University of Calif. sued over creationism — I’m waiting for someone to demand professors have religious (ie, Christian) training before they can teach.
A group representing California religious schools has filed a lawsuit accusing the University of California system of discriminating against high schools that teach creationism and other conservative Christian viewpoints.
The Association of Christian Schools International, which represents more than 800 schools, filed a federal lawsuit Thursday claiming UC admissions officials have refused to certify high school science courses that use textbooks challenging Darwin’s theory of evolution. Other rejected courses include “Christianity’s Influence in American History.”
Hey, at least someone is doing something about it! Evolution … come on, with all the advances in what we know about life … and intelligent people still think evolution is how we all got here??? Much more faith is required of evolution than the basis of creation.
Steven, with respect, if your mind could fathom the staggering hugeness of what BILLIONS of years means, evolution would not only seem feasible, it would seem like the only logical explanation.
I don’t want this to turn into a fark-style flamewar. The truth of it is, creationists can’t understand evolutionists and vice versa. The only thing we can agree on is the role of religion in our daily lives. Where should it be practiced, by whom should it be taught, and should we or should we not respect each other?
Riiiiight Steven…you keep smoking that crack. You are right in one sense. Someone is doing something. It’s the UC. They’re telling these wackos that they can go enroll at Bob Jones if they want their religion nonsense treated as science.
Daniel Dennett takes an adult look at a topic that doesn’t deserve more than passing attention as a high school practice debate topic. Is Intelligent Design Anything More Than A Hoax?
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dennett05/dennett05_index.html
Steven I hope you get a real education.
“Much more faith is required of evolution than the basis of creation. ” This is an argument from ignorance, basically saying that God couldn’t have created evolution because I don’t understand it.
I remember one of my college courses that detailed the basis for evolution and countered creationism (this was pre-ID) with discussion on vestigial organs,fossil record, adaptive island mutations, and DNA. It’s worth noting that if you google any of these terms now, you’ll get flooded with sites that refute these notions with elaborate term papers full of references and quotes on the fallacies of evolution.
It’s an incredibly well-organized assault.
p.s. And I always thought Sunday collection went to starving kids in Africa (…or defense lawyers).
come on, with all the advances in what we know about life
Lots of talk about the “holes” and “gaps” in Darwin, but nothing about the holes and gaps in Genesis. A “theory” can be attacked freely, but not an article of faith. 🙁
Replacing Evolution with ID/Creationism reminds me of the AARP ads about “fixing” Social Security – leaky faucet, so tear the entire house down. 🙂
I wonder what will actually be taught regarding ID?
How do you spend a year elaborating on “Everything was designed (by something)”?
Steven
Apparently the “intelligent” people you hang out with haven’t seen the reams of actual documented scientific case evidence showing evolution occuring, not just millions of years ago, but on a consistent and continuing basis througout the animal kingdom (that includes us, btw).
Of course, the creationist will attest, this should all be ignored thanks to constantly edited and fabricated wealth of religous doctrine used to control the masses since recorded history.
Intelligent Design? I like the though that Cancer, Down’s syndrome, Achondroplasia, and the myriad of other genetic disorders aren’t the result of chaotic factors, but instead were the intent of a “Supreme intelligence” – who obviously has a sick sense of humor.
I’m agreeing with Steven. Evolution is BS. Everyone knows that we got here after an alien race had sex with earth monkeys to create our species. Come on folks, if anyone could smell a scam it’d be our nation’s celebrities. And does anyone think that Kirstie Alley, John Travolta, and Tom Cruise could be wrong?!
Here’s an article mentioning a lawsuit filed by University of North Carolina students because the given reading assignments offended their Christian beliefs.
http://compactURL.com/cbkw
And there was a lawsuit filed last year by a university student in Florida who sued his school because he disagreed with his biology student. (I’m sorry, I can’t find a link.)
I can’t help but wonder why Christians even go to college if they already know everything a priori?!
And I find it hilarious that the Right is using political correctness to further its agenda. I guess it’s true, what goes around comes around.
HAHAHA… yes. You need great faith in evolution! Creationism is the answer! Those scientists with all of their… FACTS and other nonsense… Have you ever heard of the cichlids in Lake Victoria??? Wake up!
I would expect in the future professors would have to train in Islamic studies.
