is based on God creating man in His image. Whether one takes the six days as literally six days may be up for debate. If there is a God, He surely could have created everything in only six days. Or it could have been allegorical I guess.

But with that aside, we believe that God created man. That's why the Darwinistic theory of the macro-evolution of fish to ape to man is so staunchly opposed by Christians. That system undermines God's design for man. This is the very reason there is still a "missing link" between ape and man. Sure we may have some resemblances, but that by no means proves that man evolved from monkey.

I can see in many ways that God may have designed micro-evolution. But my belief is that God did create man. ID is the ultimate proof for Occam's Razor! I had a t-shirt in college that read "I believe in the Big Bang theory - God spoke and BANG, it was!" While it may sound like another cheesy Christian t-shirt (what's up with some of those anyway!), it is actually something to consider and it's an overly-simplified basis for ID.

53 - David - I agree with you, to a point. I think the thing that drives most of this debate (and also one of the driving forces for the need for religion) is the fact that humans hate to say "I don't know". It takes a mature mentality to be able to truthfully state "I don't know the answer, and I am OK with that". What are the origins of the universe? I have some ideas of how it came into being, but I don't know, nor will I ever know - and I am OK with that. That's the type of thing I am talking about.

As for what is taught in schools, I can't agree more - often we're too busy worrying about the latest fad, trend, etc. when we should be concentrating on the fundamentals in schools. Too many schools today are way too "test-driven", meaning that schools are now compelled to teach towards some test (largely in part to "No child left behind" acts, etc.) instead of thoroughly concentrating on the foundations of education. However I do feel that it is important in natural sciences to teach evolution as a foundation theory (and of course I am talking about scientific theory here, not just some plain ol' theory), because natural selection and survival of the fittest are integral facets of natural history.

Rock

54 - You guys are great:

"we might never fill in the gaps with a fully convincing fossil record"

I was going to ask about the gaps - good opening for me... This is pretty close to an example of what I was going to mention. There are so many "gaps" out there and the so-called missing link between man and ape. A main factor of macro-evolutionary belief is faith. With so many gaps between species you are, in reality, making an assumption that something has happened because of just looking at a fossil record. While there is no DIRECT link between, say, a rodent and a bat, you say that there is simply because there has to be a link.

Back when Darwin was working on his theory, he had a major concern. That was the fossil record. The record back then just wasn't really demonstrating his theory because of all the gaps. Well, in that ~150 years we still haven't answered his theory with the fossil record...

55 - @Jim: What do you say to people like myself (and Rock) who do not believe in a Creator? I do not want my child taught something that I don't consider 'truth'. No more do I want your child taught that your 'truth' is invalid. In fact, I don't want my child or anyone's child taught anything about what is or is not correct about first causes or religious philosophy in the public school system. There is no contradiction implicit in teaching 'good science' without stating or implying anything about religious truth, and that is what I want my school's science department to do.

Since you don't want others to have to share your beliefs, do you agree that bringing the Creator back (though I don't agree that He was there to begin with - at least not consistently) into the schools would contradict that overall purpose. Truly, the vast majority of US citizens believe in a Creator, but is it really necessary to disenfranchise those of us who don't? Can't we leave religion to the Churches, the Preachers, the Religious Educators who are most qualified to discuss it?

@Stan: I'd like to see his test plan, not to mention the QA signoff....

56 - @4: The claim of a combination if ID and evolution is a no-op. ID inherently admits that evolution sometimes happens, but ID claims that evolution does not fully explain observed biology. ID proponents then go on to conclude that evolution can not fully explain observed biology, and therefore ID should have equal standing with evolution. This is pseudo-science and pseudo-logic.

Arguments in favor of ID are all, without exception, deliberately contrived to take advantage of common misunderstandings of the nature of the scientific method and common lack of understanding of fundamental aspects of nature (particularly., probability and time). ID has no scientific merit at all for the simple reason that it does not make predictions that can be tested. ID proponents try to throw this charge back at evolution by claiming that unless scientists can perform controlled experiments that duplicate human evolution through mutation and natural selection, then evolution can't be tested. This is patently false.

The fact that evolution can not predict specific future mutations and selection is completely irrelevant and is not a weakness in the theory -- despite the claims of ID proponents. Evolution predicts that mutation and selection do happen; and over the fullness of time this is observable and it has been observed many times since the time of Darwin. Furthermore, evolution can be thoroughly tested because in addition to making broad predictions about the types of macroscopic changes that can occur in nature in the future, and in addition to making predictions about the types of microscopic processes that can exist as a result of evolution, it also -- and this is critically important to the comparison with ID -- makes predictions about as of yet undiscovered evidence of past macroscopic changes and past microscopic processes. Evolution has been tested thoroughly and continues to be tested all the time as more processes are understood and more evidence is observed in fossils and as more and more actual ancient DNA and proteins are actually recovered and analyzed.

