Europe’s main human rights body voted to urge schools across the continent to firmly oppose the teaching of creationist and “intelligent design” views in their science classes.
The Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly approved a resolution saying attacks on the theory of evolution were rooted “in forms of religious extremism” and amounted to a dangerous assault on science and human rights.
The Council, based in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, oversees human rights standards in member states and enforces decisions of the European Court of Human Rights.
America sends out missionaries from the Dark Ages to the whole world.
Mister Mustard – at least use the whole quote. Stop cherry picking and then attacking straw men. You can argue better than that, I’ve seen you do so.
“the false definition foisted upon them by those who have a vested interest in keeping them ignorant of scientific fact, which disproves their fairytales.”
You admit you believe in fairytales, and that science doesn’t cover most of it (though a lot of the bible is provably false or innaccurate, spiritually isn’t scientificly falsable, and I’m fine with that). However that is not the point that was originally made.
The point was about people in power, or that who have influence over people like you, who dish out lies and disinformation. Perhaps the last line was a little harsh, but certainly it is impossible that things happened exactly as written in the Bible, and it is also scientifically proven that other “fairytales” like a young earth, creationism, and things like bats being birds are false. Hence “disproves”
So… yeah, not a great point to make really.
#26 “…kidnapping people and burying them in a desolate wasteland”
Who…Not, Falon Gong? 😆
Cheers
Gregory – You are also missing the boat; you are glossing over a very, very precise distinction, which invariably gets overlooked in sci/rel discussions:
“…certainly it is impossible that things happened exactly as written in the Bible…”
Nope. There is not scientific proof of that. The closest anyone can say accurately is “it is astronomically improbable that…”
…and then you make the same unsupprted generalization, in the converse:
” it is also scientifically proven that other “fairytales” like a young earth, creationism … are false.”
Sorry – no it isn’t proven. The weight of all available evidence supports the assertion that those things have an astronimically high likelihood of being false – but we currently do not have evidence that they are categorically and absolutely false. Until such a time, we can only say that they are so unlikely in every imaginable way, that to they cannot rationally be entertained as actual real-world possibilities.
It’s not hairsplitting, it’s a critical distinction between what is provably true and what we can, for all practical purposes and with universally acceptable safety, regard as true but cannot prove conclusively.
Failure – or, often, inability – to make such vital distinctions is one of the core reasons why religiionists cannot grasp the absurdity of their beliefs.
But, the problem remains; if you could dissuade illogical people from their errors by use of logic – you wouldn’t HAVE to, since they wouldn’t, by simple virtue of being logical, make those errors in logic in the first place.
You don’t help the side when you make the same mistakes the other side is known for…
#17 To me Science was always the pursuit of the Truth. So no I would not like Theories passed off as Fact. Also don’t confuse Creationist with “Intelligent Design” they are two different believes ID do believe in evolution but believe God did the Evolving not Nature. I’m not saying their right but they do believe in some of the Science.
#21 It’s not a lie maybe best guess isn’t the right words but it’s the best I can come up with. I’ve seen it time and again when they go to test something and they go WTF we didn’t expect that. It usually doesn’t totally disprove what the thought was going to happen but it total changes how the look at it and usually raises more questions.
#26 Don’t confuse Religion with those who run religion(The Church). China’s Government is the only one who want to be controlling things. If you look at what Christ taught from the Bible. He never forced anyone to believe him he would just make his point and let them decide and he really never Judged anybody. Unfortunately a lot of people use Religion to control people and not for what the core believes of that religion. If you look at the Bible after Noah even God gave up on forcing us to believe in him. That doesn’t mean we should be able to talk about him.
Do I believe “Intelligent Design” should be taught in Public schools? No, because Science doesn’t back it up, but the holes in Evolution should be pointed out and how research is trying to fill them.
Should Religious schools be able to teach “Intelligent Design”? Yes, but not at the expense of Evolution science as we understand it.
More info…
While creationism, which says that God created the world in six days, has been mainly propagated by Christians in the United States, the PACE (Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly) report was initiated after a Turkish Muslim publishing group sent an Islamic creationist book to schools in several countries, Reuters news service reported.
German CDU parliamentarian Axel Fischer, who voted against the resolution on Thursday, said that he felt that the resolution had been sloppy and included a “negative undertone against churches.” “I missed a justification for why creationism is a threat to human rights,” adding that he thought it was wrong to ban certain things from schools from the outset.
“I’d rather discuss the strengths and weaknesses of something and leave it up to people to decide what they believe,” said Fischer, a mechanical engineer by trade.
