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Since 1920 creationists have been successful in persuading legislatures in five Southern states to pass laws favorable to their views, but the courts consistently struck them down, saying that they violated the establishment clause of the Constitution. In the 1990s creationists began focusing instead on changing state educational standards. The most famous attempt to do so in recent years--the decision of the Kansas Board of Education to eliminate evolution from the state's science standards--was not a success: the decision was reversed in 2001 when antievolution board members were defeated for reelection.
Still, creationists have been victorious in many other states, a trend catalogued by Lawrence S. Lerner of California State University at Long Beach. His evaluation, summarized and updated in the map below, is valuable in part because it points up the widespread sway of creationists in Northern states, such as Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin, that have a liberal or moderate tradition. Furthermore, it highlights the fact that certain Southern states--North and South Carolina--have more rigorous educational standards than some Northern states, such as New York and Massachusetts.
This article was originally published with the title Down with Evolution!.
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6 Comments
Add CommentCould this "scienntific" article be more closed-minded? The cases before the courts in multiple US states are not to "ban" evolution from the science classroom. They are instead only asking that science textbooks teach ALL of the evidence, both for evolution and for creation. Why would any true scientist be afraid of open discussion on a scientific anomaly such as the origin of life?
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTHE LAW OF ADAPTATION WITH SUBSEQUENT LOSS OF LIFE
To read the entire article, go to: http://openwetware.org/wiki/User:LOTY_Pierre_Jean_Daniel
This newly discovered law comes as a death stroke to evolution theory. We have the guarantee from the nature of the underlying philosophy (Intelligent Design) that the resulting application (programmable bacteria) is free of eugenics.
First of all; let us recall the fundamental reasoning in evolutionism: natural selection coupled with mutations can transform a species S1 into a totally new species S2.
Then, let us assume an individual S1 is under difficult conditions and undergoes modifications.
What evolutionism did not consider is that at the same time, another process comes into play: difficult conditions cause S1 to enter into a resistant form, with a subsequent loss of life.
What if conditions improve? As shown with the 1970’s research led by Peter and Rosemary Grant, “in the years following the drought, previous finches (with smaller beaks) again dominated the population.
There was a reversal in the direction of the selection; the population subjected to selection oscillating back and forth each time the climate changed.”
Thus, modifications tend to reduce if difficult conditions do not persist. However, there is absolute need of a directional, steady line of changes, should the species cross over to a new form of life.
Now, in case difficult conditions do persist, two processes admittedly would run parallel. As modifications would increase, the “quantity of life” would decrease downward limits of tolerance. Modifications would at best help the species to cope, though with a subsequent loss of life.
Surprisingly, the species S2 that admittedly evolved from S1 is found with high “quantity of life”. But S2, which is assumed to have undergone the full amount of modifications, should have undergone accordingly the full amount of adverse conditions.
Thus, S2 would have been found with a lowest “quantity of life”. Indeed, natural selection, coupled with mutations leads necessarily toward the extinction of the species.
As evidenced by the law of recurrent variation, the range of possible adaptations is preprogrammed in DNA, thus imposing inherent boundaries between kinds (groups of species defined only through lineage criteria).
If I am all knowing ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen why would I make a being that needs to learn and seek truth?
If I Created Man in my own image?
Why are you so ugly (joke)...what makes you think I have an image or a form or a place in time within Multiverse? (Multiverse will be proved soon).
If I dont Make mistakes?
Then how do you explain Homosexuality, A curse ? you learn it ?.
If there is no Evolution only placement?
Then why do you suppose I allowed so many clues to the contary.
If only one Religion is correct?
Then what do you suppose I do with the rest ?.
All you have in this game I created for your souls , is choice and experience... nothing more.........if you show I will watch , if you tell me I will ask why,.
The only Crime against me is to waste your life on not experiencing, and not making choices....live life to the full, so I then can learn what you have experienced,....that's it ...truley all there is....after that oblivion..(nah only Joking) ..after that .....you get to !!!!!!!?????? now that would be telling!! .
Love Light Peace ...God.