ID can't be tested because every single one of its claims is of the form "mutation and natural selection do not explain the emergence of X across a gap from Y" where X is some oberved biological feature that is said to be too improbable to have emerged without the intervention of an intelligent designer, and Y is some presumed precursor to that biological feature. To see that this is inherently untestable, just restate the claim this way: "For some X's and Y's, no one will ever identify the circumstances, process, or intermediate forms that show how X evolved from Y." No matter how many specific X's and Y's this claim is disproved for, the ID proponents will just either find new X's and Y's or narrow the gap between the X's and Y's and continue to make their claim. And due to misunderstandings of probability and time scales, there will always be people who buy into this. But it isn't science, and it has no place in a classroom except to say as follows:

"Some people believe in Intelligent Design. Scientists know that they don't know everything, but they do know that evolution by mutation and natural selection is the only scientifically supportable theory that accounts for the observable facts of biology, and that there is no scientific need to invoke ID to account for any supposed gaps in Darwinian evolution."

That should be the full extent of it. Anyone who chooses to believe in ID is free to do so, but they are not free to teach that it is science.

57 - @Don (57) -- 'zackly. Thanks.

58 - There is a difference between "haven't found everything yet" and "have found nothing", Chris. A big one. The evidence we do have supports the theory; the fact that most dead critters never become intact fossils (they are much more likely to become something else's meal), and that the proponderance of sedimentary rock on the planet is still on the ground (or, rather, is the ground) will always be a bit of a problem in that regard. Not as big a problem as the existence of the fossils is for "sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper et in saecula saeculorum", though.

As for your "missing link", there are several. The problem is not that there are no intermediate species in the record, but that the some people expect to see something that looks like a half-man/half chimp or half-man/half-gorilla. That expectation presupposes that the great apes have always appeared more-or-less as they do today. And that non-human apes were the "primary line", from which humanity was an accidental variant. There is no reason to make either assumption. Apes have changed over time as much as any other species (according, at least, to the evidence that we have in hand), and if one can accept the likelyhood of common ancestry (based, again, on fossil and genetic evidence, and as a working hypothesis rather than as an article of faith), then one can as easily interpret the record to "mean" that the divergence of the "proto" versions of gorillas, orang utans, chimps and bonobos are mere perversions of an inevitable march toward humanity.

But, again, that is an interjection of Purpose into an investigation of Mechanism.

59 - @41 - Rock, I just don't see how you can honestly take that to be metaphorical. The metaphor of "formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being" cannot be taken to mean "formed amoeba which later became walking beings known as homo-sapiens". There is a huge theological dilemma in picking and choosing the parts of the Bible that you believe are metaphorical and truth. Who's to argue this type of relativism? So someone can then say "well, this whole Jesus story was nice, but it's just another metaphor of how God could love us - not necessarily what He did." This is the slippery slope of Biblical interpretation through moral relativism - every one can have their own interpretation.

While I agree with Martin Luther that men should have their own translations of the Bible (by the way you MUST watch the movie Luther released last year - it's great!) and be able to understand them, this doesn't make you a "scholar" just because you can read it in English. At the same time, I don't agree with churches like the Roman Catholic church that mandates beliefs by their dogma. Anyway, I digress...

@42 - Rich, you said you wanted some proof and I gave it to you. While some of it may be said to be out of context, or extreme examples, it's still proof that textbooks are teaching Darwinistic evolution be it by inference or as stated fact.

@43 - And neither can Occam 'prove' that God does not exist or that macro-evolution is true. =)

60 - In the spirit of open and honest discussion that has been going on here, I'll submit this quote that came across my google portal page today, even though it challenges the basis of my own faith in numbers and probabilities:

"If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability."

--- Vannevar Bush

61 - The division, it seems to me, is between "mechanism" and "purpose". Science (both good and bad) can try to explain the mechanism, whether that be continuous evolution, punctuated equilibrium, specific creation along Usher's time line, or the whole thing being coughed up by a pre-existing intergallactic Space Goat. The quality of the explanation of the mechanism can be evaluated logically, and should be revisited as our knowledge progresses. (A very broad reading of Genesis 1 can yield a pretty decent interpretation of a Big Bang event from a neolithic or Bronze Age persective, so even biblical literalists have no excuse for not revisiting the question now and again.)

What science cannot explain is purpose. That is in the realm of philosophy and religion. Science (of any real description) cannot definitively determine whether or not there is a creator, designer, or first actor. People can look at all of the physical eveidence and come to conclusions concerning the necessity of an external influence. The evolution of species can be explained without invoking the supernatural -- given enough time, random mutations can explain just about everything. But there is nothing in science that can actually preclude the occasional nudge. Nor can the laws of the physical universe be explained without considering the universe in which they exist. Are they happenstance, or part of an author's design? If the rules are part of a design, then the fact that everything can be explained by the rules without the need for external influence is meaningless.