While saying that the theory of evolution explained a lot, but was unproven, he added that he was in favor of Germany’s system of teaching the story of creation in religion classes and the theory of evolution in science classes.
Supporters of the resolution on the other hand said that it was not meant as an attack on religious beliefs. “There are different views of the creation of the world and we respect that,” Anne Brasseur, a liberal parliamentarian from Luxembourg, who presented the report, recently told Reuters. “The message we wanted to send was to avoid creationism passing itself off as science and being taught as science. That’s where the danger lies.”
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That’s right, there’s enough fraud in science without any outside influences….
Thomas: the bible was written by people, not any divinity. There are many things mentioned in the various versions of the bible that directly conflict with reality (the classic being a round vessel with a radius of N and a circumference of 6N. In reality that round vessel has a slightly larger circumference of 2* Pi*N.).
If you want to use the Bible as a source of wisdom and ethics, so be it. But it wasn’t written by God and it isn’t a source of valid scientific information, including how the world was made.
Incidentally, theories are actually well proven. Newton’s equations, relativity, and evolution are examples of theories.
On the other hand, a hypothesis is a proposal about how something works, that has yet to be proven to the degree that a theory has. Evolution (for instance) is well beyond the hypothesis level. “Let there be light” is a hypothesis, but there’s not much proof that anyone actually said that other than the author of Genesis.
Science does not evangelize.
#36 – Google Pi in the Bible and read the explanations. Your assumption that the Bible assumes that Pi = 3 is wrong.
You also propose that theorys are well proven, and some of them are. HOWEVER, science is continually changing as new discoveries are made, and the theorys of today will eventually be discarded in favor of better theorys in future generations. It wasn’t that long ago that cosmologists argued for the steady state universe, aether, etc. You are correct in saying that the Bible is not a scientific textbook. It is not. However, the bible is scientificlly accurate.
“conflicts are the result of either bad Torah, or bad science, or both”
If the Bible is divine and immutable why then do all four gospels contradict each other? Even something simple such as the last words of Jesus on the cross. The Church explains this as a matter of interpretation.
That is proof enough – not divine, not from God but simply stories and myths created by people.
If God divinely inspired the human race in many forms why then all the bloodshed? God therefor is incompetent and not fit to hold the position held and must be “let go” for the sake of peace in the world.
If one assumes a God then one assumes Satan. Ah, what we have is simple identity theft, Satan has stolen God’s credit card and ‘divinely’ inspired all the religions of the world. God’s credit score suffers and so do we!!
😆
Cheers
>>The point was about people in power, or that who have influence
>>over people like you, who dish out lies and disinformation.
Aw come on, Greggie. If you’ve been reading this org slash blog for any time now, you know I am not a person who is swayed by lies and disinformation, whether they come from People Of The Cloth, Gummint Officials, or Lauren the Stinky Fish.
>>But, the problem remains; if you could dissuade illogical people
from their errors by use of logic
Aw, Fishie. Is that all there is to your life, “logic”? Does The Older Lady like that between the satin sheets? I doubt it. I would tell you to just “go with your gut”, but I fear that all your gut contains is fish hooks and the remnants of tin cans you found in the river.
So sad!
You couldn’t – as per usual – have it more wrongo if you tried.
I, as much as anyone – actually, a lot more than most – enjoy the fruits of the human imagination, the fantastical things that the mind can create. I live for it.
What I DON’T do is gullibly mistake it for reality, like religionists. It’s all just chemicals in the brain, Musty. Not an invisible friend in the sky.
And that ‘gut feeling’ you think is “divinely inspired”? The less-gullible and credulous among us know it as ‘don’t eat sardine and onion sandwiches before bed’.
So what is the Council of Europe going to do when Islamists threaten violence for teaching evolution?
#42, MikeN
The right thing, as they did here.
http://www.godsci.org/
I recommend that those that believe there’s no support for intelligent design, and that evolution can be taken for fact to be more open minded. I believe both to be theories, and have support to back this on this site.
I think it’s wrong for schools to label one as truth and the other as illogical,- something you can only believe with faith.
Personally I think evolution and atheism go hand-in-hand, and that the world is half ignorantly/half purposefully pulling closer to kicking God out.
Melody,
There is no evidence whatsoever for intelligent design. You can’t even define it in a scientifically meaningful way. ID is basically that an unknown being, did an unknown thing, at an unknown time, for an unknown reason and poof, we have an unknown result (the universe, a new species, life, who knows). Feel free to refute any of those “unknowns”.
Your narrow view that accepting evolution as a litmus test for ones faith is ridiculous. The problem is that you insist that God must manifest in a particular way in the natural world and science simply says, “we don’t see it.”