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Creation Versus Evolution

ID doesn't need to call into question evolution - it would say evolution is ID or part of it.

;)
 
coldelephant said:
What has this got to do with how we originated BTW?
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Well...If you ask a Christian creationist where they get their faith and belief of creationism from, they'll tell you 'from the Bible.' Most faiths have some sort of holy book equivelent to the Bible and they all seem to agree that Jesus existed.
Therefore, if the theory of creation comes from the Bible or similar holy book, then an investigation into the validity of the stories told in these scriptures would seem in order. ;)
 
coldelephant said:
ID doesn't need to call into question evolution - it would say evolution is ID or part of it.

;)
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There is no real reason (apart from dogmatic ones) why creationism should not embrace evolution.

And God said "let there be life, and there was life. Further I have spoken the pattern for this life and it shall be called Deoxyribonucleic acid of which the helix shall be doubled, and even more the reader and the engine for this pattern shall be Evolution "
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God creates and then sets the processes in motion to complete, and belief stays intact, even if the same can't be said for the dogma that supports it.
 
Let us test Darwin, teacher says
Science teaching materials deemed "not appropriate" by the government should be allowed in class, Education Secretary Alan Johnson has been told.
Ex-head of chemistry at Liverpool's Blue Coat School, Nick Cowan, says the packs promoting intelligent design are useful for debating Darwinist theories.

He urged Mr Johnson to view packs from lobby group Truth in Science for himself, before condemning them.

Education officials insist intelligent design is not recognised as science.

Advocates of intelligent design say there are things that cannot be explained by evolution and so argue for the existence of a supernatural intelligence behind the creation of the universe.

The Department for Education and Skills recently condemned the teaching packs, sent out to 5,000 secondary schools by the group of academics and clerics, as inappropriate and not supportive of the science curriculum.


There's a sense that if you criticise Darwin you must be some kind of religious nut case
Nick Cowan
Former head of chemistry at Blue Coat School, Liverpool

Reacting to Mr Cowan's letter, a DfES spokesman said: "Neither creationism nor intelligent design are taught as a subject in schools, and are not specified in the science curriculum.

"The National Curriculum for science clearly sets down that pupils should be taught that the fossil record is evidence for evolution, and how variation and selection may lead to evolution or extinction."

Mr Cowan's call comes as the Guardian reported that the Truth in Science materials were being used in 59 schools.

'Sacred cow'

Mr Cowan says they are "very scholarly" and could be extremely useful in helping children understand the importance of scientific debate

He told the BBC: "Darwin has for many people become a sacred cow.

"There's a sense that if you criticise Darwin you must be some kind of religious nut case.

"We might has well have said Einstein shouldn't have said what he did because it criticised Newton."

'Controversy'

Mr Cowan argues that science only moves forward by reviewing and reworking previous theories and that these materials foster an understanding of this.


This is quite frankly a distraction that science teachers can well do without
Phil Willis, Commons science and technology committee

He also points out that the Truth in Science materials, which he describes as outstanding, do not mention creationism or even God.
He says the GCSE syllabus requires children to appreciate how science works and understand the nature of scientific controversy.

"The government wants children to be exposed to scientific debate at the age of 14 or 15.

"All the Truth in Science stuff does is put forward stuff that says here's a controversy. This is exactly the kind of thing that young people should be exposed to," Mr Cowan added.

'Poorly served'

The chairman of the parliamentary science and technology committee, Phil Willis, said using the packs in science classes "elevated creationism" to the same level of debate as Darwinism and that there was no justification for that.

He added: "There's little enough time with the school curriculum to deal with real science like climate change, energy and the weather.

"This is quite frankly a distraction that science teachers can well do without."

Many leading scientists argue that theories about intelligent design should not be allowed in school because they simply not scientific.

Back in April, the Royal Society warned against allowing creationism in school saying that pupils must understand that science backs Darwin's theory of evolution.

