Proud to be a Pennsylvanian

[thebullet]

Well, at last sanity has reared its head in Dover, PA. 7 of the 8 school board members who were forcing Dover HS to teach Intelligent Design were defeated for reelection. In Pennsylvania, at least, Intelligent Design is a dead issue.

But Evil Christians have thier sleazy fingers in too many pies around the globe to go away easily. Here are some things Evil Christians have been doing around the world.

1) The State of Kansas now insists that Intelligent Design be taught as a legitimate alternative to Evolution - ignorance wins over Science

2) You won't believe this one: A new vaccine has been developed that will protect women from cervical cancer. Thousands of women die every year from this disease. Health advocates recommend that the new vaccine be given to all female children as a part of their normal immunization procedures.

But wait! Christians are opposing immunization against cervical cancer on the grounds that it promotes promiscuity! This is true! I couldn't make this up. They would prefer to have thousands of women die rather than hint that sex is acceptable behavior.

3) As we all know, AIDS has reached epidemic dimensions in Africa. But Uganda is one country that has made remarkable progress in the last several decades in slowing the growth of AIDS. In the 80's, AIDS was growing at 15% per year. By 2002, the growth rate had been reduced to about 4% a year. How? A government campaign promoting abstinence, fidelity, and condoms. Uganda has been extremely successful using this approach. But wait! Along comes President Bush and his anti-AIDS initiative. Since this initiative has started, AIDS in Uganda is again on the rise. Why? Because American aid is tied to a campagin that opposes the use of condoms. After all, condoms promote promiscuity.

Is this a great country or what? Evil Christians. Gotta love 'em.

 

[Boota]

I wish I could say I was shocked, but I live in the Midwest, the heart of this kind of crap.

So, not getting cervical cancer promotes promiscuity, hmmm? That explains a lot. I don't have cervical cancer and I fuck all the time. They must be right.

 

[Svenskaflicka]

*laughing and crying at the same time*

Someone make the scary republican go away!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[LadyJeanne]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/30/AR2005103000747.html

Cervical Cancer Vaccine Gets Injected With a Social Issue
Some Fear a Shot For Teens Could Encourage Sex

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 31, 2005; Page A03

A new vaccine that protects against cervical cancer has set up a clash between health advocates who want to use the shots aggressively to prevent thousands of malignancies and social conservatives who say immunizing teenagers could encourage sexual activity.

Although the vaccine will not become available until next year at the earliest, activists on both sides have begun maneuvering to influence how widely the immunizations will be employed.

Groups working to reduce the toll of the cancer are eagerly awaiting the vaccine and want it to become part of the standard roster of shots that children, especially girls, receive just before puberty.

Because the vaccine protects against a sexually transmitted virus, many conservatives oppose making it mandatory, citing fears that it could send a subtle message condoning sexual activity before marriage. Several leading groups that promote abstinence are meeting this week to formulate official policies on the vaccine.

~

The vaccine protects women against strains of a ubiquitous germ called the human papilloma virus. Although many strains of the virus are innocuous, some can cause cancerous lesions on the cervix (the outer end of the uterus), making them the primary cause of this cancer in the United States. Cervical cancer strikes more than 10,000 U.S. women each year, killing more than 3,700.

The vaccine appears to be virtually 100 percent effective against two of the most common cancer-causing HPV strains.

~

Officials of both companies noted that research indicates the best age to vaccinate would be just before puberty to make sure children are protected before they become sexually active. The vaccine would probably be targeted primarily at girls but could also be used on boys to limit the spread of the virus.

~

Conservative groups say they welcome the vaccine as an important public health tool but oppose making it mandatory.

"Some people have raised the issue of whether this vaccine may be sending an overall message to teenagers that, 'We expect you to be sexually active,' " said Reginald Finger, a doctor trained in public health who served as a medical analyst for Focus on the Family before being appointed to the ACIP in 2003, in a telephone interview.

