Texas Board of Education and the teaching of evolution - Page 4

Does no one do R.E. anymore??
At my secondary school we had a lesson a week for 5 years about Religious Education, where we went through each of the 6 major religions and studied them in turn, and then chose any religion we wanted to do a project on.
Surely that would be the best place to study creation theories?

Evolution as I was taught it does not cover the actual beginnings of life, just what came directly afterwards.
Surely the point of science is to explain the universe from science's perspective, leaving the religious perspective to religious studies/church/mosque/temple etc?

We did not have that in my school.

Is this the same "they" that the anti-Holocaust believers use for their arguments?

Religion never killed anyone. People kill people.

That is exactly right.

I dont know anybody like that, maybe you should ask some of them. The they Im talking about is the ones that try to rewrite history and say that there wasn't many religious wars and they didnt kill many people. There was one banner year in the religious wars in europe were the catholics killed 70,000 protestents and the protestents killed 26,000 catholics and this went on for 155 years.

You read my post and then quoted it, so that gave you 2 chances to read it, so you can point out where I said religion kills people.

I didn't say you did, I was just making that statement.

I agree 100%. If they want to teach religion, then offer it as an elective course that students can take by choice, like music, art, foreign language, etc.

I would also like to know who "they" and "some of them" are. Not trying to be snotty or offensive but just an honest question. I haven't even seen "them" or anyone saying there has never been wars fought in the name of religion. We know the opposite is true. The Roman Catholic church used to be right up doing some really bad things. The operative word is "used to",
I don't think we will see the Roman Catholic Church or any other Catholic church waging any wars anymore, it has been over a century now.

Some may find it highly amusing to ridicule other's spiritual belief's, I'm not one of them. I think it says much about the person doing it, none of it good, but that is just my opinion.

I have to wonder how the people that are doing the ridiculing would feel if others ridiculed something very sacred and important to them.

I wouldn't know, because I have the same view as Eric Idle, of "Monte Python" fame; "Nothing is so sacred that we can't find humor in it"

Besides, it might be true.

I didnt say never, I said not many, and it was said in this very discussion, it wont take you long to find it. It wasnt just catholics either the protestents did there fair share. And I disaggree with 'used to'. Like in bosnia everybody says it was ethnic but one side was christians and the other side was muslims. Its just making up excuses for the same old thing so they can say 'religion don't cause wars anymore' so they dont have to think abut it.

Well, it would appear that the Roman Catholic Church is weighing in on the "Intelligent Design" side of the debate, and consider it to be cultural phenomenon worthy of no serious consideration, but merely studied in historical and social context.

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/sto...ns/0900635.htm

Referring to Intelligent Design as "cultural" is giving it far too much credit. It is, instead, conspiratorial. It is nothing more than a concerted effort by religious radicals to impress their religious dogma on other people's children by making an end run around the Constitution and inflicting their "indoctrination" on public school students.

see, everyone's different - this is quite close to how i feel about a theory being taught as fact.

If you're referring to evolution, that is still, to this day, titled "The Theory of Evolution" or "Evolutionary Theory". It's not being taught anywhere that I've heard anything of as a fact

The problem I have with people saying it's just a theory is that the definition of a scientific theory is not the same as a theory in every day life. A scientific theory is: An explanation of why and how a specific natural phenomenon occurs, or A well-tested concept that explains a wide range of observations
So it's just something that explains an observation that already exists, like saying the "explained details of evolution" would be close to what the theory of evolution means in the scientific world.
So in science, it is NOT just something that someone came up with that may or may not be true, and it's not presented as such in schools. Evolution is presented as an observation, in the same sense as gravity is presented. The theory of evolution gives details and reason for why it happens, etc.
So in simpler terms, it is being taught as a fact.
Now, it is a fact in the world of science, but science and theology often don't mix and this is just one of the examples....So it boils down to: do we want to teach children real science or do we want to avoid certain subjects that happen to conflict with theology. IMO, it's a country of religious freedom, so I think: we should teach evolution. Even though we have religious freedom, we are nowhere near France for example, when it comes to how secular we are. US society is extremely religious and church going in comparison to other countries of similar economies. So that's why this becomes an issue for people. And frankly, laws should reflect how most people feel about a certain subject: If most people feel evolution should not be taught, then it shouldn't be. It's a hard thing to determine though..
Sorry for that extra long and confusing ramble....

i guess the problem i have with it being taught as fact is that there was no one around observing/recording it. gravity was observed & recorded, as were many other scientific facts. gravity, the rotation of the planets, etc. - these things are not taught as theories in any way, shape or form - also, all are still observable & recordable today. yet, evolution is taught as fact, & alternative ideas, regardless of what they might be, are simply not allowed. sorta like a monopoly on ideas on 'how it happened', wouldn't you say?
realize that what i refer to as 'evolution' is a compilation of theories - origin of the species, the practice of dating fossils based on stone strata & vice-versa [a circular argument, at best]. i am decidedly NOT referring to adaptation, which i consider separate from the above, since it definitely IS both observable & recordable in the present day.

According to evolution though, origin species occurs through adaptation. When a species adapts to the point of not being to mate with its predecessor, that's how speciation occurs. Or when two groups of the same species are adapting to a different environment, they can no longer mate and produce offspring with each other. Darwin's observations of the galapagos finches is what explains that. There are two scientists conducting further studies in the Galapagos- Peter and Rosemary Grant, you can google them if you want, but they are actually seeing speciation of the finches within their 30 year old study. What about the species that go extinct? Do you believe that's because of evolution?? To me, that's a clear example of speciation. Like, I know origin of life is definitely not a question answered by evolution...but that's completely different from origin of species. I won't go into fossil dating because that's just too scientifically complicated, and I don't know much about it.

Personally, I like knowing that we don't know the answers to some things- such as the origin of the universe. A lot of advances in physics were made using Einstein's Theory of Relativity but even that may be undergoing some revision in the near future to help in possibly answering more questions about the nature of the universe.

Well they are different versions of the same spcies at first but eventually become so different that they no longer mate with each other...Such as a horse and a donkey. Those do mate but their offspring is sterile so they are still considered a separate species. Or goat and antelope...I agree that the origin of life cannot be answered with evolution. In my biology classes though, this was not being taught. We studied about different hypothesis on how life may have originated but they were not formed into theories and were not accepted at all. They were just out there for us to look at.