The society's statement said: "Young people are poorly served by deliberate attempts to withhold, distort or misrepresent scientific knowledge and understanding in order to promote particular religious beliefs."


Recently the British Humanist Association asked Mr Johnson for greater clarity on the teaching of creationism in schools.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/e ... 187534.stm

Published: 2006/11/27 12:28:19 GMT

© BBC MMVI
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QuaziWashboard said:
Imagine a world where the intelligent inhabitants have made artifical intelligence that thinks, feels and reproduces itself. This 'could' be said to constitute intelligent life even though it's non organic. Now imagine that something happens to that world that causes all organic life to die out. The resulting artificial civilisation of robots, androids, ect. could be construed as being the result of creation, being 'created' by the earlier civilisation. It could even result in a form of religion that worships their creators. Of course, this doesn't answer the question of how the original life on this hypothetical planet occured in the first place, but would this matter to the artifical intelligence? After all, those who claim that some kind of deity is responsible for life here don't seem to be concerned with who or what created God, although this hypothetical artificial race would have proof of their creators existence in records and remains of the earlier civilisation, unless maybe they had to abandon their planet shortly before it was destroyed, leaving all proof behind.
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One of my favourite arguments about consiousness! But what I meant to say is, unlike oourselves, it would be possible for those androids etc to stumble across remnants of organic life. Maybe whilst digging aimlessly. They would be very able to come to the conclusion that those heaps of bones must have moved once as they could make models of those finds and hence conclude that those organic creatures must have inhabited the earth before them. So if they ever wondered where they came from they would have a whole lot to go by. The idea of having been created by those beings could further be evidenced by finding other non organic materials shaped to serve the bodies of those they found [i.e chairs,buildins] which would show that the organics were able to "create" non-organic structures. Yes it would take them an awful long time to maybe get to those conclusions and there would be debates BUT in this instance, the argument FOR creationism would be more credible than evolution. It would almost be the only feasable explanation for the existence of the non-orgs on a planet that has so much evidence of previous organic life.

In our world it is however the other way round. Everything plausible points to evolution, so why not go with the overwhelming evidence?
 
Faith - and an overwhelming desire to control every aspect of human life is the reason why these people are asking for creationism to be taught as a science.

It is not science, it is religion, but they think it is the truth, and think it is science.

I wonder if faith will undo the human race, or paranoia, or greed...
 
coldelephant said:
and think it is science.
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Faith isn't science. I think that's the bit they get wrong. But that's also the bit most people get wrong, notably also those that call faith into question.
 
coldelephant said:
ID doesn't need to call into question evolution - it would say evolution is ID or part of it.

;)
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Except those people who are pushing for ID to be taught in schools actually believe that evolutionary theory is completely wrong.

Proponents of ID want evolution to be scrapped in favour of a new design-based theory. The problem is, they don't have a testable theory to replace evolution..........just empty rhetoric. Consequently ID is really an ideological movement and not the least bit scientific.

"Easily the biggest challenge facing the ID community is to develop a full-fledged theory of biological design. We don't have such a theory right now, and that's a real problem. Without a theory, it's very hard to know where to direct your research focus."

Paul Nelson

Source
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Hieru: "Anyone familar with H.G. WELL's "War of the Worlds" should now understand that the downfall of the Martians would not occur as it does in the book. Earth-bound viruses and bacteria would simply be incompatible with Martian lifeforms."
There is a very important distcinction between virus and bacteria. Bacteria (or protists) would have no problem to infect alien bodies, as they would probably not have any immunological defenses against them. They're predators, living on organic matter. Viruses have to enter hosts cells and merge with their genetic codes in order to reproduce. As they're not living organisms, they don't 'eat'. There's no way they could be dangerous to an unrelated organism, except by astonishing coincidence. But to eat an undefended extraterrestrial would not be more difficult to bacteria than to a carnivorous mammal to prey upon an extraterrestrial animal. That's not to say that the conclusion of "War of the Worlds" is very plausible: couldn't advanced space aliens be aware of the existence of microbs? But NASA is right to be careful.

