Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

Actually, to a degree we are. Humans are extremely adaptable to different climates. That's essentially what the different "races", if that's the right term for it these days, come from - the adaptatioins to dry/wet, sunny/cloudy, and so on. Did you know, for example, that the Incans had very large lungs that are perfect for the high altitude, thin air conditions? Or this one group in the Pacific region where people have learned to superconstrict their irises underwater to that they can see almost as well as if they were wearing goggles? Interesting stuff.

_________________

Of course, but none of that's quite as drastic as the varying breeds of dogs, and some other species.

But I digress from the topic at hand. I was taught evolution in bio class, as a theory. I was taught creationism, from several cultures and religions, in Arts and Humanities, as a set of beliefs. I think that's the way it should be.

Sorry you feel that way.


Nowhere in there does it say that creationism is illegal to teach. The closest thing to that in there is that it would be illegal to require anything religious to be taught in schools. Unless you get fancy in interpretation, there is nothing in there that says religion is not allowed in government.
Evolution IS a theory. A theory is a "best guess" at explaining something (well, technically, science is an informed best guess). If evolution DID explain everything, then you would have an answer to my "If we evolved from Apes (because that gave us some advantage over them), why are Apes still here? " See? It doesn't explain everything.
I'm not saying you're wrong, because I can't do that any more than you could prove that you are right.

_________________
If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

But there is an answer to that. There isn't 100% undisputable proof that it happened this way, but the possibility is certainly open, so it's an answer: apes and humans simply diverged from a common ancestor. OK, picture something like this: we have a community of proto-apes near a river. The community gets too large, and some apes decide to go over to the other side of the river, forming a second community. From there, they became more and more distant, until they are no longer near each other at all. Because they can no longer interbreed, the two communities will eventually become genetically incompatible, cementing the genetic boundaries between the two. At this point they're already separate species, even though they might appear very similar. Therefore, they will continue to evolve independently. One might evolve into humans, and the other may simply evolve into a different form of ape. It depends on environmental conditions and random chance. This is all of course a simplification, but it gives the idea.

- Kef

Um, why do you feel that way? Have you ever heard of the Scopes Monkey Trial?

Also, nice use of inflammatory words. That's "disgusting"? Sounds pretty condescending to me.

_________________

The Scopes Monkey Trial was 1925. And I think it's perfectly understandable to find those statistics "disgusting", although I agree such words may be too inflammatory here.

True enough. So electricbassguy believes that America was "disgusting" in 1925, evolved to a more sophisticated and scientific view by the 60's, and then reverted back to "disgusting" in the last decade?

Weird.

_________________

No, that wasn't the point. The point was that statistics like that would sound extreme even for the 50s-60s, let alone today.

I dunno...



Sounds like he believes we've reverted. I think he may need to clarify his point himself.

_________________

Okay...so this site helps define a "theory" by scientific definition as being "an explanation or model that covers a substantial group of occurrences in nature and has been confirmed by a substantial number of experiments and observations. A theory is more general and better verified than a hypothesis." (Bold and italics added by me to stress emphasis.) Furthermore, this short page shows in a bit more detail why a "theory" in the realm of science is more than what the layman might think of as a theory.

Now, this point about the importance of semantics when arguing against the "But evolution is just a theory" argument has been made several times already in this very thread. I've linked to sources and cited a dictionary definition now. So if anyone says anything like "Evolution is just a theory" in this thread anymore, I'm going to be rather upset, because it shows that you're just not paying attention. Do your homework before replying--it only took me a quick Google search to find this stuff.

_________________
The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

I only bring up the "theory" argument when people do the whole "Evolution is obviously true" tone. Theories have been verified (confirm is a word that is not used in science. Don't believe me? Submit a journal paper with "confirm" in it).
Just because it's a theory doesn't discount it as false... You're right there.

_________________
If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

I think electricbassguy might be referring to a 1999 Gallup poll which found a direct correlation between level of education and belief in creationism. It was an agree-or-disagree poll based on the statement, "God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years or so." The percentage of people who agreed with the statement broke down like this:

High school or less: 55%
Some college: 43%
College grad: 39%
Postgrad / professional: 29%

Personally, I'd be willing to bet quite a lot that these percentages are smaller than samples you'd get from the 20's, 60's, or even the 80's. I'll see if I can find similar polls from those eras.