Why it’s all those Christians faults. If they had just not been so religious and listened why those terrorists would never have attacked on 9/11. Why those Islamic guys probably didn’t even participate in the attack, Christians probably brainwashed them into doing it.
It is weird that Islam is the only protected theology by the media and the left and it’s also peculiar that radical Islam shares many ideals with Communism.
I just had a conversation with the drug resistant bacteria I had in 2003 and convinced it the it indeed was not the result of 60 years of consistently culling the weaker bacteria and thus leaving the stronger to survive, but that it was exactly the same as all those other dead bacteria and – wow like Christian magic it went away.
Out of curiosity – if evolution doesn’t work – then why do we breed cattle – sheep – horses – cats – dogs etc.
I mean if evolution doesn’t work – why bother try to breed a better horse?
J.S. Scongilli
I fail to understand what your post has to do with the topic at hand. First of all, Christianity is generally more protected by the MSM and left in the west because generally we are also members or culturally lean that way. What has occurred is the reduction in abusing and slandering other people’s beliefs. It is now Politically Incorrect to badmouth other’s religions.
What is taking a hit, IMHO, is the separation of church and state to the detriment of the church. Less and less, we are allowing religion to govern our daily lives. In the debate over teaching Evolution, there is a contradiction that many devout Christians have a hard time accepting. It is this non-acceptance that has fueled the idea of intelligent design as the equivalent to Evolution. The whole notion of intelligent design is an attempt to re-introduce the Bible into classrooms.
And yes, it was Muslims that flew planes into the WTC and Pentagon. It was Christians though, that dropped napalm on the Vietnamese, the atomic bomb on the Japanese, and built the ovens for the Jewish Holocaust. It was Christians that subjugated native people in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. It was Christians that stole the land for their own settlement and took the natural resources for their own with no regard for what was left behind. And on the seventh day God saw that all was good, and he rested.
Sounds,
Quit talking to your bacteria. People are beginning to talk.
Hey Pat,
First off Nazis were not Christians (no matter how bad you want them to be). Hitler was a Pagan. Muslims are protected by the MSM and also heavily by the ACLU. Africans were sold into slavery by Muslim slave traders but this fact is being erased by many historians because it doesn’t fit with the template that white Christians are to blame for everything. Christianity is constantly run down as being religious zealots and nuts unlike the protected Islamic faith.
Also dropping the atomic bomb on Japan saved at least 1 million American lives and millions of Japanesse lives that would have been lost in the invasion.
Have to disagree with you Pat on a couple of points. The first being that Hitler was not a Christian but a Pagan and he also has a vegetarian and loved animals more than people. Most other Nazis were into Pagan type beliefs or other mystical beliefs. If you think that I’m making that up check into a book called “Myth of Hitler’s Pope” by David G. Dalin (who is a Rabbi). It exposes many stories that are not talked about Pope Pius XII, like the fact that Hitler had a plan to kidnap the Pope. Also that Pope Pius XII tried to stop the Nazis even with his first encyclical Summi Pontificatus, which begged for peace, rejected Nazism and expressly mentioned Jews(Allies would later drop the encyclical over Germany to raise anti-Nazism). The book also includes numerous testimonials from Holocaust survivors that and Catholic priests that directly credit the Pope for his involvement in saving Jewish lives. Dalin’s book also includes the story of Hajj Amin al-Husseini who was Hitler’s primary Arab conspirator in the Final Solution and later would be a mentor to Yasser Arafat. Husseini actually moved from Jerusalem to Berlin because he thought the Nazis were going to win the war. Husseini was an early representation of what today we would call radical Islamist or islamofacist. Husseini would also be Hitler’s mouthpiece in the Middle East and his support for the Final Solution is the common threat that links today’s radical Islam and Islamofacists with Hitler and the Nazis.
The second point would be your inclusion of the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. If those bombs were not dropped it would have caused not only mass causalities on the American side but huge numbers Japanese civilians would have been killed in the post X-Day invasions of Japan. The Japanese government and Emperor of Japan had told the civilians to fight on till the last man.
Hey Pat I like the inclusion of the Japanese in your post. Maybe you aren’t familiar with the Japanese actions at Pallawan, or Nanking, or the treatment that they gave to American, British, Dutch, Australian, and Chinese POW in their care. Just for the record people who believe as you do (Atheist, Agnostic, and Darwinism) are responsible for over 150 million deaths in the world since 1917. In such locations as the former U.S.S.R., Eastern Europe, China, Venezuela, Columbia, Darfur, Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. I know that these are small events in history but they do deserve attention.
