And I seriously doubt any educated thinking person would fail to see the parallels with the old belief that demons caused disease, that an intelligent designer caused lightning, and the earth was the center of the universe. There was a time when these things were felt as having implications on morality, ethics, and sense of purpose. For example, how dare some upshot person tell kids that lightning forms naturally and isn't the directed fury of god?
You know lightening is not the directed fury of God?
Really....
Diminishing the reaches of god's retribution will surely lead to practices of immorality!
It likely will lead to a different morality.
Or that the earth is not the center of the universe - are they trying to turn kids into atheists?
Yes, I think the scientific community has an agenda to turn kids into atheists, or at least the type of theist that they scientifically approve of. Science has become the bottom line for the scientific community, yet science is not an independent power set apart from man, it is a creation of man, and we all know man is deeply flawed in many, many ways.
Most would agree that power tends to corrupt, and scientific power/dogma is not much different in this respect. We have a few that have been put into intellectual power by the masses, and they are want to abuse that power in the name of "science."
This is not a new story, it is the story of man's desire to influence others through the power they have.
One of the checks against science is skepticism, yet the Darwinists seem to have looked the other way in their enthusiasm at this most important tool of in the scientist's bag.
Teach the kids how to think critically and skeptically, especially of theories that are not falsifiable.
This issue is of the same ilk. I imagine in 500 years time skepticism of evolution will be as rare as skepticism of a sun orbiting earth.
That is your imagination.
But just as acceptance of a heliocentric solar system did not turn everyone into atheists, neither will
evolution.
No, it will not turn
everyone into an atheist, as some will have the common sense to understand that science reaches a limit, then postulates that it has achieved knowledge.
No it isn't. Given the scarcity of atheists I feel safe to say that the majority of people who accept evolution also believe in god.
Scarcity of atheists?
Are they an endangered species?
LOL...
In a science class the answer is to give the consensus view of scientists, so the answer given should be evolution.
There is no need to give a "consensus" view in order for children to learn about biological processes.
This is the issue. Teaching a "consensus view" is indoctrinating children with scientific opinion, not teaching them the facts of life.
Right, but you are just claiming "Darwinism" is dogmatic thinking without giving a reason why it is anymore dogmatic than any other scientific theory.
I am not saying it is any more or less dogmatic than other unfalsifiable theories.
Big bang theory, another unfalsifiable theory, is certainly taught by some teachers with full zeal and dogmatism.
I could equally claim atomic theory is dogmatic thinking just because so many physicists believe it.
Atomic theory has quite a bit of math behind it, and there is consistency in the use of language.
Most physicists know the history of theories being blown to hell as knowledge deepens, so they are much less dogmatic. They have learned their lesson, something lost on many biological thinkers.
Noone has observed an electron either, noone has observed a full orbit of pluto. "missing link" is a meaningless phrase unless you specify what the link is between.
Missing link is very meaningful, we have all seen the drawings:
<img src=http://www.dispuuttau.nl/content/staut/pictures/ape-to-man.png>
There is plenty of empirical evidence for common descent, hence why so many IDists accept it.
Common descent? Sure, a commonality of a designer and/or programming, not evidence of random chance evolution.
Do you believe the earth is only 6,000 years old too?
No.
My point is that some people do believe that, they believe that the old earth geologists have figured out is wrong. They would say they don't want old earth dogmatism taught in schools, they don't want atheistic old earth theories taught to kids. All they want is the facts taught you see "not some presupposition based theory used to support an argument that is ineligible to submit to falsification". The problem is that I don't see why your argument against evolution is any more valid than the argument of young earth creationists use against old earth geology.
Do scientists theorize the age of the earth, or do the
calculate the age of the earth based on carbon 14 dating?
Of course, there is an acceptance that carbon 14 dating and other geological measurements are accurate, but quite frankly, there is a degree of speculation and possible error in those calculations.
Why on earth should survival instinct disappear if evolution was true?
Survival instinct, by evolutionary teaching, is a product of evolution. Survival instinct is not a product of design, but some random chance unplanned condition of some atomic particles eventually joining together and producing man.
You can't look at the theory properly in parts, you have to look at the whole, the theory needs to explain the whole rise of life to its present state, and from the most basic forms of life to the most complex.
If all this rising of life from non life by chance and random interactions of atomic particles, then it is just as probably that somewhere along the line species would have evolved out of the survival instinct.
This of course has not happened. Species have not randomly, magically, chaotically, driven by chance altered their nature for survival, from birth, through lifespan, to death.
The cycle continues unbroken, despite the passage of millions of years, and plenty of opportunity for these defining characteristics of biological organism to magically mutate into something else.
I suspect you are defining macroevolution as "anything we haven't observed" and then claiming we haven't observed macroevolution as an argument. That is circular reasoning. First define exactly what macroevolution is in genetic terms.
Who said macro evolution must be defined in genetic terms? You?
Lol.
We have not seen complex biological species evolved into different species.
We have not seen a fish evolve into a land loving lizard. We have not seen a monkey evolve into a human being.
I know, I know, the excuse or rationalization is that "it takes time" for this to happen.
How do you know?
You don't know, that is a guess and an admission of ignorance.
Speciation has been observed, plenty of empirical evidence supports it (ring species for example). If that is macroevolution (and the biological definition of macroevolution is evolution above the species level) then macroevolution has indeed been observed.
Not on the level of macro evolution of more advanced species.
We see micro organisms adapt to environmental stress, but it is still not known if this adaptation is by design, or within the realm of possibilities of programming of the organisms. We really don't know if a "new" species has suddenly "evolved" or if the species is just presenting itself to us in one of its various and potential forms.