StrongRad, have you ever heard of Answers in Genesis? They're a creationist think tank. Even they discount the "why are there still apes" argument. It's on their list of "arguments we think creationists should not use" page, about a third of the way down. Might be worth a look.

Mike

_________________
Logical fallacies ahoy! I'd also like to say: graaaaagh!

Thanks for the link, Mike. I actually got that question from an evolution proponent. It was his main question evolution.
I positively despise the "correlation" of education with religious beliefs. To me, it's almost a form of elitism on the part of non-believers. That's why I work as hard as I do in school. I'm the exception to their rule!

_________________
If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

While I agree that the "Why are there still apes?" question may not neccesarily be a great question, I can see where it comes from. I mean, if you figure that there was a need for adaptations (because the current ones were doing poorly) and a new one was begotten, then why would the older, inferior ones, under the newer, harsher (to them) environment still stick around?

One thing that I struggle to see where people get ideas from is when they talk about molecular evolution, in which atoms and compunds "survive" to become more complex molecules, and eventual organic compunds, and eventually life. You can't evolve if you're not actually alive, unless I'm mistaken. Otherwise, that sounds an awful lot like chemistry to me.

_________________

Recollecting from my Historical Geology class (which was QUITE interesting considering that sitting right next to me in class was one of my fraternity brothers--a stout Young-Earth Creationist and Southern Baptist--and the teacher was a stout Evolutionist [the class couldn't be taught without evolution] and most likely Atheist), the question arose of HOW exactly could we have all these basic and seemingly random elements in nature that are not considered life (such as atoms by themselves), and yet we suddenly at one point, more than a billion years after the formation of the Earth, life. How did a primordial soup of non-living elements suddenly come together to spawn life, even if it started as a single-cell organism? My professor was big enough a man and smart enough a scientist to admit that he--nor anyone in the world of science, really (as far as he or I knows, at least)--does not know the answer to that.

_________________
The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

That's really the only point I'm trying to make... It helps to keep that in mind. A lot of times, you get these "OMG SCIENCE!!! UR STUPID U CREATINONIST!!1!1!!" people who seem to think that everything has been completely and unequivocally answered. I don't say that this proves creationism had to happen, but it's important that the "Christians close their minds to science" people keep an open mind.

_________________
If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

It is very nice to see a scientist be honest with what he accepts.

You know, it's interesting. While I believe God did use Creationism to make the world and everything in it, he could have just as easily used Evolution. Now wouldn't that be an interesting idea. Just think, "Charles Darwin discovers a new scientific theroy! Which he labels as "Creationism." The world is shocked!"

And to be honest, a scientific law really can only be regarded as a theroy, even when it's proven, like with Gravity. God can brake the laws of physics (and has) as easily as he made them. Time travel? No problem. Light speed? Not a difficulty. Make the world spin backwards? I can do it with my eyes closed!

You see, I just find it a bit silly. Creationism and Evolution could both very well be true or not true. I don't think that in our current world we will ever prove them. And I think that because we have so little information to that past. While fossils, stones, landmarks, and all sorts of other things do show a time quite a bit ago, it just can't lead us to the answear we all want. Which one is correct.

That's why I believe that both Creationism and Evolution are a faith, not a science. Or they should both be treated equally untill the other is proven correct.

And that is that.

At the very least, Creationism could never be proven nor disproven by science, because it would mean to prove or disprove the existence of God, which is impossible due to two basic rules of science: 1) You can't prove a negative (meaning you can't prove that God does NOT exist); and 2) Scientific laws and theories must be fallible--it must be able to be proven wrong at some point down the line through later experiments and developments in logic and reasoning, whereas God must be, by very definition, infallibe...so to prove that God DOES exist would be to prove in science something completely infallible. And that would make many scientists' heads go boom.

_________________
The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

THEIR HEAD A SPLODE!!