"There are people who sense that it could cause people to feel like sexual behaviors are safer if they are vaccinated and may lead to more sexual behavior because they feel safe," said Finger, emphasizing that he does not endorse that position and is withholding judgment until the issue comes before the vaccine policy panel for a formal recommendation.

Conservative medical groups have been fielding calls from concerned parents and organizations, officials said.

"I've talked to some who have said, 'This is going to sabotage our abstinence message,' " said Gene Rudd, associate executive director of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations. But Rudd said most people change their minds once they learn more, adding that he would probably want his children immunized. Rudd, however, draws the line at making the vaccine mandatory.

"Parents should have the choice. There are those who would say, 'We can provide a better, healthier alternative than the vaccine, and that is to teach abstinence,' " Rudd said.

In a statement, the conservative Family Research Council said it will "monitor the development of these vaccines, the FDA drug approval process, the development of recommendations for their use and the marketing of these vaccines."

"While we welcome medical advances such as an HPV vaccine, it remains clear that practicing abstinence until marriage and fidelity within marriage is the single best way of preventing the full range of sexually transmitted diseases," the group said.

________________

Bullet, I had no idea this vaccine was in the works - this is fantastic news.

 

[rgraham666]

"While we welcome medical advances such as an HPV vaccine, it remains clear that practicing abstinence until marriage and fidelity within marriage is the single best way of preventing the full range of sexually transmitted diseases," the group said.

That's news to me.

Bullet? I'm going to object to the Evil Christians tag.

Evil and Christianity are not congruent terms.

In fact, I don't regard the people behinds these actions as evil, or Christian.

I do however regard them as really, really stupid.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

What precisely is their objection to human beings having sex?

Is it because the Bible says it's wrong? Or is it just that Christian-Puritan knee-jerk belief that all pleasure is bad?

 

[rgraham666]

Probably because they don't get much.

And when they do it's not much fun.

 

[thebullet]

Rob, I'm certainly not painting all Christians as evil. Some of my best friends are Christians.

But one cannot just write these people off as stupid. That underestimates them at the same time it forgives them their trespasses. They are smart enough to get rich in the business world. They are smart enough to gain control of the Republican Party. They are smart enough to gain control of the Legisilative and Executive branches of the American government.

They are plenty smart enough. What they are, Rob, is EVIL!

 

[LadyJeanne]

Rob, I'm certainly not painting all Christians as evil. Some of my best friends are Christians.

But one cannot just write these people off as stupid. That underestimates them at the same time it forgives them their trespasses. They are smart enough to get rich in the business world. They are smart enough to gain control of the Republican Party. They are smart enough to gain control of the Legisilative and Executive branches of the American government.

They are plenty smart enough. What they are, Rob, is EVIL!

They were smart enough to re-package and re-market creationism as intelligent design, thus making people believe it's a legitimate scientific theory. Some people, anyway. Enough people to get it into real schools.

 

[rgraham666]

I won't classify them as evil until they start building 'special camps' and ghettos for people who don't believe as they do.

I'll admit that such actions are, in my opinion, within their purview, but they are doing that. Yet.

Also, they've only had the one success so far, and I think that's quite temporary.

At least I hope so. I like your country, despite its weaknesses and foibles. And I'm very fond of a lot people in it. Would be a shame to watch it destroy itself.

 

[entitled]

Rob? i suggest you turn your head now.

While not 'official' camps and such, there are quite a few small towns around here that are deemed to be non-christian because the people that live in them aren't baptist. The majority of people will not interact with them. They won't drive through them if they can help it. i've been in the vehicle with people who lock the doors and speed (70 or 80 miles per hour) through these towns because the people in them are 'different'.

This is a bigger force than most people are willing to admit, and are less Christian than they claim to be. If they were truly Christian (the real meaning, following the teachings of Christ), they would be much more tolerant and accepting.

With that being said...

*wanders off whistling 'every sperm is sacred'*

 

[cantdog]

I like 'quasi-Christians'. I think the term has a nice derisive edge.

