What evolution debate?

No pressure, Max!

Dang, I just realized I must have hit 2000 this week. The hallmark moment came and went - I'll have to try to trace my steps...

The concept ofIntelligent Design, IMO, should be taught in Sunday School.  Evolution should be taught in public schools, which being subjected to Gov't regulation/interference, should be practicing the separation of Church and State.

Time is a mainmade invention - what we 'see' as millions or billions of years could be nothing more than a millisecond to God.  What we know of evolution, could just be God creating in His time-frame.  Ever make a sandwich for a hungry kid?  THEY will think it's taking forever, while YOU will think you're rushing!

I don't see the point of teaching creationism in a science class - it's not science, so what's the point?  Teach creationism in a religion class.

That said, while it has been proven that evolution occurs, there is not a current scientific theory for the actual creation of life on earth that holds up scientifically.  What they teach in high school biology  is not sound science.  The  idea that a "soup" of atoms miraculously reorganized in the conditions of early earth to form the first enzymes has been disproven in numerous experiments - the conditions they used in the initial lab work that backed this theory were ideal and unrealistic.  Watson and Crick (the dudes who discovered DNA) didn't even believe in this concept - one of them proposed that life was introduced to the earth from space.  I find it interesting that they still teach this as though it's proven science - I'm a science geek, and it bugs me.  There are thousands of physicists and biologists that are developing some really deep science to try and explain the origins of earth and the universe - they wouldn't be doing this if we already had all the answers.  Why can't biology textbooks at least state that this is only a theory at best, rather than acting like it's gospel?  Why do we have to teach our kids that we have all the asnwers, when we don't?

The phrase "building a wall of separation between church and state" was actually first written by Thomas Jefferson when he was explaining the necessity of creating the First Amendment.

Jefferson’s interpretation of the first amendment in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association (January 1, 1802):
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”

For your consideration....

Kenneth R. Miller
Evolution: You Bet – It’s ‘Just’ a Theory
Of course evolution is a theory – the biology textbook already said so. So why did the Cobb County Board of Education order stickers affixed inside the book’s cover, warning students that evolution is a theory? Kenneth Miller, co-author of the textbook and a witness at the trial in federal district court, has a theory ...

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Isn’t evolution a theory? Of course it is. So why, on Jan. 13, 2005, did Federal District Judge Clarence Cooper order a board of education in Georgia to remove stickers from biology textbooks that seemed to tell students that evolution was just a theory? Is this a case of censorship? Is a closed-minded scientific establishment trying to keep evidence against evolution out of the classroom? Is a federal court telling educators that that evolution is now federally protected dogma?

 
The answer is far simpler. The judge simply read the sticker and saw that it served no scientific or educational purpose. Once that was clear, he looked to the reasons for slapping it in the textbooks of thousands of students, and here the record was equally clear. Insertion of the sticker favored a particular set of religious beliefs – exactly the argument advanced by the parents of six students in the district who sued the Cobb County Board of Education to get the stickers removed.

So what’s wrong with telling students that evolution is a theory? Nothing. But the textbook they were using already described evolution as a theory, and I ought to know. Joseph Levine and I wrote the biology book Cobb County’s high school students are using. Chapter 15 of the book is titled “Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.” Hard to be clearer than that. So why did the Cobb County Board of Education find it necessary to place a warning label inside a book that already refers to evolution as a theory? Judge Cooper hit the nail right on the head when he wrote that “By denigrating evolution, the school board appears to be endorsing the well-known prevailing alternative theory, creationism or variations thereof, even though the sticker does not specifically reference any alternative theories.”

Exactly. What the sticker said was that “Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things.” The problem with that wording is that evolution is both a theory and a fact. It is a fact that living things in the past were different from living things today and that the life of the past changed, or evolved, to produce the life of the present. Recent news, for example, reports the discovery of a new mammalian fossil in China that has a small dinosaur in its stomach. This fossil is a fact – clear evidence that some early mammals were able to prey upon dinosaurs, at least little ones. And it is just one of millions of fossils supporting the fact that life has changed over time, the fact of evolution.

How did that change take place? That’s exactly the question that evolutionary theory attempts to answer. Theories in science don’t become facts – rather, theories explain facts. Evolutionary theory is a comprehensive explanation of change supported by the facts of natural history, genetics and molecular biology.

Is evolution beyond dispute? Of course not. In fact, the most misleading part of the Cobb County sticker was its concluding sentence: “This material [evolution] should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.” Think about that. The sticker told students that there was just one subject in their textbooks that had to be approached with an open mind and critically considered. Apparently, we are certain of everything in biology except for evolution. To tell students that would be to mislead them utterly as to the true nature of biological wscience. What that sticker should have told students is something that our textbook makes clear in its opening pages. Namely, that everything in science should be approached with critical thinking and an open mind. Everything.

