Leftist education

[Voice]

Comparing one to the other because neither is disproven is not "teaching creationsim".

That is just a comparison.

If one taught it as fact, then I could see your argument. So again, I have to posit that creationism is not taught in schools.

In fact, if we wanted to disallow the comparison of how life developed, when we don't have proof of one way or another, then we are truly doing ourselves a disservice because the presumption of the left is that their view is correct, without any evidence to prove such is true.

When something that isn't biology like creationism is given equal merit in a biology class when compared to, well, biology, there is something wrong with that curriculum.

Did you say 'we don't have proof one way or another'? We have gallons of scientific proof for evolution and zero scientific proof for creationism. Again, when my tax dollars are paying for a religious hack to teach my kids that something that ISN'T science has equal merit to something that IS science in a science class, there's a huge problem.

 

[Voice]

It's really sad to see supposedly intelligent, rational men declaring with all certainty, "There is no God".

It is entirely illogical (and I must say, pathetically ignorant) to state this opinion as fact as you were NOT there during creation and you, being born in the 20th century, have NO CLUE as to whether there is a God or not.

In this thread, the man making the most sense is Danger. It is fair to be agnostic, to state that "I don't know if there is a God". It is also fair to state "I don't think there is a God". But to say, "I know there is no God" is absurd to the highest degree. This is UNKNOWABLE to you. We spend so much time here on SS calling women out on their lack of logic, and then we come to this subject and men declare that they know the demonstrably unknowable.

Men of faith believe with all their heart that there is a God, but they understand that God has set a requirement that He is only knowable by faith (His words, not mine) along with His scriptures that are literally dripping with prophecy that has been fulfilled.

God requires faith for those who are inclined to approach Him, but He recognizes that blind faith is worthless. That's why exposure to scripture is the very thing, in fact the ONLY thing (again, His words, not mine) that bestows this faith on us.

Let us never forget, too, that God is the one who has said to mankind, "Come, let us reason together". God requires faith, gives us the faith He requires (because we can't drum it up on our own), but He also values and appeals to our reason.

Men hold onto the painfully ridiculous logic of "I know there is no God" because they REVILE the though of answering to a higher moral authority. The very concept is so distasteful to them because man wants to be His own god. He wants to call the shots in his life and decide for himself what is right and wrong to such a degree that he is willing to make outlandish leaps of logic in order to maintain this belief.

"I'm not sure if there is a God"
Absolutely fair.

"I don't believe there is a God"
Fair and intellectually sound (although of course my belief differs).

"There is no God"
Absolute foolishness with zero basis in logic.

"I believe in God"
Usually voiced by a man who formerly was agnostic or even atheistic but who has availed himself of scripture in order to settle the question and found his faith.

I'm not sure if there is a Christian God. But the problem with your logic is, I'm also not sure if Krishna, Allah, Shiva, Aries, Zeus, Baal, Apollo exist either. Another problem with your logic is there is absolutely no way to prove that any of these gods do or don't exist because by definition they exist outside the "mortal realm". To say that your god has a greater probability to exist when compared to any of these other gods is absurd.

You said yourself, that God only requires faith, not actual scientific proof to "know" he exists. The same could be said about any other god. They ALL require blind faith and there lies the problem.

 

[SamTheHobit]

I'm curious if there has been any skeletal remains discovered that suggest we evolved from anything "animal".

 

[Voice]

What is there to rule out that Life here on Earth was created by an intelligent being? If you have that evidence, please present it now. Who is to say that evolution and intelligent design are mutually exclusive?

And, last I knew, the beginnings of life was biology, so yes this does belong in a biology class. And if one discusses how life was created, then one does not rule out any theories. Especially when there is no proof that only one possibility existed. BTW, when I say proof, I mean proof that rules out any other possibility, thus moving said proposal from theory to historical fact.

I don't care for my tax dollars going towards all sorts of things, but this is actually quite reasonable. At least until they disprove God.

There are many theories for the beginning of life itself on this planet. One of those being panspermia. This theory simply states that life came from somewhere else. That IS taught in schools. Evolution does not and has never explained the origin of life on this planet. It does however explain the variety of life.