An important adddition to the debate about the origin of life. The average temperature of Earth's oceans, 3,5 billions years ago, has been estimated at 70°C! Maybe the warm pond theory was right after all...
 
Analis said:
There is a very important distcinction between virus and bacteria. Bacteria (or protists) would have no problem to infect alien bodies, as they would probably not have any immunological defenses against them. They're predators, living on organic matter.
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I suppose that it would depend if the aliens were made of matter that terrestrial bacteria could metabolise.
 
Hieru:This particular version of Intervention Theory appears to be nothing more than Creationism or ID: except deities have been replaced with aliens.
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Not exactly...Pye supports evolution (even with all of the gaps including the difficult ones at the very beginning organic molecular stages) up to the point where we have a problem showing the origins of homo sapiens. At this point (approx 300,000 years ago) he believes that 'aliens' genetically altered proto-humans, like Homo Erectus for example, to create the modern human. (He does say he thinks it's possible that organic material was seeded on earth in the beginning as a possible explanation for the origin of organic complex molecules leading to rna and dna. He clearly states this is all speculative.)
While I don't fall into his camp, I think he brings up some excellent points showing the huge gaps in evolutionary theory that others of course have brought up before. Where Pye gets strange is his use of alien intervention to explain the emergence of homo sapiens.

I sit on the fence on possible answers to origins and evolutionary mechanisms. I am not willing to rule out seemingly eccentric ideas at this point since we have no clear proof of the actual chain of events involved in 'evolution' at this stage in our knowledge. I suspect 'random evolution' alone may not be the answer but I am not postulating ID or 'God' here. I don't think we should automatically dismiss alternate ideas simply because they don't fit current scientific paradigms or prejudices.
There is far too much prejudice from the science rationalists against alternate ideas and far too much faith based belief and rejection of science on the part of the creationists. It would be nice to see some middle ground somewhere.
 
dr_wu said:
There is far too much prejudice from the science rationalists against alternate ideas and far too much faith based belief and rejection of science on the part of the creationists. It would be nice to see some middle ground somewhere.
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This is, to a degree, what Forteanism is all about. For example, just cos science can't explain the existence of ghosts doesn't mean they don't exist, but equally every bump in the night doesn't automatically signify the presence of a ghost.

Forteanism is one of the very few disciplines that admits that sometimes it just doesn't know one way or the other, and at the same time doesn't compel anyone to have to make a choice either. It often merely acknowledges that some things just are, regardless of explanation.
 
stuneville said:
Forteanism is one of the very few disciplines that admits that sometimes it just doesn't know one way or the other, and at the same time doesn't compel anyone to have to make a choice either. It often merely acknowledges that some things just are, regardless of explanation.
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would you say 'agnostic' is the default setting of a 'fortean'?
 
Two things which are causing minor evolutions in evolution these days are
Horizontal Gene Transfer and the Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution.
Horizontal gene transfer allows new genetic material to be incorporated into an organism from outside, by infection or conjugation. Transfer of material between bacteria and fungi has been observed, and possibly between insects and bacteria. I would expect that viral DNA sometimes crosses into eukaryote DNA as well, or acts as a transfer agent between different eukayotes, but can't find any reference to studies of this possibility. Yet.