'Evil' is a great shorthand. But it is a form of madness, actually. These quasi-Christians are engaged in a revolution, by cells and moles, from within. There are references in the news that tipped me off to this; I started with the name of the quasi-Christian minister who acts as Bush's advisor. The guy was named in the stories about the prayer sessions which start each Cabinet meeting . Check out Christian Dominionism, Christian Reconstructionist. It reads at first like some kind of bizarro Illuminati style thing. But these people are all through the GOP, the circuit courts, the Congress. DeLay is one of them, for example, and much of the cabinet.

It explains why they haven't made sense to the Left. The Left has been used to ascribing strictly venal reasons to their opponents' actions-- they do it for wealth and power, because they are essentially businesspeople. That explanation doesn't quite cover what the Bush republicans are doing. Sure there's oil, sure, there's plunder; but the peace initiatives from the Israeli government were shut down and the Israelis told to take a hard line. The oil is difficult to obtain because of sabotage and resistance strikes, and yet the most important thing seems to be keeping an American troop strength on the ground in the region. Our policy is also to begin a civil war there, pitting Kurd and Shi'ah against Sunnite.

On every front, the reason given for every decision taken by this GOP is a quasi-Christian reason. No other sort of justification can be considered if it contradicts the quasi-Christian reason.

They are thinking End Times. They are planning for the Armageddon, which cannot begin until the Israelis recapture all of Jerusalem.

 

[thebullet]

Rob, I suggest you read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood or Revolt in 2100 by Robert A Heinlein.

I thank whatever God there is that GW Bush is so completely incompetent or this country would be in real peril. We have been moving well onto the path predicted by those two works of fiction.

 

[cantdog]

The country is in real peril. I cite the Help America Vote Act. This mandates the touch-screen voting machines, the ones without paper trails, to be phased in all over the country over the next few years. One of the executives of the companies who make these ran for office as soon as his district of choice put his machines in. He won with 85% of the vote, even in Black districts.

 

[thebullet]

Cantdog wrote:
They are thinking End Times. They are planning for the Armageddon, which cannot begin until the Israelis recapture all of Jerusalem.

Yes we have actual leaders of our nation who fully expect to witness the Rapture in their lifetimes. Given that one rather significant fact - then environmental issues become meaningless, and yes, Israel has to recapture the entire holy land.

Isn't it ironic that the Bush Administration and especially the "Evil" Christians so thoroughly support the Israeli government in their efforst.? These people want Israel to return to its '67 boundaries. But when that happens, these people expect the Israelis to suffer all of the rages of hellfire and damnation (since they aren't born again Christians) when the Rapture hits.

This reads like a really bad SciFi story.

 

[thebullet]

I've mentioned voting machines before on this website and have been usually called a whiner and told to shut the hell up.

Here is an article from a Rockford, Illinois newspaper about the Ohio voting in the 2004 presidential race:



GAO report upholds Ohio vote fraud claims


By Joe Baker, Senior Editor Back

As if the indictment of Lewis “Scooter” Libby wasn’t enough to give the White House some heavy concerns, a report from the Government Accounting Office takes a big bite out of the Bush clique’s pretense of legitimacy.

This powerful and probing report takes a hard look at the election of 2004 and supports the contention that the election was stolen. The report has received almost no coverage in the national media.

The GAO is the government’s lead investigative agency, and is known for rock-solid integrity and its penetrating and thorough analysis. The agency’s
agreement with what have been brushed aside as “conspiracy theories” adds even more weight to the conclusion that the Bush regime has no business in the
White House whatever.

Almost a year ago, Rep. John Conyers, senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, asked the GAO to investigate the use of electronic voting machines in
the Nov. 2, 2004, presidential election. That request was made as a flood of protests from Ohio and elsewhere deluged Washington with claims that shocking irregularities were common in that vote and were linked to the machines.

CNN said the Judiciary Committee got more than 57,000 complaints after Bush’s claimed re-election. Many were made under oath in a series of statements and affidavits in public hearings and investigations carried out in Ohio by the Free Press and other groups seeking to maintain transparent elections.