This guy on the other hand is providing intelligent design as an alternative to evolution. He is not saying that life was intelligently created and then through evolution we begot humans and the rest of the variety of life today. He is instead putting out there to his students that it's possible that an intelligent being created life as it is NOW. He is explaining that the variety of life could be explained through intelligent design. This has absolutely no scientific merit.

If you want all theories to be evenly presented, then why don't we teach the scientology explanation of life or the Hindu explanation of life? Because they all equally have absolutely zero evidence to support them. In science we present theories that have evidence of being valid. Creationism has no evidence. It is not a theory. It is a hypothesis that isn't supported by any evidence. It should not be presented in a science class.

BTW I can't prove to you that an intelligent being did NOT create life. Unfortunately it's logically impossible to ever disprove a negative. Faulty logic is something that is pretty consistent with creationists.

 

[Bible_Belt]

Genesis does get the chronology correct in that fish came before people. The only scientific explanation for that correctness is that it must have just been a lucky guess. Not that creationists actually read the bible, but there is a lot of creepily true-sounding parts to Genesis, like giants walking the earth and the way that Cain is afraid of "the other people" when he is being banished by his parents, who were supposed to be the only two people on Earth besides him.

 

[Voice]

Genesis does get the chronology correct in that fish came before people. The only scientific explanation for that correctness is that it must have just been a lucky guess. Not that creationists actually read the bible, but there is a lot of creepily true-sounding parts to Genesis, like giants walking the earth and the way that Cain is afraid of "the other people" when he is being banished by his parents, who were supposed to be the only two people on Earth besides him.

It also said that earth was created before the stars...

 

[Voice]

So, you are ok with teaching that life could have come from another location, but not if an individual was thought to be behind that process?

No, again I'm against creationism being taught along side evolution as both having equal merit to explain the VARIETY OF LIFE. Because evolution is evidence based while creationism is not. And science is about evidence, and this is a science class.

The origin of life is a not nearly as clear. I'm quite ok with someone proposing that life was brought here by an other intelligent being or beings. It could be possible, but it's extremely hard to test. BTW intelligent being(s) does not equal God. So if you are going to propose this hypothesis in schools you have to make that clear and that is something that this guy does not. I actually think I remember my AP bio teacher in high school talking about this subject. There are other hypotheses that have more evidence such as abiogenesis and possibly this http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/12/021204080856.htm.

"Intelligent Design" is so extremely broad in meaning. I'm not even sure what it means to most people.

The problem with creationists is that when they find a gap in human knowledge, they fill it with God because it already fulfills their previous held beliefs. Or in this case because creationism was ruled to be unconstitutional in schools an "intelligent being" fills the gaps which pretty much means the same thing to them. I don't know what's so wrong with saying "we don't know yet".

 

[Voice]

I don't agree with teaching religion in schools, but the leftists go too far in banning something like ID when it is definitely a possibility.

It's as simple as this: The problem with ID is it is not empirical. Scientists cannot test for the presence of design, nor can they disprove the presence of design. In other words, intelligent design isn't science, therefore it shouldn't be taught in a science class. It's not even a scientific term. It was made up by creationists. It doesn't even have a clear definition. From my understanding it's basically this: Anything that science cannot currently explain about life on this planet through evidence must be due to an "intelligent designer". This is backwards logic. Most of the things argued for ID has been disproven by mainstream science.

I'm completely open to intelligent design being discussed in a philosophy class. Because that's what it is, a philosophy. It has no part in a biology class.

I'm definitely not liberal. I consider myself moderate, maybe a little libertarian but definitely a realist.

It basically comes down to this. The religious right does not want something taught in schools that undermines their previously held beliefs. So they have to push for an alternative pseudoscience type theory to be taught in schools to rationalize their beliefs. Unfortunately pseudoscience has no place in a science class.

 

[Voice]

I disagree that science is about what can be tested.

The scientific method is ENTIRELY based on empirical and measurable evidence.

The whole notion that life developed on Earth without assistance can only be a theory

That isn't a theory, it's a hypothesis, and one you made up. And it's logically incorrect because you cannot prove a negative. Logic 101.

This is the problem. You are a very smart guy, Danger. But you are not a scientist. When you have people who are unaware of the scientific method attempt to structure the curriculum of a science class problems like these arise. "It's just a theory" is a common misconception. Theories are backed by evidence. Hypotheses are just explanations you try to prove or disprove.

