In case you hadn’t heard, the Senate Judiciary Committee in Florida voted to pass a bill entitled “academic freedom”. In case you also didn’t know, this is just another way for creationists to teach creationism in schools and a way for the Disco ‘tute to run with the “it’s science” nonsense all the way to the bank.
The Orlando Sentinel has a good report on it.
(Click through for Part I out of II, on supposed alternative theories and user comments from the Sentinel)
Our first quote of the night comes via the user Sanford Man:
The problem with only one theory being taught is that , that theory then has to be an absolute truth. The “big bang” does not co exist well with evolution as their is no theory to suggest how the big bang got started. Two or more theories are fine with me.
The problem with two theories being taught is that there really aren’t two theories within the scientific community. What most Florida schools aside from college would be teaching is more likely just the fact of evolution and some of the theory backing how it works. The big bang is completely irrelevant to the subject of evolution because, at least with the Earth, there was about 10 billion years between the big bang and the evolution of life on Earth.
One Brian has a view common in modern protestant Christianity and most of Islam:
Its really funny to see how all the evolutionists feel so threatened by this. If evolution is so pure and true, then you should have nothing to fear from “intelligent design” being taught as another theory of creation. But that’s just it. You have a LOT to fear because the theory of evolution does not hold water when scrutinized. But it really is easier to believe in evolution. Believing in evolution allows you equate human beings to the beasts of the wild. When you put people on the same plane as animals instead of beings created in God’s image, it makes it easier for you to justify the horrors of abortion, euthanasia, and other such atrocities.
Evolution has withstood 150 years of intense scrutiny. It was proven by modern genetics. That’s withstanding scrutiny well. I must say though, humans (including myself) are anti-evolution: we take care of people. In wolf packs, if one wolf was to betray the others, he or she would be kicked from the group and die. This doesn’t happen in human families. We’re animals, but just as every animal type behaves different, humans have set our own ways of activity. Notice that Christianity, Islam, and Judaism repeatedly say to kill, murder, etc. everyone who is a heathen, doesn’t agree, rebellious teens, and so on. That’s a lot worse. But I’m not holding that against religion because our human evolved civility has made such things utterly appalling.
DMZ had this to say:
I believe that the “BIG BANG” and “LET THERE BE LIGHT” are the same story, one from a religious perspective, the other from the scientific. I believe in Evolution and the Divine Creation of our physical universe. Science will never disprove the Creation. It will only help us better understand it.
Science has no goals to disprove creationism, because it disproves itself. Science will never disprove that I’m the tooth fairy, but that doesn’t mean it’s true. In fact, in science, you study what can be proven as opposed to what can not. If there is a creator, we want to study him. The goal of science is to learn. However, I strongly disagree with the opinion that science helps us better understand creation. How do you explain the flood from a true scientific perspective as opposed to religious dogma by way of Kent Hovind and Ken Ham? You can’t. Because there’s no actual evidence for it. Just evidence for other things given religious spin.
I really don’t understand the criticism here. There are MANY scientist that are now “coming out of the closet” so to speak, not when they find religion, but when they look at the evidence against evolution with an open mind as in “everything happened strictly by chance given billions of years”, it still couldn’t have just happened. The cell itself is so extremely complex that given another billion billion years, it still couldn’t have evolved into what it is without being designed. Anyone can look at any building and know that it has a designer. They same goes for nature. Further more, many mathematicians scoff at the idea of evolution because the chances of just about anything that we see on this planet coming together all in the correct order by chance has the probability of nill. Compound that by millions and millions of various species, etc… all with a nill probability?? But yet “WE MUST NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING BUT EVOLUTION!” Spare me, and spare the teachers that are having the courage to allow truth to be spoken. This is not about religion, it is about truth. Some people just don’t like the truth. Seems to be lots of them here.I would be glad to believe in evolution if the evidence AGAINST it wasn’t so strong. And I don’t base that on the Bible, but on science. By the way, go see Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, opening April 18th, then come back and blog.
A very typical case of lying for Jesus. 99.9% of the scientific community fully accepts evolution. Mathematicians have given beyond great odds for evolution of the tiny cells, as well as the evolution of bigger creatures into small ones (i.e. dinosaurs to birds). As far as this supposed designer is concerned, where did he come from, exactly? Has he always been? Is he metaphysical? Yeah, that’s creationism… and god. Intelligent Design is not science because it’s a null argument, it says that evolution don’t work so godidit, which isn’t how science works. You provide proof and evidence for every claim you make. Intelligent design has none.
This one is a bit different, but still moderately relevant:
The TRUTH is…evolutionists HATE the God of the Bible and have Hijacked the teachers union to cram their religion, [EVOLUTION] down our throat.
How much of their religion [EVOLUTION] could they cram if we the taxpayers said….NO.
See Ken Miller. He comes from a long line of Catholics, who have a saying called truth is one. He’s also an evolutionary biologist. Evolution is as much a religion as gravity — they’re both “just theories”. In fact, the point of religion is that it’s about faith and has no supporting evidence, whereas evolution has mountains of backing evidence.
There’s a lot more madness than that at said site. Some of it is downright sickening.
The only “Alternative Theories” are creationist stories from the stone age and have no backing in science, where the term theory is used in this context.
I’m sorry this one is a bit short, but I’ve got another to cover and it’s a bit more extreme.