The neutral theory of molecular evolution notes that most non-deleterious mutations do not give an organism any advantage; these neutral mutations are incorporated into the geneome, and genetic drift gradualy diffuses the new genes into a population. This tends to change the genome of a species gradually without sselection pressure, eventually leading to a new species. In practice selection would operate to a graeter or lessr extent anyway, and this means that gradual molecular evolution works together with the well known 'survival-of-the-fittest' mechanism to change populations over time.
 
ghostdog19 said:
stuneville said:
Forteanism is one of the very few disciplines that admits that sometimes it just doesn't know one way or the other, and at the same time doesn't compel anyone to have to make a choice either. It often merely acknowledges that some things just are, regardless of explanation.
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would you say 'agnostic' is the default setting of a 'fortean'?
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Good question. I think the two standpoints do have a good deal in common, yes, but an awful lot of Forteans nonetheless have faith in one area or another - most Forteans, for example, believe that aliens exist in some form or another (or many) but equally many are not at all convinced that they're flying about over Wiltshire: many, or most believe in the objective reality of some anomalous animals but not of all anomalous animals - though there is lots of disputed evidence of Bigfoot's existence, there is still no proof, so it becomes a faith issue.

A lot of people take the same tack with religion, or course. It comes back to accepting the essence of a message without having to dogmatically adhere to every word. Most faiths boil down to a message about being nice to other people and rubbing along together. You can practise that without having to buy all the bells and whistles - the ritual and allegory and barracking of other creeds is religion. Faith is about you.

So I'd say, yes, I think agnosticism, or a near analogue is a Fortean default. It's willingness to listen and a give a fair hearing, and even to accept an occurence, but to reserve the right to disbelieve a given explanation.

Things that you're liable
To read in the Bible
Ain't necessarily so.
 
Nice one - I think that was very well put Stu.

You've done this before haven't you?

Well I would agree with that, as per my signature - there is never only one explanation. ;)
 
IDers fight back, albeit not that effectively, and some of the fighting is amongst themselves - so just like real science, then! 8)
Intelligent design: The God Lab

PAY a visit to the Biologic Institute and you are liable to get a chilly reception. "We only see people with appointments," states the man who finally responds to my persistent knocks. Then he slams the door on me.

I am standing on the ground floor of an office building in Redmond, Washington, the Seattle suburb best known as home town to Microsoft. What I'm trying to find out is whether the 1-year-old institute is the new face of another industry that has sprung up in the area - the one that has set out to try to prove evolution is wrong.

This is my second attempt to engage in person with scientists at Biologic. At the institute's other facility in nearby Fremont, researchers work at benches lined with fume hoods, incubators and microscopes - a typical scene in this up-and-coming biotech hub. Most of them there proved just as reluctant to speak with a New Scientist reporter.

The reticence cloaks an unorthodox agenda. "We are the first ones doing what we might call lab science in intelligent design," says George Weber, the only one of Biologic's four directors who would speak openly with me. "The objective is to challenge the scientific community on naturalism." Weber is not a scientist but a retired professor of business and administration at the Presbyterian Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington. He heads the Spokane chapter of Reasonstobelieve.org, a Christian organisation that seeks to challenge Darwinism.

The anti-evolution movement's latest response to Darwin is intelligent design (ID). Its fundamental premise is that certain features of living organisms are too complex to have evolved without the direct intervention of an intelligent designer. In ID literature that designer remains cautiously anonymous, but for many proponents he corresponds closely with the God of the Christian Bible. Over the past few years the movement's media-savvy public face has been the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which has championed intelligent design, claiming it to be a legitimate scientific theory, and supported its key architects. It was Discovery that provided the funding to get the Biologic Institute up and running.

Last week I learned that following his communication with New Scientist, Weber has left the board of the Biologic Institute. Douglas Axe, the lab's senior researcher and spokesman, told me in an email that Weber "was found to have seriously misunderstood the purpose of Biologic and to have misrepresented it". Axe's portrayal of the Biologic Institute's purpose excludes religious connotation. He says that the lab's main objective "is to show that the design perspective can lead to better science", although he allows that the Biologic Institute will "contribute substantially to the scientific case for intelligent design".

This science-first message suggests that the developing anti-evolution movement in the US has moved on to a new stage - one in which opponents of evolutionary biology, trained as research scientists, take to the lab in search of the creator's handiwork. In light of recent events, it also makes sense as a public relations strategy.