It is not the job of science teachers to try to explain the purpose (or lack thereof) of our universe or the critters that inhabit it. Layering ID on top of evolution in the classroom is attempting to give purpose to the mechanism. The mechanism is objectively testable, the purpose is not.

Well, not until the kid whose experiment this all is turns in his paper, anyway. I'm not so much interested in the purpose or the conclusions, but I would like to see the apparatus list and the procedure he used.

62 - Chris (40) That was me, not Jim, you were answering. I'm not sure he would have agreed with even half of what I wrote, so it might bother him to be associated with it.

I do have one nit-picky thing I'd like to point out, simply because it's a pet peeve of mine. You refer to the faith of 'we Christians' and proceed to describe the faith of a particular subset of the great tree that is Christianity. Many Christian faiths exist. Protestants, Roman Catholics, even Unitarian Universalists (no, not all of them, but certainly many of them). Many of them see no contradiction between their core faith that Jesus was the Christ (that being the definition of the term Christian, after all) and the scientific basis for evolution. The use of the term 'Christian' in such a way is misleading to those who are less familiar with the history of religion in modern western society. One can name one's religion whatever one chooses, of course, so the relatively recent decision by conservative Christian sects to refer to their faith simply as 'Christian' is perfectly legitimate. It fosters confusion, though, when speaking with others who aren't members of that particular sect.

My particular Christian background is Roman Catholic (12 years of Catholic schools). That particular sect is more strongly focused on the New Testament and specifically the Gospels and the life of Jesus himself (as opposed to the writings of St Paul or Revelations), and has no trouble at all with the idea that the Old Testament is largely allegorical and metaphorical. Nevertheless, Roman Catholics are quite certain that they are Christians too, and I daresay my Jesuit and Sacre Coeur religious education instructors would be quite put out at any contrary implication.

Per your suggestion that Occam's razor supports the idea that macroevolution of humanity is a myth, please bear in mind that Occam's razor refers to the simplest explanation that covers all the evidence. As I pointed out earlier, believing that God literally created Adam looking just the way we do now requires one to ignore a vast amount of scientific evidence. As I also pointed out, it's certainly possible for an omnipotent God to create, not only humanity in His image, but also evidence contradicting said method of creation. If He decided to act in such a way, though, that would violate Occams razor because the simpler explanation is that He created humanity but did not simultaneously invent misleading evidence trails - thus, that He created humanity within the laws of the universe He also created. Not that God has to obey Occam, either (there's that sneaky omnipotence again). But one certainly can't use Occam to 'prove' that God exists.

63 - Rock - Indeed I was referring to the Sumerian Enuma Elish and other of their original writings. When you read it, there's so many matches to the old testament, that it's impossible to be coincidence. Now I have a challenge, in the new testament there's a story about the Nefilim (or incorrectly translated as Giants in some newer translations, however Nefilim means basically "those who have descended (fallen?) from the sky to the earth"), who took human women as their wifes. If someone, anyone, would have some proof that those Nefilim ever existed, it would be a major revolution to all religions. It would proove that humans were created by alien (where the term "alien" also becomes more like "our anchestors") lifeforms with genetical fusion from an earlier evolution of Homo Erectus and their own species. It would explain why the Homo Sapiens had an yet unexplainable jump in the evolution, and it would explain who is God, and why humans are not the top of evolution as we know it.

64 - I meant to add to my last post:

And as Stan says, it is simply a difference between mechanism and purpose. ID tries to infuse purpose into science, which is simply about the mechanisms. Deism is about purpose as well, and his conversion from atheism to deism does not change his belief in the mechanics of nature, evolution:

He accepts Darwinian evolution but doubts it can explain the ultimate origins of life

Rock

65 - Rock (17) - Gotcha on the minority thing and I touched on it too. WAY too many people are getting snippets of news like just reading headlines. Speaking of that, headlines can be VERY misleading. In my county, we have a 1% prepared food tax that's used for road construction. Our local paper reported with a front-page headline "County gets $17M with Pennies for Progress". If you read the second paragraph of the article, you see how misleading it is. It stated that we had a shortfall of $17M and that the State was giving us that difference. So what looks good at first as a headline is not the truth. But that's they way the soundbite socitey could take it...

Anyway, I can't really say I disagree with the rest of your reply. I don't want to shelter my child. But for the sake of proactivity, how proactive should we be. I wouldn't have thought that homosexuality would be introduced to 5 year olds. At least this parent was proactive enough to know what books the children were reading. This is something I would do for public AND private schools.

It takes more than a village (a.k.a, socialist government that Hillary would like!) to raise a child. It takes a family!

66 - @20 - AMEN Tom!

67 - I will chime in with a podcast that I recently listened to, which you can also read here:
http://www.slate.com/id/2124297/nav/tap1/

68 - By the way: I'm not American, and not well versed in ID. I have no deep feelings about the issue, just wanted to share my perspective!