Neighter

Either we allow for an honest and open discussion of all relative THEORIES of origins, or we just take this out of our schools' science programs. Talk to any of the leading microbiologists and they will tell you how evolution cannot account for the miraculous and marvelous intricacies of cellular structures. Pair them up with a mathmatician and they will show you the improbable numbers of a "Big Bang" being able to bring biological life into being. So take your pick, talk about Evolution, talk about GOD, talk about intelligent design (which could include aliens), you name it, it now becomes a philosophy class on origins. Which is really where it should have been all along. STOP teaching evolution as FACT because it is rife with unsupported evidences.

You know, there are some facts in the Bible that are able to be proven in the world today, anyone who's interested can go to www.answersingenesis.org/ which is an extremely creationist site online, they prove evolution both unrelated to the bible and absolutely false and they also teach how creation has more evidence in it's favor than evolution. I'm not saying that creation is provable, but evolution is definately disprovable.

there is no way to even test Intelligent Design to see if it could work that is the number one reason it should never be part of school

The hteory of evolution has proof and evidence just piling up while intelligent design has none whatsoever. I think that this is a shut case.

The "theory" of evolution needs some competition.

Alright, I don't know where you're getting your information, but evolution is a science. Evolution. Is. A. Science. It has been tested and it has been proven. That does not mean you have to believe we share common ancestors with apes. That does not mean you have to go against your faith. Besides, evolution and religion are not mutually exclusive, but that's another topic. Evolution relies heavily on "observation and logical inference"; if it didn't it wouldn't be a scientific theory. Please note the "scientific" aspect of the theory, too. There is a difference between theory in the scientific sense and theory in the sense of the common vernacular. Don't confuse them.

MichaelR(B.B.B.09)a scientific theory is based on and tested against provable facts to within a fairly minnamal margin of error.not perfect of course.hence continued scientific study in all fields.intelligent design is based on myth,stories,mans need to believe he is special,and an almost pathalogical refusal to even contemplate that this.this life is all there is.why would that make it less precious?i mean we all need a teddy to protect us from the dark as children,but as we grow we realize a piece of cloth and fluff has only the power of imagination.

Wow it is true, 2/3 of people have imaginary friends who they talk with. I stopped when I was 6. Learn your science and you'll never be troubled by hallucinations again. You either believe that the universe is infinite, and accept all that that entails, or you make up a god and believe in the easter bunny.

Yes definitely make it a separate course, or even better, just remove it! I can not believe that people actually still believe this evolution rubbish. One of the most influential theories that came from someone with the scientific knowledge of my granny. So many people who claim to be intelligent make the school boy mistake of confusing speciation with evolution, which are two completely different processes. Speciation does occur and has been scientifically proven and occurs every day, but when was the last time you saw a fish get up and walk out of a river or saw a monkey make itself tools? Never! Why? Because it doesn't happen! This is what evolution teaches! Lies! Sure you might say it takes millions and millions of years, but you can't just turn evolution on and off, chances are we would have seen at least one occurance of this over the period of recorded history. But we have'nt, hence why it is still a theory and a very bad one at that. Personally I believe in creation, though I'd even believe steady state theory before I'd believe this rubbish.

Teaching intelligent design would make a mockery of our country! Support real science, the proof of evolution has been set in the tree of life, if you don't know this then your not smart enough to make a decision.

I feel I have to express how saddened (and not a little frustrated!) I am to see so many thoughtful people get in such a pickle over this...

Evolution by selection really does explain, simply and beautifully, the fabulous complexity of life on earth - and yes, where us humble humans came from too.

And there is no necessary reason to see it as going against God. Evolution is not evil! It's wonderfully, mind-openingly, fabulously exciting!!

Darwin, and many others since (eg through genetics), have unravelled how life became so mesmerisingly diverse.... but not how it came to be in the first place. Darwin would be the first to admit that! Perhaps... science will explain this in time too... but, until then, christians (and other creeds with their creation stories) can rest easy: scientific reason need not be in conflict with religious faith. Please, please think carefully and reasonably before making this so.