“We need all the input we can get in the sciences. It's necessary to move ID along”ID was dealt a significant blow when parents in the Dover school district of Pennsylvania successfully challenged the right of school board officials to introduce pro-ID material into high school biology classrooms. In December 2005, US federal court judge John Jones ruled that it was unconstitutional to teach ID in public schools because it would violate the separation of church and state as laid out in the First Amendment (New Scientist, 7 January, p 8).

In addition to its religious undertones, ID had not "been the subject of testing and research", Jones stated, nor had it "generated peer-reviewed publications", and so had no business in science classes. Wary of losing similar court cases, at least four state education boards subsequently rejected or removed ID-friendly language from their high-school curricula, or are expected do so when newly elected members take office next year.

These developments underscored ID's most serious weakness. "The criticism that has been levelled against them most frequently is that they talk about science but they don't do science," says Richard Olmstead, a biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle who has spoken out against the teaching of ID in science classes.

Research agenda
The message is clear. If ID supporters can bolster their case by citing more experimental research, another judge at some future date might conclude that ID does qualify as science, and is therefore a legitimate topic for discussion in American science classrooms. This is precisely the kind of scientific respectability that research at the Biologic Institute is attempting to provide. "We need all the input we can get in the sciences," Weber told me. "What we are doing is necessary to move ID along."

“If supporters of ID can bolster their case by citing research, a judge might conclude that it can be taught in American science classes”Axe appears to be one of the prime movers in this latest version of the anti-evolution enterprise. In a Discovery Institute strategy paper that was leaked on the internet in 1999, Axe is identified as heading up a molecular biology programme that has the aim of undercutting the scientific basis for evolution. At that time he was funded by the Discovery Institute and working as a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Protein Engineering, a research centre in Cambridge, UK, funded by the Medical Research Council, under the supervision of protein specialist Alan Fersht of the University of Cambridge.

Fersht says he did not at first know about the Discovery Institute's support for ID. "People do work in labs on external funding. Basically he [Axe] had a fellowship from what I thought was a bona fide research institute," he says. When another researcher in his lab pointed to the Discovery Institute's agenda and suggested that Axe be asked to leave, Fersht refused. "I have always been fairly easy-going about people working in the lab. I said I was not going to throw him out. What he was doing was asking legitimate questions about how a protein folded."

In 2000 Axe published a paper about protein mutations (Journal of Molecular Biology, vol 301, p 585). The paper itself makes no mention of ID, but William Dembski, a philosopher and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, cites it as peer-reviewed evidence for ID (see "Building a case").

By 2002 it was becoming clear that Axe and Fersht were in dispute with each other over the implications of work going on in Fersht's lab. At the time Fersht was preparing to publish a retraction of a paper in which he and three colleagues had claimed to have caused one enzyme to evolve the functionality of another (Nature, vol 403, p 617). Axe interpreted the fact that problems had surfaced with the result as evidence that there were problems with the theory of evolution. "I described to Alan preliminary results of mine that seemed to challenge the ability of spontaneous mutations to produce proteins with fundamentally new structures, and I suggested that the struggling projects under his direction might actually be pointing to the same conclusion," Axe told me in an email. Fersht disagreed with the suggestion. The problem result "didn't show anything of the sort", he says. "It showed there were inadequacies in our knowledge."

In March 2002, Axe left Fersht's lab to work as a visiting scientist at the structural biology unit of the Babraham Institute, also in Cambridge. His work there, again funded by the Discovery Institute, led to the publication of a second paper in 2004 (Journal of Molecular Biology, vol 341, p 1295) that was again cited by ID proponents as evidence in its favour.

Since 2004 Axe has resurfaced in Washington state, where he has set up shop at the Biologic Institute, a short drive away from the Discovery Institute. Weber told me that Biologic was a "branch of Discovery". Both Axe and Discovery spokesperson Rob Crowther insist that it is a "separate entity".