When I first read the posting by Steven I was excited about reading on but as I kept reading I got slapped in the face by hypocrisy, all the evolutionist did was slam Creationism. What is wrong with the belief in Creationism, Steven was not attacking people that believe in evolution, he was merely stating his thoughts, what the bigoted people that wrote on did was not only attack Creationism but Christians, if you are entitled to your beliefs why can’t we believe what we want to believe too? You are so worried about having your rights infringed upon, what about our rights, what about our free speech? Also, why you are spouting off about evolution being a fact of nature? It is only a theory and a flawed one at that, most of the supposed facts that support it have only been proved to be hoaxes, even Darwin later in life admitted that his THEORY was flawed. Creationism to many is a theory, just like evolution, so why can’t it be given the same amount of respect? Some said that creationism was just made up by man, well so was evolution, if you bothered to do any research before spouting off about how horrible Creationism is you would find out that it has just as much scientific backing as you think evolution does. Read about the Bible why you are at it too, it has NEVER been proven historically wrong, I will repeat NEVER been proven to be historically wrong, you might not believe in God, but you can’t deny the historical accuracy of the Bible, and to those who are thinking that you’ll prove me wrong about the Bible try coming up with a credible source. And to the person that brought Hitler into the subject great job at making yourself sound like a jerk.
> What is wrong with the belief in Creationism,
There is nothing wrong with believing in creationism per se. The problem is when Creationists step over the line and expect that it should be treated as science.
> You are so worried
> about having your rights infringed upon, what about our
> rights, what about our free speech?
Ah, free speech. So, we should allow our science classes to teach that Purple Leprechauns created the universe? We should allow our science classes to teach that aliens created the universe and imprisoned soles in volcanoes?
Science is about what is provable. No one has any problem teach creationism/”intelligent” design for what it is: religion, cultural anthropology, philosophy, ancient civilizations, mythology or a host of other subjects. Just do not try to pass it off as science. Just as we shouldn’t teach Spanish in an English class.
> Also, why you are
> spouting off about evolution being a fact of nature? It is
> only a theory and a flawed one at that, most of the
> supposed facts that support it have only been proved to be
> hoaxes, even Darwin later in life admitted that his THEORY
> was flawed.
> Creationism to many is a theory, just like
> evolution, so why can’t it be given the same amount of
> respect?
You mean like gravity is only a theory? Electromagnetism is only a theory? To make such a statement shows a severe ignorance about the difference between a layman’s definition of a theory and a scientist’s definition of a theory.
That species evolved is a FACT. There is absolutely no question that species have and are evolving. To argue the contrary is the equivalent of arguing that the world is flat. The only discussion is about the mechanics of evolution (e.g. the causes, the speed of evolution etc.) Even “intelligent” design proponents do not argue this. Rather, they argue that that species evolved but were originally “designed” by something or someone. Of course, their ideology still does not qualify as science because they can provide no scientific evidence said “designer” exists.
> Some said that creationism was just made up by
> man, well so was evolution,
Not true. The theory that species evolved was *deduced* from evidence. Creationism was devised by the whims of the biblical writers. There is a vast difference.
> if you bothered to do any
> research before spouting off about how horrible Creationism
> is you would find out that it has just as much scientific
> backing as you think evolution does.
> Read about the Bible
> why you are at it too, it has NEVER been proven
> historically wrong, I will repeat NEVER been proven to be
> historically wrong, you might not believe in God, but you
> can’t deny the historical accuracy of the Bible, and to
> those who are thinking that you’ll prove me wrong about the
> Bible try coming up with a credible source. And to the
> person that brought Hitler into the subject great job at
> making yourself sound like a jerk.
Really. Well, let’s see, the writers of the bible believed in a flat earth. The bible claims that a farmer built a boat and put all the worlds species (which would count in the billions and weigh in the hundreds of thousands of tons) onto it and waited out a flood. The bible is a collection of stories that relate to the events that occurred at the time to teach the readers about their religion. It was not meant to be taken literally.
The UC was absolutely right in rejecting these pseudoscience courses from being passed off as science.