This has all become a hideously rancourous 'debate'. I'd suggest to all EO Wilsons' 'The Creation' as this book has a much needed gentler and more thoughtful tone.

And to finish....

Would accepting evolution inevitably lead to rejecting your faith in God?

Would faith in God necessarily prevent you from rationally accepting evolution?

Evolution IS a fact. If you don't have any ideea what a Theory means in the scientific world, look it up.

Teaching Intellegent Design in schools couldn't be done without teaching religion, so it would have to be optional.  Many biology courses teach evolution as a fact rather than a theory so biology would have to become an optional course for students who believe in intellegent design. 

Biology is a natural science and should be taught.  But the material is very biased towards evolution and I'm not sure how that bias could be taken out without making most biology textbooks obsolete. 

I think a special module in biology courses about intellegent design could be done as an elective for parents who have strong religious views and want their children to know that there is a lot of science that does support intellegent design.  But it would have to be definetly an elective module.  Students with religious beliefs who wish to, could take the elective module on intellegent design.

It is a good point, all science subjects should teach observation and logical inference as well.  Biology is an essential science for students who want to become Doctors, Veternarians or study it in college or even just to have a well rounded education.  I can't see making it totally optional, but then again biology covers a lot of territory.  Could some aspects of biology be taught where the issue of intellegent design or evolution doesn't come up?

Reason, Observation, and Experience; the holy trinity of science.

Teaching Intelligent Design is what we call in Europe : OBSCURANTISM

Old G: Science measures the distance from the stars to our planet in light years. Their light travels at (forgive my redundancy) the speed of light and you say that at that speed "time would stand still." Then how can we be sure that their light really takes millions upon millions of years to reach us? Either time is running or time stands still, but we cannot have it both ways. I know the theory of relativity tries to explain this, but if time stops for the light coming to us, by mathematics I know that 0 ≠ 1,000,000.

Ah, but this is one of the basic concepts behind relativity (for interesting reference, one only needs to look up the "twins paradox"). We can indeed only have it one way, and light (or any relatively moving object) can indeed can only have it one way, but there are indeed "both ways"...and in every single experiment designed to either prove or disprove relativity, relativity has passed with flying colors. If we throw a clock at the speed of light (a ludicrous concept, no matter, not even a subatomic particle, can be accellerated to the speed of light as it would take infinite energy to do so, or so we think so far...but this is merely a thought experiment...atomic clocks on air and space craft has repeatedly confirmed the predictions of relativity beyond any doubt), an observer seeing that clock travelling at the speed of light will see its hands not moving...even if we follow the clock's progress for thousands (or millions) of years. But from the clock's perspective, it is not that the hands stop moving, but rather that the trip was instantaneous. And again, the delay in time from a light-signal (radio for example is merely light at a much, much longer wavelength that that of visible light) travelling from earth to mars is exactly as the speed of light would lead us to predict. The same holds for the signals sent from earth to the moon during the appolo missions. Unless you're suggesting that the laws of physics change as one gets further from earth (gallileo would be getting nervous at this point), there is no escaping the fact that the speed of light, from any frame of reference in spacetime is finite and constant -this is the wildest prediction of relativity in my opinion...even if we're moving at half the speed of light away from a light source, we will measure the speed of its light as being the same as we would if we were standing still relative to said light source...only the light's wavelength is altered (the principle behind the "red shift" of stars that are moving away from us). Again, this has been experimentally verified over and over.

Now I'm going to choose my words carefuly, as I don't want to discourage you from participating in this discussion. I'm noticing a trend in your agruments where your answers to some points eventually smack of conspiracy theories. Of course, you are absolutely correct in that science has had its fair share of frauds. Science is performed by humans, and thus of course, there have undoubtedly been many documented cases where unscrupulous scientists, desperate for acceptance or Nobel prizes or funding (or whatever else drives them), have falsified results or omitted information that could have discredited their ideas. Sadly, this is as unavoidable as is theivery, murder, and every other form of human sin. Scientist are, after all, only human, and humanity is certainly a mixed bag. But when experimental proof of a concept is attained by many scientist from all over the world, again and again, as in the case of relativity, it cannot so easily be dismissed.