Online Journal.com reported that the GAO report stated that “some of [the]concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes.”

This is the only democratic nation that permits private partisan companies to count and tabulate the vote in secret, using privately-held software. The public is excluded from the process. Rev. Jesse Jackson and others have declared that “public elections must not be conducted on privately-owned machines.” The makers of nearly all electronic voting machines are owned by conservative Republicans.

The chief executive of Diebold, one of the major suppliers of electronic voting machines, Warren “Wally” O’Dell, went on record in the 2004 campaign
vowing to deliver Ohio and the presidency to George W. Bush.

In Ohio, Bush won by only 118,775 votes out of more than 5.6 million cast. Honest election advocates contend that O’Dell’s statement to hand Ohio’s vote to Bush still stands as a clear indictment of an apparently successful effort to steal the White House.

Some of the GAO’s findings are: 1. Some electronic voting machines “did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both
without being detected.” In short, the machines; provided a way to manipulate the outcome of the election. In Ohio, more than 800,000 votes were cast
on electronic voting machines, some registered seventimes Bush’s official margin of victory.

2: the report further stated that: “it was possible to alter the files that define how a ballot looks and works, so that the votes for one candidate could be recorded for a different candidate.” Very many sworn statements and affidavits claim that did happen in Ohio in 2004.

Next, the report says, “Vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level.” The GAO found that falsifying election results
without leaving evidence of doing so by using altered memory cards could easily be done.

The GAO additionally found that access to the voting network was very easy to compromise because not all electronic voting systems had supervisory functions
protected by password. That meant access to one machine gave access to the whole network. That critical finding showed that rigging the election did not take a “widespread conspiracy” but simply the cooperation of a small number of operators with the power to tap into the networked machines. They could
thus alter the vote totals at will. It therefore was no big task for a single programmer to flip vote numbers to give Bush the 118,775 votes.

Another factor in the Ohio election was that access to the voting network was also compromised by repeated use of the same user ID, coupled with easy-to-guess passwords. Even amateur hackers could have gotten into the network and changed the vote.

System locks were easily picked, and keys were easy to copy, so gaining access to the system was a snap.

One digital machine model was shown to have been networked in such a rudimentary manner that if one machine experienced a power failure, the entire
network would go down. That is too fragile a system to decide the presidency of the United States.

Problems obviously exist with security protocols and screening methods for vendor personnel. The GAO study clearly shows that no responsible
business would operate with a computer system as flimsy, fragile and easily manipulated as the one usedin the 2004 election.

These findings are even more damning when we understand the election in Ohio was run by a secretary of state who also was co-chairman of Bush’s Ohio
campaign. Far from the conclusion of anti-fraud skeptics, the GAO’s findings confirm that the network, which handled 800,000 Ohio votes, was vulnerable
enough to permit a handful of purposeful operatives to turn the entire election by means of personal computers using comparatively simple software.

One Ohio campaign operative, Tom Noe, a coin dealer, was indicted Oct. 27 for illegally funneling $45,400 to Bush by writing checks to others, who then wrote
checks to Bush’s re-election campaign, allegedly dodging the $2,000 limit on contributions by an individual.

“It’s one of the most blatant and excessive finance schemes we have encountered,” said Noel Hillman, section chief of the U.S. Department of Justice’s
public integrity section, as quoted in the Kansas City Star.

In the 2000 election, Florida was the key; in the 2004 election, Ohio was the key.

From the Nov. 2-8, 2005, issue

 

[bholderman]

That's news to me.

Bullet? I'm going to object to the Evil Christians tag.

Evil and Christianity are not congruent terms.

In fact, I don't regard the people behinds these actions as evil, or Christian.

I do however regard them as really, really stupid.

Just one thing I hop everyone will remember and this was a mental "revalation" to me when I was tuck in that position of being Christian and dealing with all the other crap that seems to get wrapped up in it.

