Evolution In The Classroom

[rossum]

For you,this could well be a major problem and a stumbling block because unlike proper Catholics perhaps you dont accept the word of God that He does not make mistakes

If you look at the top right of my posts you will see that I am Buddhist, not Catholic.

but created everthing perfect[very good]and guess who threw a spanner in the works and messed it all up as is his wont to do it even to this day

It is you who does not accept the word of God. God says “very good” sometimes, He says just “good” at other times and He says “not good” at Genesis 2:18. Can something God describes as “not good” be perfect? At no point before the Fall does God say “perfect”. You are adding a new word to the Bible.

The GULO pseudogene is just part of the strong evidence for common descent of humans and the other apes.

rossum

 

[twinc]

A lot of people see a strong backlash at people attempting to get Intelligent Design into the classroom and assume the backlash is against religion or God, but this is not really true. The backlash is because they’re trying to force something in a science class that is not science, which just makes no sense. This is especially true considering that ID says that it is not religious, so why would one even then feel the need to say people are keeping religion out of schools when ID is rejected? Besides that, I’ve met very few atheists even that are against religion being discussed in religion, philosophy, or history classes, it just has a proper place and the science class is not it.

And no, I’m not saying that ID is not science because I’m biased. The issue with ID is that it’s only a hypothesis… that’s it. It simply has not met the proper requirements to be taught in a school setting as a scientific theory. This is explained by this video:

youtube.com/watch?v=WqznURlEWI0

If you want to learn about Evolution, here is a good book written by a Christian. I have not read it, but it was recommended by some friends of mine that are Christian and they said it helped them understand the Evolution idea much better.

amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0060930497

Hope that helps

It is highly relevant that as you state Evolution be accepted and regarded as an idea but not as a fact - I think we can all go along with that,no problem - twinc

 

[twinc]

If you look at the top right of my posts you will see that I am Buddhist, not Catholic.

It is you who does not accept the word of God. God says “very good” sometimes, He says just “good” at other times and He says “not good” at Genesis 2:18. Can something God describes as “not good” be perfect? At no point before the Fall does God say “perfect”. You are adding a new word to the Bible.

The GULO pseudogene is just part of the strong evidence for common descent of humans and the other apes.

rossum

no,no,no,not so - you stressed a fault in His creation.God said about His creation “very good” viz no defect or fault.I think we can all accept that what would be very good for God would be perfect for us .He did not say His creation was “not good”.He said “it is not good for man to be alone” - so what about common descent,how common is common,how far back do you want to go,is it to the amoeba or the molecule.Only in evolutionary circles would it be possible for a cow and an ape as animals to have cross bred a two legged cow or a four legged ape as intelligent design or very good - twinc

 

[twinc]

No, you’re not.

If you’ve got a science teacher actually telling a class that God doesn’t exist, that’s a major issue. However, if teacher just teaches science without reference to God, then that’s not the “atheist’s point of view”. It’s no more a public school biology teacher’s job to talk about God than it is a math or gym teacher’s job. If you want your child to understand the facts they learn in the context of the God you believe in, then you have to teach that part to your kids yourself.

Apparently you can’t remember much of your class at all if you can’t remember what the term “theory” means in the context of science.

“Theory” means a well-supported body of scientific knowledge that’s useful for making predictions. Evolution isn’t something that we only kinda know and will progress to “fact” once we have more data… it’s a theory, but it’s also fact. Actually, it’s based on many, many facts.

It’s not.- exactly and not even one fact - twinc

Sure. But first come up with one that stays in the realm of science. BTW: so-called “intelligent design” isn’t it.

btw Evolution,so called, is not science but pseudo science posing in the guise of true science and also a doctrinal error parading in scientific guise - twinc

It’s about the search for measurable fact, not “truth”, but that aside, you’re fairly close to the mark. What science isn’t about is political wrangling to get religion slipped into public school classes in disguise.

 

[Mystic_Banana]

Welcome to science. Possibilities are all you will get in science; if you want absolute truths then you are in the wrong place. Every scientific measurement comes with error bars. Every scientific theory is provisional. Science studies the material world, and since we do not know everything there is to know about the material world we can never be sure that we have the final answer. All we have is the best answer we have so far.

…according to which, evolution should not then be considered a fact! Unless as a a scientismic article of faith, perhaps…

If you want to calculate a probability then you will need a model. We know that there are at least six billion different ways to make a human being; there are a lot more ways than that if you think about it carefully. There are also billions of ways to make an amoeba. Between any one amoeba and any one human being there are a multitude of possible pathways. You have billions of possible starting points, billions of possible end points and billions of possible pathways. You do the calculation; what is the chance of any one of those billions of billions of billions of possibilities happening?

Each possibility is mindbogglingly unlikely, I should think. I’m guessing, from your argument, you understand that vast quantities of individual improbabilities do not accumulate into anything you could point at and describe as ‘likely’. At least not from how I understand maths to work…

No, both neutral and beneficial mutations continue life. You need to learn more about genetics.

:crutches: ooh, ooh, I’ll have to go to the back and write 30 lines, sent by the great professor… OK, you big pedant you, ‘if the beneficial mutations are those that drive evolution’

Big fish eat little fish. Size can be an advantage. Is it easier to kill a rabbit or an elephant?

Depends on how. If you are a fox, the rabbit. If you are a lightening bolt, the Elephant. If you are a famine, still the Elephant. In a casual reworking of maths ignoring the multitude of other factors involved in this process (and remember, kiddies, the whole scenario of an environment for life being able to spring into life in the first place, assuming that’s actually possible, should also be factored into this), the rabbit wins, and the amoeba probably does better than either. THE AMOEBA IS THE HEIGHT OF EVOLUTION!

Why this obsession with “pure chance”. Natural selection is not a chance process, it is an effect of the number of fertile offspring you have - loosely the number of grandchildren. Two eagle chicks hatch. One chick has a mutation that renders it blind, the other chick has normal eyesight. On average, which chick is going to have more descendants? Do you think that the result is “pure chance”? You are criticising a strawman here.

Do you really think that it is immensely unlikely that the blind chick will have fewer offspring than the sighted chick? Strange.

rossum

You are talking of something like a vast and elaborate domino display being set up - by accident. I am criticising a relentlessly celebrated strawman hiding being a deluded excuse for science as if it were a ‘fact’, here.

I think I’ve said before - survival is not ‘evolution’. Does complexity produce greater survival chances? Not necessarily.

Is an ape that naturally stands upright more likely to survive a lightning bolt than one that walks on all fours? You’re inventing Sci-fi scenarios, excuses for the why what and wheres to justify your belief in the (un)holy dogmas of Darwin.

All this is irrelevant as to whether organic acid would eventually give birth to intelligent life