I completely agree with you, as I've stated, that we have a long way to go in understanding the universe around us, but we cannot merely dismiss experiments, which are conducted by many scientists of many ethnic backgrounds who all agree on the results time and time again, as conspiracy. There is no escaping that light from distant galaxies can take hundreds of thousands, millions, or even billions of years to reach us depending on their distance from us. There are many many other forms of experimental proof which confirm and enforce the conclusions that scientists/physisists have drawn. This is not something scientists take on faith, (as may indeed be the case with evolution I'll concede)...we measure the speed of light on earth with stunning accuracy -indeed, this was done with reasonable accuracy when lanterns were a common light source (for excellent reading on the subject, check the book "The relativity of wrong" to see man's documented progress in measuring the speed of light), and we send spacecraft and measure the speed of light via radio signals and the delays between emission and absorption. All of the arguments I've mentioned cannot be the result of unscrupulous science, even if evolution is actually riddled with it as they have been successfuly been proven by experiment and observation by scientists all over the world.

Faith cannot be considered proof, nor can disproving one particular theory out of a great many confirm another theory. If a scientist who seeks to consolidate religion (or more accurately, his particular religion) and science is to be taken seriously by his peers, he must do so in the language of science with either direct experimental proof, or at the very least, direct observation of phenomena which cannot be dismissed by, or contradict, experimental proof or direct observation to the contrary. So far, this has not been done. You cannot blame science for this. In the field of biology, it may be easier to argue religious views, but when physics comes into play, one certainly has his (or her) work cut out for him.

I have to say I don't know about Hume. But independent of whether he lived before or during the time of Darwin, it seems to me that those involved in science where thinking about how to reconcile their Faith (if they believed in God), with what their field of science was telling them, or at least what they thought it was telling them. Darwin wasn't able to convince all of his peers, evolution has been rejected from the very begining not just by the faithful but more importantly by scientists. We hear only about the rejection of the faithful in the media.

Old G: Science measures the distance from the stars to our planet in light years. Their light travels at (forgive my redundancy) the speed of light and you say that at that speed "time would stand still." Then how can we be sure that their light really takes millions upon millions of years to reach us? Either time is running or time stands still, but we cannot have it both ways. I know the theory of relativity tries to explain this, but if time stops for the light coming to us, by mathematics I know that 0 ≠ 1,000,000.

We believers believe in an Omnipotent God, a God that is a Creator, that from nothing He created everything. To us it's not difficult to belive in Him and believe that He alone created the Universe. Science is still in its infancy, no matter all the progress it has made, of which 99% is good science. For that we have to congratulate and thank the science community. But when they try to explain how we got here they are in deep waters. They don't have the smoking gun that evolution took place. They mention the Big Bang (an explosion of nothing) as the begining of everything but we still can ask them: "Why and how did this nothing exploded? What was there before this nothing exploded... where did it come from?" Unanswerable questions. They cannot explain it. They can assume, suggest, interpret but not prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Which becomes in the end a matter of believing: do we believe in them (scientists)... or do we believe in our Faith.

It's true like Old G said that scientists try very hard to discredit each other's ideas but I doubt if it's only for the benefit of science. I have a book (the spanish edition) by Federico di Trocchio titled ("Las Mentiras de la Ciencia") "The Lies of Science - 1995" and he says and proves that scientists have resorted to lies and deception forever, specially since the end of WWII when governments (the USA first, others later) started to finance scientific research. He says that Science went from a "vocation" to a "profession," a way to earn a living and make lots and lots of money. Add to the governments the private institutions: NGS, the Smithonian Institute, Discovery Channel, History Channel, BBC, etc. It's no wonder that when a scientist gets a grant form any of these institutions to go and search for ... say, dinosaurs fossils, he/she will never come back empty handed. They (scientists) get millions of dollars per year to carry on their research... they can't come back saying they didn't find a thing! And this you can see happening on all fields of science. They always find what they go out looking for. Wherever they go searching they find what they are looking for.

