EXACTLY why ID, aka Creationism, cannot be taught in public schools.

Nor is the word "god". Read: "establishment of religion." ID/Creationism is religion.

We are not evolved from apes, we share a common ancestor with apes.

Evolution through the agency of natural selection is a lot simpler than you make it appear. It simply means that those individuals whose characteristics enable it to reproduce more are more likely to spread their genes through a given population than individuals whose characteristics do not allow it to reproduce more.

Let's say your Hereford bull produces larger back muscles than other Hereford bulls. Beef producers far and wide will offer you big bucks to breed your bull to theirs. Given artificial insemination, your bull could produce thousands of offspring over the course of it's lifetime. Compare that to a Brahma bull wandering the streets of Calcutta which given it's conditions, will likely not breed more than a couple dozen times in it's life producing far less offspring.

Of those two bulls, which one's genes will be most likely to spread the farthest through the population?

Now you say that changes that have been observed are limited. That's true if you look only at limited cases. But the fossil record is replete with lineages consistent with evolutionary sequences. All it takes is time.

Take pigeons as an example. If we accept that the Earth has 4,500,000,000 (4.5 billion) years of history, then there is plenty of time for pigeons to diverge from the common ancestor with ostriches, eagles, anacondas and molluscs.

I disagree with you on that. I think the study of religion should be available in school. My problem is teaching it in a science class: Religion is not science.

Religion is a practice of the majority of humans who now live and who have ever lived. It has shaped human thought for thousands of years. Therefore, to ignore religion in schools is to intentionally blind students to one of the greatest characteristics of humanity. That is a stupid thing to do.

Mr. B has summed it up very well.

I watched an "Intelligent design" film in my sunday school class one day a few years back. It is a joke. Even at my limited scientific expertise I could see it was not at all science.

ID and creationism have no place in science classes in our public schools.

Tom W

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This is the the 21st century. It's time to get our heads out of the fairy tails and realize that there is no invisible man in the sky watching everything we do. Religion was created by man to explain what he could not. Many religions have come and gone. Each one believed it was the one and only true religion. What makes you so sure any of the ones alive today are the one and only? Faith? That's all they have.

I myself was forced into religion as a child as my grandparents were very religious and still are. Luckily for me, I saw the light in my early teens and was able to realize what a crock of ***** religions have been feeding people for so long. I believe what happened was I started thinking for myself instead of blindly believing following the herd every sunday, monday and wednesday.

Public schools are government run. Religion has no place at all in it.

If the students want to have their own club after school, great, good for them. Leave the teachers to educate students on what they need to know to succeed in life and let the parents corrode their brains with stories of invisible people in the sky.

To many people, the ideals of communism are a good and proper substitution of religion. In this country most people find the practice of communism to be immoral. Should communism be studied in school?

I think so. Communism is a fact of history and a goal of many millions of people on Earth. To ignore communism or restrict the study of it from school is to intentionally blind students to one of the most important forms of government ever implemented.

Does providing a comprehensive analysis of communism necessarily create communists?

B

Communism is not a religion, its a form of government, so thats not even a valid comparison.

Communism is a philosophy of government that many proponents and detractors believe substitutes for religion in the mind of man. A belief in (and against) communism motivates many people to behave in common to promote (or suppress) communism.

Is it not reasonable for students to study those factors that motivate people's behavior?

B

Communism presupposes that human beings will behave honorably, cooperatively, and for the common good. It's based upon high-minded ideals, but fails to take human nature as it really is, into account. It's probably a good idea for our kids to study it and to realize these things, therefore avoiding this error in the future.

Some might say religions have not done much better inmaking THEIR case.

As Mistress is fond of saying, "Communism works fine, on paper."

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In the history of western thought, the basic argument of ID, once known as the teleological argument for God's existence is a part of metaphysics. Aristotle used it. I'm not completely convinced that all metaphysical arguments are necessarily religious. It doesn't strike me that Aristotle was a very religious man.
On the other hand, the current ID'ers are clearly religious. Phillip Johnson who developed and pushed the current version of ID only came to value the argument after having some kind of born again experience and sees the argument as one way of directing US culture away from naturalistic humanism and towards authoritarian Christianity.

Can anyone think of a single example where science has advanced by substituting a supernatural cause for a natural cause? I can think of a number of examples of the reverse but not a single example of an advancement through supernatural causation. Perhaps I am blinded to the obvious.

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The transition from scholasticism to empiricism was not a single step process. Scholasticism, through it's efforts to unite creator with creation using Aristotlean logic, unwittingly advanced it's own demise. Thus, I would have to say that scholasticism matches your challenge pretty closely, if paradoxically.

B

It's my understanding of Aristotelian scholasticism that it never substituted a supernatural cause for a natural cause. Aristotle had 4 causes: material, efficient, formal and final. The final cause was 'God' and was proven through a teleological argument. However, God was never a substitute cause for material or efficient causes. There were always material and efficient causes in addition to final causes.
It's pretty clear to me that the 'Designer' in ID is a substitute cause. ID'ers are saying no material or efficient cause can create so there has to be a different kind of cause as a substitute.

The clearest recent example to me is mental illness. Is it scientifically superior to claim that demons cause mental illness through possessing people or explaining it thru chemical imbalances of the brain? The logic of this situation is virtually identical to the evolution/creation situation.

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There are many scientists that disgree with the evolution theory but don't receive the airplay as the pro evolutionists.The so called overview of ID just shows ignorance of the entire debate.If you really want to see both sides from a fair and open minded perspective just read from a few of the web sites. If you want to debate the two at least do it with real issues instead of that "God did it " cliche

http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/index.htm

http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/[/QUOTE]

I don't believe the issue is whether or not evolution has problematic components. The issue is whether or not it is scientific to explain natural events with supernatural causes.
I think there is clear historical precedent to view science as a substitute for supernatural theories of causation and pretty decent reasons for thinking that such a change gets to the essential core of science.

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1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

ID is basically a faith while evolution is a theory. In a faith, there is nothing to investigate. In a theory, it needs more investigation till we know one way or another. At this point, do we have to accept either as fact? I think not. Can't we just say "I don't know" and move along?

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