I was sitting in a native American history class at one point in school (me major was archaeology), the TA a native/Hispanic was discussing the affect of missions. The history of the Spanish missions if one is truly biased can certainly be twsted into an evil Christian argument, but he changed gears in a direction that I was suprised to hear. He summed it up in one comment whaich I can still see him sitting at the table, "The problem isn't with Christianity, the problem is Christians."

Just like my view of the left is predominately through the media, I know its skewed, the view of the Christian right is as well. There are extremes no doubt, and the extremes make the most noise on either side and get more tv time.

For every evil Christian, there is probably a wacked out liberal. I prefer where we all meet in the middle.

My 2 cents in the political arena (by the way I hate these threads).

 

[Wildcard Ky]

I have no problem with intelligent design being taught along side evolution. There's a lot of people that believe in it, so I think all options should be presented. I don't think evolution should be dropped in favor of intelligent design.

For the post about voting fraud: It seems that there's quite a bit of fraud in New Jersey as well. Over 7,000 dead people voted in last years presidential election. What's good for the goose must be good for the gander, eh?

 

[Alfie Higgins]

I have no problem with intelligent design being taught along side evolution. There's a lot of people that believe in it, so I think all options should be presented. I don't think evolution should be dropped in favor of intelligent design.

Wildcard KY - IF you have no problem with intelligent design being taught along side evolution, then you don't realize that Evolution is science and intelligent design is not science. If Intelligent Design is taught at all, it should be in a religion course, not a science course.

Please do not fall for these religious extremists' claim that ID is science. There is nothing about it that is scientific. By its very nature it cannot be tested and proven true. One cannot perform experiments based upon ID concepts. All one can do is believe it or not believe it.

That makes it faith, religion. Not science.

Teaching Intelligent Design in a science classroom is a degredation of the science ciriculum. It is sending a totally invalid message to our children.

It is dumbing down our schools.

Wildcard KY, I recommend you rethink your position. Do you really want to make our schools even worse? Do you want to pull some religious slight of hand on our children, having this religious concept taught by an authority figure such as the science teacher under the guise of science? Do you want to pull the rug out from under the biological sciences by denegrating the concept upon which most of biology is based?

 

[Alex756]

Wildcard KY - IF you have no problem with intelligent design being taught along side evolution, then you don't realize that Evolution is science and intelligent design is not science. If Intelligent Design is taught at all, it should be in a religion course, not a science course.

Please do not fall for these religious extremists' claim that ID is science. There is nothing about it that is scientific. By its very nature it cannot be tested and proven true. One cannot perform experiments based upon ID concepts. All one can do is believe it or not believe it.

That makes it faith, religion. Not science.

Teaching Intelligent Design in a science classroom is a degredation of the science ciriculum. It is sending a totally invalid message to our children.

It is dumbing down our schools.

Wildcard KY, I recommend you rethink your position. Do you really want to make our schools even worse? Do you want to pull some religious slight of hand on our children, having this religious concept taught by an authority figure such as the science teacher under the guise of science? Do you want to pull the rug out from under the biological sciences by denegrating the concept upon which most of biology is based?

I am sorry that you do not understand the history of Evolution or the various theories of evolution or the various theories of inteligent design.

The foundation of Darwin's theory of Evolution is rooted firmly in Intelligent design. It is from the infancy of paleo and fossil searching that evolution theories emerged. If not for the scientists that tried to prove teh date of the flood and their obsession with pre-deluvial bones, these sciences would not have developed as they did. If not for the MANY highly religious men who painstakingly documented fossils these theories would not have occured.

Evolution is a very recent theory and very full of holes. Many of the Inteligent design theories are firmly rooted in science with many doctorates and biologists working on them.

Should we remove all religion from science? Would Newton have developed what he did if he was not deeply involved in Hermeticism? Would Darwin have been on the beagle if it were not for his 'religious character' I believe was the reason he was extended his invite. Would Lyell have developed his principles of geology whoch Darwin read on the Beagle without his religious background?

Most likely not.

Intelligent design is as much as basis of Evolution as the persecution of Heliocentric theory was to Keplar.