In the 19th century there were two competitors trying to beat each other and see who came up with finding the biggest dinosaur bones... not just for science but for pride, glory, fame, and $$$. Do you know that a T-Rex squeleton was sold a few years ago for $12 million dollars to a museum in the USA? Who knows if every single bone of that T-Rex was found pristine and intact, so it's possible that maybe 50% or more of that T-Rex is just plaster. We cannot denied the economics involved in science today.

Scientist have become the new High Priests of the day: they always say the truth, they never lie, they are free of any human weakness (ambition, greed, envy), so their work is flawless. It's no wonder that when someone questions them or their findings their reaction (and that of their supporters) is like... "Heresy!" They are untouchable. The common man is not an "expert," therefore he cannot be part of the discussion. Nuts! When I sense that someone is lying to me I don't need to have a doctorate in science to figure it out. Besides, I read their peers, and time and time again I find scientists saying that the evolution is a hoax, that the millions and millions of years is not true either. When the supossed age of the Earth, 4,500 millions of years, becomes indefensible (their peers will eventually prove it) they will add more zeros to that figure. They've being doing it for decades. First they started with 10,000 years (against the then accepted figure of 6,000). When that wasn't enough to prove their theory they went to 100,000 years, then to a million... that's how we got to today's 4,500 millions of years.

Andrew V: Regarding natural selection... within 14 years after writing Origin of the Species, Darwin confessed to a friend:

"In fact the belief in Natural Selection must at present be grounded entirely on general considerations [faith and theorizing] . . When we descend to details, we can prove that no one species has changed . . nor can we prove that the supposed changes are beneficial, which is the groundwork for the theory. Nor can we explain why some species have changed and others have not."—Charles Darwin, letter to Jeremy Bentham, in Francis Darwin (ed.), Charles Darwin, Life & Letters, Vol. 3, p. 25.

He had a difficult time trying to figure out his own theory, and frequently admitted in his writtings that it appeared impossible. He said that just to think about the eye and how it could possibly have been produced by natural selection was enough to make him ill. On that he said this:

"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."—Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1909 Harvard Classics edition), p. 190.

I believe in intellegent design.  Ironically once someone has accepted Christ, intellegent design is the only way the Earth could have been created.

Yet I came to believe in intellegent design because once I didn't believe in it.

Science has one large problem with it.  A Philosopher who specialized in logic proved that there is no such thing as an experiment that can prove anything.  Hume showed that when a scientist produced and reproduced experiments say something about sub atomic particles, no experiment could be designed that did not assume the thing that it was trying to prove.  Humes logic is one of the few works that all specialists in logic agree that Hume proved his point. 

But Hume (pronounced Home) also proved that no one could prove causality.  No scientist could prove that one thing caused a second thing to happen.  Humes proof is quite ingeneous, he observed scientists using the scientific method, the same scientific method that is used today and showed that no experiment could prove causality, for example no experiment can prove a chemical causes white cotton to turn blue -- a chemical that we would call dye.  He showed that no one could create an experiment where all the "x" factors could be removed and since "x"  Experiments all use equipment and occur in air or in a vacuum or in pure water etc.  Because of this the chemical and cotton turning blue were unrelated because no one could remove all progenerators -- an unknown thing that may be the cause of several different things.

Hume showed that the most we could say is that you observed a bat hitting a ball, but you could not prove the swing of a bat caused the baseball to fly over a fence.  Unknown progenators do exist and Hume said that being the case what we were observing were two different actions happening at the same time we don't know if there are other progenerators.

Hume was an Atheist but he did not believe in evolution or natural selection and in fact was one of the first to debunk it even though Darwin had previously been a friend of his.  This fact makes evolutionists foam at the mouth when it is brought up in school board meetings.  Using statistics from Humes logic it takes more faith to believe in evolution than creationism and this is a thing Hume said himself despite being an atheist,  Using logic and statistical analysis the odds are that creation is more likely to be true than evolution.  So creationists actually have logic and statistical analysis on their side and according to Hume, the people with "deluded faith" were actually evolutionists.  I forget the exact odds but Hume's and all subsequent statistical analysis shows that creationism outsrips evolution in probability by a factor of several million.