Biologic's staff consists of at least three researchers, including Ann Gauger, who like Axe signed a petition titled "a statement of dissent against Darwin's theory of evolution" that was organised by the Discovery Institute in September 2005. In 1985 Gauger published a paper on cell adhesion in fruit flies (Nature, vol 313, p 395) while completing a PhD from the University of Washington, and then went on to publish more papers as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. Her former supervisor, Larry Goldstein, now at the University of California, San Diego, expressed surprise when he learned of her association with the anti-evolution movement.

Gauger would not speak to New Scientist about her work. According to Axe, the projects currently under way at Biologic include "examining the origin of metabolic pathways in bacteria, the evolution of gene order in bacteria, and the evolution of protein folds".

Certainly the topics Axe mentions are of interest to science, says Kenneth Miller, a cell biologist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, who testified as an expert witness for the pro-evolution side at the Dover trial. Miller adds that they might be of particular interest to people intent on undermining evolution if, like Axe's earlier work on protein folding, they can be used to highlight structures and functions whose origins and evolution are not well understood.

In addition to protein and cell biology, Biologic is pursuing a programme in computational biology which draws on the expertise of another of its researchers, Brendan Dixon, a former software developer at Microsoft. According to Axe, "On the computational side, we are nearing completion of a system for exploring the evolution of artificial genes that are considerably more life-like than has been the case previously."

Dixon also declined to speak with New Scientist, but there are reasons why the computational arena might be of interest to the anti-evolution movement. Starting in 2001, Robert Pennock at Michigan State University in East Lansing and colleagues wrote a computer program that behaves like a self-replicating organism able to mutate unpredictably and evolve (Nature, vol 423, p 139). The experiment demonstrates how natural selection and random mutation give rise to increasingly complex organisms.

For anti-evolutionists, this was a discouraging result. "That one really got to them," says Barbara Forrest, a philosopher at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond who studies the anti-evolution movement. It would not be surprising if Biologic wanted to challenge the impact of Pennock's work by finding a counter-example in which a computer simulation fails to produce complexity by random mutation alone. Such a counter-example, once published, would be available for citation by proponents of ID. Even if the citations do not appear in peer-reviewed literature, says Forrest, they could still have an influence on politicians and school board officials, who might not be sensitive to this distinction.

Miller agrees that work of this kind would help anti-evolutionists politically. "If Axe can produce a few more papers in good journals they will be able to cite a growing body of evidence favouring ID," he says.

However, Steve Fuller, a sociologist at the University of Warwick, UK, who testified in favour of ID in the Dover trial, believes the Biologic Institute's activities could help break down barriers between religious people and scientists. "Regardless of whether the science cuts any ice against evolution, one of the virtues is that it could provide a kind of model for how religiously motivated people can go into the lab."

Ronald Numbers, a historian at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who has studied creationism, views it in a different light. The lab's existence will help sustain support within the anti-evolution community, he says. "It will be good for the troops if leaders in the ID movement can claim: 'We're not just talking theory. We have labs, we have real scientists working on this.'"

Building a case
While researching protein structure at various institutes in the UK, Douglas Axe, now at the Biologic Institute in Redmond, Washington, published two peer-reviewed papers that are cited by anti-evolutionists as evidence that intelligent design is backed by serious science.

"Extreme functional sensitivity to conservative amino acid changes on enzyme exteriors" Journal of Molecular Biology, vol 301, p 585.

What it reports Inducing multiple mutations in a bacterial enzyme causes it to lose its ability to perform its role as an antibiotic disabler.

How ID proponents use it Because such mutations destroy "the possibility of any functioning" in the enzyme, it could not have arisen via "Darwinian pathways" (William Dembski, from Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, Cambridge University Press, p 327).

What scientists say Major modifications can be made to proteins without destroying function. Also, making many mutations at once is different to gradual evolution, where dud mutations get weeded out.


"Estimating the prevalence of protein sequences adopting functional enzyme folds" Journal of Molecular Biology, vol 341, p 1295.