Please do not tar inteligent design as creationism, it is not.

To think Evolution is as understood as another theory like gravity is a downfall, the reason thinking and knowledgeable people in some caes have doubts about evolution is that it IS soo full of holes. Was not Newton's theory full of holes until Special relativeity? Evolution is a very young science, which MAY perhaps proove to be wrong. Aristotles explanations of ballistics prooved to be wrong, not just inaccurate. Democretus was wrong, MANY MANY more scientists and natural philosophers have been wrong than right, but they provided a building block on which to build forward.

Evolution is a scientific theory with holes. Inteligent design is a scientific theory as well with holes. Creationism is a religion.

I don't know where the 'right' answer is, but teaching our children more instead of less if not always a bad thing. Science education still starts with the Greeks in more text books. If we teach that due to its influance on modern science even KNOWING it is not factual, teaching ID which is the basis of Evolution theories and not proven non factual doesn't seem too bad.

~Alex

 

[Alfie Higgins]

Alex you are dead wrong.

Intelligent Design is merely recycled Creationism. Creationism wasn't working so the extreme right did what they do best. They repackaged the same old shit and sold it as something new.

Evolutionary theory is certainly not an outcropping of Intelligent Design. How in the world did come to that conclusion? Probably been reading too many Right Wing blogs, I'd bet.

Let me restate it: If you can't test it, it ain't science. Intelligent Design cannot be tested. ERGO: it ain't science.

Evolution is a theory only in the most scientific sense, just as gravity is a theory. (Gravity is a theory, but if you fall out of an apple tree you'll land just as hard as if Gravity were a fact.)

For all intents and purposes, evolution is a proven fact. What is still being determined is the mechanism of evolution.

 

[Alex756]

Alex you are dead wrong.

Intelligent Design is merely recycled Creationism. Creationism wasn't working so the extreme right did what they do best. They repackaged the same old shit and sold it as something new.

Evolutionary theory is certainly not an outcropping of Intelligent Design. How in the world did come to that conclusion? Probably been reading too many Right Wing blogs, I'd bet.

Let me restate it: If you can't test it, it ain't science. Intelligent Design cannot be tested. ERGO: it ain't science.

Evolution is a theory only in the most scientific sense, just as gravity is a theory. (Gravity is a theory, but if you fall out of an apple tree you'll land just as hard as if Gravity were a fact.)

For all intents and purposes, evolution is a proven fact. What is still being determined is the mechanism of evolution.

I am very sorry to say my sources of this information come from reading the books of Lyell, the diaries of Darwin, the publications, both early and later of Darwin, Reading articles from the currant plethora of scholars whose feild is the history and philophy of Biology. Reading the papers of names such as Olby, who I am sure does little more online than check his email being more of a pen and paper type.

If you wish to think this is based on right wing blogs and not reading and anylizing the documents in question, I can not help you since your mind is made up.

Evolutionary theory is most certainly firmly rooted on a basis of inteligent design. Read the origninal works yourself.

~Alex

 

[rgraham666]

Intelligent design is not a science.

The main reason, in my opinion, is because it makes little recourse to natural law. It always becomes 'the Designer (sotto voce The Christian God) made it that way'. This is an unobservable and untestable hypothesis.

Evolution has many observed instances.

For example, the evolution from lizards to mammals is quite clearly documented. Mostly through changes in the jaw and teeth.

Lizards have complex jaws, consisting of several bones including the dentary which holds the teeth. Several other bones make up the rest of the jaw. The teeth of a lizard are very simple, little more than cones.

There is a documented fossil record of mammal-like lizards over time. In this time, the bones other than the dentary became smaller. The teeth became more complex. Canine and front teeth for nipping and tearing evolved and molars with cusps for chewing.

If you look at mammals jaws there is only the dentary now, and the the teeth are enormously complex, and appropriate to the lifestyle of the animal. Tearing and chewing for predators, nipping and grinding for herbivores.