As I mentioned it is generally accepted that Hume's logic is correct and to date no one has been able to find any fault with it, including statistical analysists whom work in evolution.  Their belief in evolution is driven by an emotional reaction of not wishing to believe in God. 

But most Christians avoid Hume because of a famous trial where he was tried for heresy.  Hume had written that in could not be proved that God caused the human mind and it was for this he was tried for heresy.  He was acquitted because he espoused at the time he was an atheist and therefore could not be convicted for heresy.

When he wrote his most famous works Hume states that his goal was to debunk science and the scientific method.  Because of the trial some people assume that he wrote his most famous work with the incredibly dull title of "Essays and Treatises" to disprove God.  Some Christians believe it is an atheistic book because o the Trial even today.

Regardless, "Essays and Treatises" is now called "the smart bomb that destroys evolution" as well as science and that is what Hume meant to do.  In one of his Essays Hume suggests that any work about natural selection would be so full of error it would be best thrown in the fire.

So it takes far more faith to believe in Evolution than in God's creation.  And because of Hume's analysis I rejecton evolution and began to believ in Creationism.  My belief in God tells me He created the world and logic tells me that evolution could not be true.

One last note on David Hume his last work "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion"  Hume says at the end of the book he does believe in God.  But the book itself tears apart with a lot of stong language the three normal theological proofs that God exists.  He attacks the a posteriori agruement, the a priori agruement and the moral arguement.  The moral argument is God exists because people have an innate sense of morality.  Scince humans seem to be born with it then it has to come from God.  Also morality often prevents people from doing things that would improve the quaility of their lieves (they do not embezzel from their emplyer even situations where the would not be caught, they return found money by actively seeking it's owner when if they did nothing according the law after thirty days the could keep it.

Yet Hume believed in God and after his death people asked Hume's nephew why he believed in God.  His nephew said that Hume and his mother were very close (his father died while he was young) and his mother was a very fervent born again Christian.  His nephew gave the opinion that Hume wrote the book for his mother because once you have eliminated or disproved all logical arguements, the only reason left to believe in God was blind faith, which is what his mother beleived, faith is a gift from God.  Hume likened faith to a sense like sight or hearing, faith according to Hume is the sense that by which human beings can apprehend God.  There is a verse in Proverbs that says something along the lines that "Raise you child in the right way of faith while he is young and when he is old he will return to it."  I sometimes wonder if that is waht happened to Hume, in his old age he returned to his child hood fundamentalist faith.

Sorry for such a long post, if the petitioner finds it to be too long, let me know and I'll take it down.  But I find evolution and the removal of creationism from schools a very interesting issue.  Not teaching creationism I think is a tragedy for today's young people.  David Hume, a debunker of science, was one of my guides along the way that helped me to find God.  After reading and agreeing with what Hume wrote that we can't prove God by using theological proofs, then all that was left to me was what I used to call "crude fundamentalist salvationism."  Some time after that a Jesuit Preist of all people who had accepted Christ into his life at a Billy Graham rally witnessed to me, we went through the tract "Christ my Heart's Home" and I prayed the sinners prayer.

Revelations 3

20  Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.      

'Evolution' (or more specifically, the theory of evolution by natural selection), is a scientific theory, because it explains an enormous amount of data, from several fields, including biology, paleontology and geology. Its status as a science is made particularly clear by the fact that when Darwin proposed it, the principles of genetics had not been discovered, and no-one knew about DNA. When these were discovered, they explained things that had been absent from the theory, and were themselves explained by the theory. In contrast, Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory, as it does not explain any data in a way that scientists find acceptable. This is why papers supporting Intelligent Design are never presented at respectable biological conferences: it's not that they say things that real scientists can't handle, it's just that they say things that contradict, or fail to account for, the evidence.