What it reports Calculates the probability that a random sequence of amino acids will result in the folded shape that a protein needs to function as an enzyme.

How ID proponents use it The probability of creating a functioning protein fold "at random" is very low, making "appeals to chance absurd, even granting the duration of the entire universe" (Stephen Meyer, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, vol 117, p 213).

What scientists say the vast majority of protein folds probably evolved via alteration of other smaller functional amino acid chains.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opi ... 225824.000
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That's pretty nifty and could be a very logical explanation. Someone should look into it properly. Well found Mytho. :yeay:
 
Mythopoeika said:
Interesting snippet on the New Scientist website:

http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/dn10783-dnalike-ice-seen-inside-carbon-nanotubes.html

Just my crazy idea, but:

Carbon nanotubes may have formed naturally, and ice crystals carrying certain compounds may have formed inside them, creating the first primitive DNA...
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I was reading something about carbon nanotubes the other day and they do form naturally iirc every time something burns so your thought holds water (frozen) 8)
 
Excellent find Myth

It does seem to fit together very neatly (perhaps too much so, but time will tell) and is worth a dig around for further research on the topic.
 
Has this bunch of twisters been mentioned, recently?

http://www.truthinscience.org.uk/site/


Welcome to Truth in Science, a new organisation to promote good science education in the UK. Our initial focus will be on the origin of life and its diversity.

For many years, much of what has been taught in school science lessons about the origin of the living world has been dogmatic and imbalanced. The theory of Darwinian evolution has been presented as scientifically uncontroversial and the only credible explanation of origins. This is despite the National Curriculum which states:

Pupils should be taught…
how scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence (for example, Darwin's theory of evolution)
The National Curriculum for Key Stage 4 Science (Sc1: Scientific enquiry)

Few schools have taught this controversy. This is partly because many popular textbooks present Darwinism as the only scientific theory of origins and give little coverage to alternative theories, sometimes misrepresenting them.

New GCSE Science Specifications in September 2006 give a fresh opportunity to reconsider what is taught about origins in science lessons. These specifications place an emphasis on students understanding 'How Science Works'. This concept is explained as follows by the Edexcel Examination Board:

How Science Works is primarily about helping students to engage with and challenge the science they meet in everyday life. Students need to adopt a critical, questioning frame of mind, going ‘behind the scenes’ to understand the workings of science and how it impacts on society and their lives.

We consider that it is time for students to be permitted to adopt a critical approach to Darwinism in science lessons. They should be given fair and accurate presentations of alternative views.

In an Ipsos MORI Poll carried out in January 2006 for BBC Horizon , 41% of the respondents thought that Intelligent Design Theory should be taught in school science classes, and 44% believed that Creationism Theory should be taught. An Opinionpanel Research Survey in July 2006 found that 30% of University Students in the UK believe in creation or intelligent design.

There is a modern controversy over Darwin's theory of evolution and the neo-Darwinian synthesis, and this has considerable social, spiritual, moral and ethical implications. Truth in Science promotes the critical examination of Darwinism in schools, as an important component of science education.

© Truth in Science. 2005-6
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Creationists, disguising their nature and peddling their non-science as science and in Britain, too.
 
Also, see this for other interesting 'origins of life' details:

http://space.newscientist.com/artic...-in-meteorite-may-have-seeded-earth-life.html

The Mythopoeika theory on the origins of life:

The globules may have eventually combined with the carbon-nanotube DNA over trillions of freeze-thaw cycles inside a comet until the 'correct combination' of primitive DNA was generated (each freeze-thaw cycle would create a different pattern - i.e. every snowflake is different and has a mathematically defined shape). From that point on, the primitive bacterium (which was probably like a nanomachine) that resulted from this process started replicating itself.

The microbes eventually spread through space on comets until they reached Earth, and the rest is history.
 
Have I killed this thread?
 