The other bones did not disappear. We mammals still have them. In our inner ear. The jaw bones of the lizards became the ear bones of the mammals. The ear bones of mammals help with our hearing. Lizards have bad hearing and mammals have good hearing.

This demonstrates another factor of evolution. Evolution does not design, it jury rigs. It takes already existing facets of a species and adapts them to circumstances. It never creates new material.

There are modern examples of evolution as well. The resistance of bacteria to antibiotics for example.

A more complex example of modern evolution can be found in Africa.

There is a small lake just south of Lake Victoria. It was part of Lake Victoria until 3,000 years ago, when a sand bar made it a separate entity.

In that lake, there are three species of fish that exist nowhere else. They are similar to species found in Lake Victoria, but cannot mate with those similar species. This fits with the central tenet of evolution, that species adapt to their environments.

Intelligent design is a hypothesis. There has been little evidence gathered for it. It offers no real description of life and how it works. It can be studied and debated by knowledgeable experts. Perhaps these experts will gather enough evidence that intelligent design will become the leading principle explaining how life works. It is not currently at that stage.

Until it reaches the stage of central descriptor, agreed upon by the large majority of credible biological scientists it has no place in classrooms of our educational system.

Christ! I'm a high school dropout, and I understand this. Why can't the supposedly well educated?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Evolutionary theory is most certainly firmly rooted on a basis of inteligent design. Read the origninal works yourself.

~Alex

Saying that the roots of evolutioary theory are rooted in theology because early paleontologists were Christians is like saying that the roots fo the the theory of relativity are rooted in bicycling because Einstein rode a bicycle. The contention is just absurd. Darwin's theology has as much to do with the present day theory as the color of his socks.

Intelligent design is not science. Because it can't be disproven, it's simply not science; end of story. Screw the religious connotations. A theory that does not allow itself to be proven false in some way is simply not empirical science. Karl Popper showed that. A scientific theory must have results or implications that can be challenged by empirical experiment and ID doesn't have that, therefore, not science

It's true that Darwin and Lysle and others were religious men, but the very cornerstone of Darwin's theory is that evolutuion is driven by random mutation, not Divine Will.We got here the hard way, by trial and error over billions of years.

I work with paleontologists. I work in the geology department of the Field Museum of Natural History in invertebrate paleontology and paleobotany, and I can tell you that there's not a credible paleontologist who gives the slightest credence to ID. In fact, it drives them apoplectic with rage.

I work with fossils, with billion year-old rocks containing the first smears of unicellular life. Our collection takes its painstaking way up hundreds of millions to the first multi-cellular organisms, 300 million years more before the first plants creep out onto the land, the development of vascular tissues, spores, asexual then sexual reproduction. You can see it all there in the fossil record, cabinet after cabinet of specimens covering hundreds of millions of years. You can see evolution in action, see things changing, life making wroing choices, extinctions, mutations, modifications. You can see the whole fucking parade of life over a billion years right there, and anyone who can't see it just blind.

Evolution has "holes" just like particle physics has "holes", or organic chemistry has "holes", or mathematics. No one's saying that the lack of proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is evidence that numbers are so complicated that only God could have created them and so we should teach Divine Mathematics. No one's suggesting we start believing that atoms are actually angels because we can't isolate the Higgs Boson and therefore particle physics has "problems." Evolution is law. There are problems within the field just as there are problems in every branch of science, but there's no question as to the validity of its principles, and so far evolution has stood up to 150 years of the most rigorous scientific challenges.

Unlike ID, the Theory of Evolutin provides us with thousands of opportunities to disprove it. All it takes is one, but so far no one's found it, no matter how hard they've looked.

 

[cloudy]

Should we remove all religion from science?

Absolutely yes, we should!

Who decides which religion is the "right" one, hmmm?

While I have no problem with Christians (REAL Christians), I would be highly pissed to have my children taught their doctrines in school.

How would you like it if it was from the other side? I don't know if you're Christian or not, but if you are, what if I wanted to teach YOUR children what I believed, as part of their science curriculum? Wouldn't you object?