I understand what you are saying. I agree that intelligent beings, or an intelligent being could have engineered or planted life on this planet. But it is incredibly hard to test that. That's why it remains a hypothesis, because there is no evidence to back it up, yet. And I believe this hypothesis was mentioned briefly in my AP bio class back in high school along with panspermia, abiogenesis and other explanations for the origin of life. So it is taught in schools. I wouldn't use the term "intelligent design" to describe this hypothesis because according to creationists ID includes the origin of life AND it's diversity and pretty much everything in between which has no validity.

 

[Dust 2 Dust]

If the God of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism exists and Satan is this Gods adversary then I choose Satan. Any man who says to me thou shalt is my enemy. Kill god, fukk Jesus, Hail Satan.

 

[Down Low]

So why isn't some one-off COGIC or Pentacostal sect the third rail? It's no accident that the Roman Catholic Church is the only organization that remained steadfastly against sex out of wedlock, homosexuality, divorce, remarriage, contraception, and abortion. (As opposed to Lutheran bvll sh1t about OKing abortion when Planned Parenthood abortionists declare that pregnancy might possibly be harmful to the emotional state of the mother if she throws a tantrum one day at the father.) Go ahead, blow smoke about current fads, but the Church has great moral authority precisely because it isn't swayed by fads. I'm not at all surprised that degenerates targetted the Church to get to young men; the same way Village People celebrated degenerates camping out in YMCA hotels.

 

[Voice]

Science is not afraid of words. It just doesn't deal with the supernatural. That is why i'm quite ok if you hypothesized that life was brought here by another being or beings. I'm not ok if you hypothesized that those beings were supernatural. This is why rightests are so sneaky. They want to sneak in the possibility that life was created by supernatural beings in our schools. That is not science.

You're never going to convince me that science isn't empirical.

 

[Bible_Belt]

The empiricism is the problem, because it refuses to accept anything that cannot be experienced by human senses. I once had an undergrad honors course that was supposed to be about Einstein's theory of relativity and cosmology. The professor described the universe as an expanding balloon. I asked him what was outside the balloon and he got really mad because he said such a question was impossible to answer. That's the limit of empiricism. I think that's also why "dark matter" is the greatest mystery right now. It drives scientific minds nuts that there is something there that they can't see.

 

[Voice]

So you are ok with science classes in public schools teaching that there could be supernatural explanation for life?

I'll try to put this in perspective. Science really doesn't know why we need to sleep, but we have pretty good ideas. Does this mean we need to include a supernatural explanation for it?

We don't know != there could be a supernatural explanation

This can go on and on.

The bottom line is people can believe anything they want, but a science class has no business discussing anything supernatural, because science deals with empirical nature. You can discuss the supernatural and limits of empiricism in a philosophy class, not a biology class.

 

[( . )( . )]

So you are ok with science classes in public schools teaching that there could be supernatural explanation for

The problem is stupid leftoid ****s indoctrinating children with their own destructive ideologies. The whole smoke and mirrors tactic of leftards spouting "gah religion" was done and dusted decades ago. It's a non issue in public school communist camps.

Danger, you have the patience of a saint.

 

[Voice]

Danger I don't give a rat's ass how you interpret "other intelligent beings" as long as the teacher isn't actively sprouting that "other beings" could be supernatural i.e. God.

If a student in the class asks the teacher whether "other beings" could be God, then the teacher should answer "Science does not deal with the supernatural". If a students asks if "other beings" could be Allah or Shiva or Ra then the teacher should have the same exact answer.

BTW I'm neither a liberal nor am I an atheist.

 

[Voice]

Ok, so you are against teachers uttering the word "God". Gotcha. Not sure why that question would upset you so much. It's just a question.

I'm against the teacher uttering God or anything supernatural as an explanation for something, in a SCIENCE class. Because that is not science damnit.

But, I'm not mad, u mad bro?

 

[Voice]

Nah, just seeing how you think. But when you start throwing out "damnits" and "rats @ss" it just appears like you are.

Frustration bro. This topic is always frustrating. You're a logical guy but most people who are against evolution are only against it because they are emotionally attached to their religion. Logic can persuade logic, but not emotion.