_________________

I think Creationism raises more and bigger questions than evolution does. For instance, suppose the world was created 6000 years ago... what exactly explains how all these species of dinosaur disappeared, and why does it look like their remains are millions of years old? Why would he show patterns of speciation that mimic evolution if it didn't happen? Is God playing tricks on us? And if so, should I even want to worship him? (I've heard arguments against these points, usually centered around the Flood, but the whole Flood thing also runs contrary to empirical observations just like everything else.)

Evolution, of course, raises big questions, too, but I don't think they're so huge and fundamental. The biggest questions are "So where did the first life come from?" (a question that evolution itself doesn't terribly care about; what matters is what happened after) and the old "What use is half an eye?" argument -- we do have partial answers, but they're only partial.

- Kef

Isn't religion supposed to be kept out of government-funded endeavors, like, oh, saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay........... school?


Well, that wraps that up. I'ma go take a coffee break.


Oh wait, I don't drink coffee.




Well, it's never too late to start. *walks off*

_________________
So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell, blue skies from pain. Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell?

Read StrongRad's first post on this page...

I did read it. It smells like BS to me. It clearly says,



Teaching Creationism in schools certainly respects Christianity, don't you think?

Besides, Creationism ISN'T SCIENCE and therefore it has no right to be taught in science class. Science is something that has been noted through observations and testing. Religion is stuff that you choose to believe with little to no evidence for it at all. I'm not saying religion is wrong, just making a point.

_________________
So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell, blue skies from pain. Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell?

Different sense of "respect". In that passage, I think "respecting an establishment of religion" means "regarding establishing religion", i.e., what it's saying is "The government shall make no law establishing a religion..."

Teaching about Creationism in schools, it can be argued, does not establish religion. Teaching it (as the truth) obviously does.

- Kef

I see no reason why Creationism shouldn't be taught as a belief. I mean, regardless of whether or not it's true, it's something that a large amount of people believe in. Of course, I think that if a public school teaches about the Christian belief, they should also teach about the Islamic and Hindu beliefs, as those are the top three religions by number of followers, excluding the "non-religions".

Evolution should be taught as theory, not fact. Once again, regardless of whether or not it's true, it's a scientific theory and thus should be taught to students. And as much as I hate to say it, Intelligent Design should also be taught about in the science class, though I don't know what one could really teach about it aside from its basic definition.

Exactly. Science is 95% about why thing happen, it's pretty much impossible to teach creationism if there's nothing to back it up.

I must strongly disagree with this. ID is neither repeatable nor observable, and thus denies falsifiability. Hence, it is not science. Even Michael Behe of the Discovery Institute (the leading proponent of ID) has admitted that ID cannot be proven by experiment. (He was quoted saying this by Time magazine, August 15, 2005.)

Pseudoscience and junk science have no place in the classroom. The public's understanding of science and the scientific method is poor enough without throwing blatant clutter into the mix.

Mike

_________________
Logical fallacies ahoy! I'd also like to say: graaaaagh!

Nothing to back it up? Usually the little 'holes' in the evolution theory are things that back up ID.

_________________

Only through reverse reasoning. Good science starts with a hypothesis, then seeks to collect any and all data both supportative and unsupportative to the hypothesis, so that the conclusion may end up completely different from the hypothesis. Creationists, on the other hand, start with the conclusion and only look at evidence to support the conclusion. Creationism isn't a science because Creationists (or "Intelligent Design" supporters) don't look for contrary evidence. The mark of any good scientist isn't when (s)he tries to prove his/her hypothesis as being true, but when (s)he seeks to prove his/her hypothesis to be UNtrue. Creationists, as a rule, find their ideology to be infallible and so refuse to find any way to prove it wrong. Any evidence that may arise that would help disprove Creationism is totally ignored by Creationists, so that they only accept "evidence" that supports their claim instead of any evidence that denies it--and that's just illegitimate science. I could do the same thing for Phrenology--debunked as a pseudoscience long ago--and show how "true" it is by leaving out all contradicting evidence.

_________________
The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

I think PianoManGidley is absolutely right. No matter how you slice it, "creation science" (including intelligent design) will never be science. It may be a valid possibility, but it isn't a scientific one.