P.s Yes God does have a sense of Humour,
Philosophical Thoughts and Ideas About Evolution
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Purpose of Life: As you start to read this, I want you to know that I believe that a force, a power, a Supreme Being that we call God created everything, including us. And when God created us, for some reason we were given some very special gifts; our five senses and an intelligent mind capable of analysis and creative thought. Why were we given these special gifts? As we use our minds and these special gifts to look back through history we see that everything has evolved and is continuously evolving, i.e. we are witness to ongoing evolution all around us. What about us? Are we evolving during our lifetimes? We are born, increase our brainpower, then die and become dust. Our minds evolve and produce the one non-physical, temporal product of our living our thoughts . Perhaps each of us is actually in the process of evolving toward pure thought. Perhaps our temporal body passes through a cycle of temporal life thinking thoughts and we do know that even after we die in a physical sense, some of those thoughts may remain. Thoughts are the most powerful force that each of us can create. They are the source of invention; they are the forces that change the world; they can be the most powerful products of our lives. Some of us will go through what we call life having nothing but mundane thoughts, but even these may impact the lives of other people and other things. A few of us will have thoughts that impact the world we live in, enormously. My thought is that the purpose of physical life may be that it could be an evolutionary path toward living-on in another dimension that is pure thought . Life may be an evolutionary passageway bringing us closer to that God that so many of us believe in. So use all those gifts youve been given. Keep your mind active and busy all throughout your life thinking creatively; it may turn out to be very good practice for whats next. And that is just one more thought for today, to get you thinking about the evolutionary purpose of life.
Darwin’s theory of evolution has been aggressively promoted by the scientific establishment for over 150 years, yet billions of people, and thousands of scientists, are still highly skeptical, and for good reason.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll “historical” theories are based on “unobserved “ past events that “supposedly” occurred over vast spans time, ensuring there were never any observers. This means that no scientist can ever conclusively establish that evolution occurred one way, and not another way, or even whether it actually happened at all. Historical based theories (cosmology, geology, and Darwinism) are thus ultimately based on SUBJECTIVE presuppositions, inferences, conjecture, predictions, and (more often than not) sheer speculation.
Even the Nobel committee well understands that historical based theories fall far short of science based on the Empirical & Scientific Method. As such, “science by explanations” regarding unobserved past events is still not seen as the real thing by countless millions. Particularly when “explanations” are endlessly manufactured to fit any and every situation. Indeed, the evolutionary paradigm has become so elastic it is now “unfalsifiable”, and therefore unscientific.
Evolution is a localized competitive process limited to each individual lifeform. Natural selection is totally blind and has no goal. As such, the evolutionary process hasn’t the foggiest notion of where anything and everything is evolving to, or even why.
People instinctively know that we live in a universe that clearly manifests intelligence, mathematical regularity, predictability, finely balances sub atomic particles, cosmological fine tuning, accompanied by structure and design at every level. We instinctively know that the wonders of the cosmos, and greatest show on earth (living environmental systems), necessitate a “Master Conductor” with all the attributes and perspective of deity.
The reality is that evolution is a theory in crisis, and people are increasingly sensing this, like it or not.
And all the inquisitional styled activism of the Humanist spawned NCSE and hard core Darwinian devotees (committed to securing the prevailing Darwinian paradigm as the sole and exclusive explanation for origins ) will not change this reality.
One further comment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe current rejection of the teleological concept of Intelligent Design by the scientific establishment is utterly bazaar, by any measure. To argue that intelligence and design have no place in science, is to deny the very foundations on which all of science is founded. The reason that all scientists "must" apply vast amounts of “intelligence” and “reason” in science, in order to understand the natural world, is because we live in an intelligent rational universe. And the fact that scientists are forever studying the design of biological systems, and probing the underlying structure of the natural world, affirms the reality that we DO live in an intelligent superbly structured universe.
This is precisely why scientists study the natural world. And why they investigate the operation and design of biological systems, and apply their discoveries to new technology. All of which affirms that design (and superbly ordered intelligent structures),are everywhere present in nature.
That the current scientific establishment "opposes" the reality that intelligence and design are part of the fabric of nature and the cosmos is utterly bewildering. One therefore wonders why the editors and contributors to science magazines such as the Scientific American apply vast amounts of reason and intelligence to their science,their papers, and their research, when they believe they live in a “non-intelligent” universe. This causes us to wonder what "non-intelligent" and "design-less" foundation their science is actually founded on.
To operate on the principle the self-evident design of everything in nature is more imagined than real, and that everything in nature is not designed, but only “appears” to be designed is to deny realities that the pioneers of modern science regarded as self-evident.
This of course shows the full extent to which the scientific establishment has now been utterly seduced by the Darwinian delusions. And exposes its mindless commitment to the unsustainable assumptions of philosophical naturalism and materialism.