The forces of anti-evolution will pretend that the sticker case is an example of censorship and that the sinister forces of science have converged on Georgia classrooms to prevent honest and open examination of a controversial idea. There is great irony in such charges. As conservative icon Alan Bloom pointed out in his landmark book, The Closing of the American Mind, one of the worst forms of intellectual intolerance is to promote a false equivalence between competing ideas. Acting as though all ideas (or all theories) have equal standing actually deprives students of a realistic view of how critical analysis is done. That’s as true in science as it is in the cultural conflicts that were at the heart of Bloom’s book.

Judge Cooper saw this point clearly: “While evolution is subject to criticism, particularly with respect to the mechanism by which it occurred, the sticker misleads students regarding the significance and value of evolution in the scientific community.” Does it ever. In reality, evolution is a powerful and hard-working theory used at the cutting edge of scientific inquiry in developmental biology, genome analysis, drug discovery and scientific medicine. To pretend otherwise is to shield students from the reality of how science is done today.

What the removal of the sticker will actually do is not to close a window but to open one – a window that will let students see a science of biology in which all theories – not just one – are the result of constant, vigorous, critical analysis. A science in which evolution is at the centerpiece of a 21st-century revolution in our understanding of the grandeur and majesty of life.

So, what should be done with those stickers, now firmly glued into thousands of textbooks? Given the power and scope of the Judge’s ruling, I’d pass along a suggestion I received from a science teacher in Cobb County itself: Paste a bright, shiny American flag on top of each and every one of them.

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Kenneth Miller is professor of biology at Brown University and co-author (with Joseph S. Levine) of Biology, published by Prentice Hall – the biology textbook used in the high schools of Cobb County, Ga. Miller also serves as chair of the Education Committee of The American Society for Cell Biology.

I'm sorry, but that page is a load of crap. Particularly this sentence: "Our U.S. Constitution was founded on Biblical principles and it was the intention of the authors for this to be a Christian nation."

That's bullsh*t. This nation was founded on, among other things, the freedom from religious oppression. The idea that this would be a "Christian nation" is completely antithetical to that.

Actually, the scientific community does not propose that is was a miraculous event. They don't use miracles as explanations of events. And there are supportable theories of evolution but the evolutionary scientists are still hashing out the details - as they should be.

Watson and Crick stole the research of a female scientist who died as a result of the radiation she exposed herself to in her pursuit of knowledge. She took all the chances and they stole her research and films. More importantly, they were not evolutionary scientists; they were molecular biologists.

You are confusing the fact of evolution with the theory of evolution. The facts of evolution are taught in science since they deal with scientific matters. The theory  - the structure for explaining the facts - belongs in science. Where would you put it? Spanish class? Finally, scientists don't claim to have the all answers. They have all the questions!

It's not in the Constitution, but it's alluded to in the Bill of Rights.  Specifically, see Amendment I and Amendment X.  Since the Constitution does not specifically say that the President or Congress can order schools to teach certain things, the States have the right to determine what should or should not be taught.

Then again, it's all a rather moot point, as our schools have been failing to teach our children useful information for years.  Seen any recent polls about knowledge of geography or history?

I get the dollar...

My point exactly - you may understand these two concepts, but I don't think the average high schooler does.  It is not taught that way, at least not in this area.  A surprising number of adults DO think that science has all the answers.

I'm not meaning to have an argument about evolution here - I'm a chemical engineer with a minor in biochemistry and I don't need the have evolution or the the scientific method explained to me.  I was trying to dumb down my point by using the same terminology an average person would understand - since this is a triathlon forum, I'm not going to nitpick about every word I, or anyone else, uses to make a point.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!

That quote makes big fat liars of  Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison and Thomas Paine.

Thomas Jefferson:
“The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”

“They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition of their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the alter of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

 
“In every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty; he is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.”
 

James Madison:

“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise....During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.”

“Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”

Thomas Paine, From The Age of Reason:
“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of....Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and of my own part, I disbelieve them all.”

“All natural institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”
 
“The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion.”

“What is it the Bible teaches us? — rapine, cruelty, and murder.”

John Adams - From a letter to Charles Cushing (October 19, 1756):
“Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, ‘this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.’”
 
From a letter to Thomas Jefferson:
“I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved — the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!”
 
Additional quotes from John Adams:
“Where do we find a precept in the Bible for Creeds, Confessions, Doctrines and Oaths, and whole carloads of trumpery that we find religion encumbered with in these days?”

Wrong, The portion quoted is correct. It is Jefferson's interpretation and widely accepted as the first use of the phrase "separation of church and state." If you wanted to know which amendment is known as the separation clause then you should have asked that instead.

The question was  where in the Constitution does the phrase "separation of church and state"  appear. My answer was that it does not appear in the Constitution (it doesn't) but that Jefferson coined the phrase in the letter I referenced.

My answer was entirely correct.