#65 Postby kevin » Wed Jan 18, 2006 10:12 am
Abiogenesis is a separate issue from evolution. You might as well try and disprove gravity and a round earth, because those theories of round earth and gravity are as well supported as evolution. Abiogenesis which is the formation of living creatures from inorganic materials isn't on as sturdy of ground.
We know evolution occured and occurs. What we know to a very strong degree (just like we know to a very strong degree relativity) is that natural selection is the driving force behind evolution. The only possible change to our understanding is that natural selection is perhaps involved to a slightly lesser or slightly greater degree.
As for teaching the word of god in schools. Which god? Which value based system? Why are schools instructing in morals and ideas to begin with? Why should they instruct in your morals and ideas? Because the founding fathers allegedly held them (which is false by the way, they were hardly christians)? Well that was two hundred years ago, and a lot can happen in two hundred years. The Roman empire in fact within two hundred years can go from worshipping a pantheon of Roman/Greek/Egyptian gods to worshipping the Unconquerable Sun to worshipping Jesus in that time.
There's no reason why in America the bible should be taught as divinely inspired. There are many religions and groups in these United States and as citizens they are free to move and enroll in any school district they live within. So even if 100% of your district is full of divinely inspired preachers you cannot teach a book as the word of god, because if I had a son and we moved to your area, you would be forcing him to learn something which has no basis in fact and is only believed by those of a certain faith. Evolution on the other hand is accepted by almost everyone who is not an Islamist or a Conservative Christian. Believe it or not, the books you might have read about evolution are filled with so many lies they make people like me red in the face, they lie about what Darwin wrote, they lie about physical facts, they lie and repeat them enough it makes me want to throw up.
Scientists have no interest in changing anyone's value-system, only in discovering the best set of ideas for predicting and understanding the natural world. We could care less what books you read and instruct in your home. What I as an American will not stand for is the stupidification of America which results when dogma is taught not as dogma within a church but objective fact within a classroom. Its bad enough we have to go fight religious theocracies around the world without instructing our kids in religion in the secular domain.
Kevin
0 likes
), but if you had children teaching them that only God created man is ridiculous. You will have problems when it comes to human biology and so forth. I say let them learn that stuff when the time is right.