Christian faith in the other good book
12:56 10 February 2007
From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.

Flocks of the Christian faithful in the US will this Sunday hold special services celebrating Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The idea is to stand up to creationism, which claims the biblical account of creation is literally true, and which is increasingly being promoted under the guise of "intelligent design". Proponents of ID say the universe is so complex it must have been created by some unnamed designer.

Support for "Evolution Sunday" has grown 13 per cent to 530 congregations this year, from the 467 that celebrated the inaugural event last year. Organisers see it as increasing proof that Christians are comfortable with evolution.

"For far too long, strident voices, in the name of Christianity, have been claiming that people must choose between religion and modern science," says Michael Zimmerman, founder of Evolution Sunday and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Butler University in Indianapolis. "We're saying you can have your faith, and you can also have science."

Zimmerman and his backers believe the biblical account of creation is allegorical. "Creationists fear that if you believe evolution, you're an atheist," he says. But for Zimmerman, attempts to try and "ratify God's existence" through intelligent design signify lack of faith. "If you have enough faith, you don't need science to prove God exists, and science can't prove this anyway," he says.

The event arose from the Clergy Letter Project, a pro-evolution letter signed in 2004 by 10,500 Christian clergy. It is spreading internationally, and this year will also be celebrated in Australia, the UK, Canada and Nigeria. Seven publishers are donating material for the services.

www.newscientist.com/article/dn11145-ch ... -book.html
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Who wrote this ?

Answers on a postcard to your local authority mental health crisis team.
“A triumph of consciousness-raising has been the homosexual hijacking of the word "gay". I used to mourn the loss of gay in (what I still think of as) its true sense. But on the bright side (wait for it) gay has inspired a new imitator, which is the climax of this article... Those of us who subscribe to no religion; those of us whose view of the universe is natural rather than supernatural; those of us who rejoice in the real and scorn the false comfort of the unreal, we need a word of our own, a word like "gay". You can say "I am an atheist" but at best it sounds stuffy (like "I am a homosexual") and at worst it inflames prejudice (like "I am a homosexual")...
Bright? Yes, bright. Bright is the word, the new noun. I am a bright. You are a bright. She is a bright. We are the brights. Isn't it about time you came out as a bright? Is he a bright? I can't imagine falling for a woman who was not a bright”.
The Guardian 21st June 2003.

In The Scientist [28th February, 2005] evolutionists discussed if they should use the design metaphor in their papers. One stated:
We should chose our words carefully...The enemies could take that and say "see, biologists recognise design".

http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blo ... 000522.php
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:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:
 
Oh dear.

“Indisputable evidence — long hidden but now available to everyone — demonstrates conclusively that so-called ‘secular evolution science’ is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate ‘creation scenario’ of the Pharisee Religion,” the memo says. “This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic ‘holy book’ Kabbala dating back at least two millennia.”

The memo calls on lawmakers to introduce legislation that would end the teaching of evolution in public schools because it is “a deception that is causing incalculable harm to every student and every truth-loving citizen.”

It also directs readers to a Web site www.fixedearth.com, which includes model legislation that calls the Kabbala “a mystic, anti-Christ ‘holy book’ of the Pharisee Sect of Judaism.” The Web site also declares “the earth is not rotating … nor is it going around the sun.”

The Anti-Defamation League says the assertions in the memo border on anti-Semitism.
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Rest of it

And for a laugh :?

http://www.fixedearth.com/

A website with the stylistic attempts of a raving nutter.
 
Just to lighten the mood a little

http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurrin1/textbookdisclaimers/

Wording for the first disclaimer (top left) is taken verbatim from the sticker designed by the Cobb County School District ("A community with a passion for learning") in Georgia, which actually plagiarized Alabama's evolution disclaimer (view). Really, I'm not making any of this up.
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Although this was telling.

At the very least, print out the PDF version and send it to your kid's science teacher; if he or she is not amused, move immediately to another district, far, far away.
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