Re: Public Nudity: Innocent or Sin?

Someone <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]: 

> In article <[email protected]>,
>  Lane <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>> Evolution is science. Creation, and its deriviatives are religion. We
>> teach science in public schools and not religion. This is not
>> complicated. 
> 
> Creation, assuming for sake of argument is true, would also
> be science. For a creationist, God's world and everything
> He created is science. You get nowhere saying creation is
> just religion. 

Words have meanings. You can't just call something science and make it
so. The word "science" applies to the practice of discovery through the
scientific method: posing of a question; collection of evidence relevant
to that question; generalizing a hypothesis that might explain the
evidence and thus answer the question; developing scenarios that might
disprove that hypotheses; testing those scenarios to see if the
hypothesis still stands; iterate on the last two as long as the
hypothesis holds and iterating on the last four if ever it does not. 

The creation story does not involve any of that. It comes from a book
that we are asked to believe without question. 

So-called Creation Science, or its more cleverly-disguised cousin,
Intelligent Design uses some of those steps but in a different order: 

Determine what it is we are trying to prove; Look for evidence that
might tend to verify what we are trying to prove; Concoct ways that the
evidence could be used to verify what we are trying to prove; If we can
not come up with such a way, throw away the evidence; Iterate over the
last three. 

> 
> Saying you teach science and not religion in schools is
> also misleading. To teach evolution is to state things evolved
> and that then becomes a statement of religion! 

What? That's silly. To teach evolution is to explain the science and
what is currently known as a result of that science. It's not asking you
to believe anything. It is just describing what is known with about as
much certainty as that the nuclear fusion causes the sun to glow (which,
by the way, is also "just a theory"). 

> Simply put,
> you are saying a god had little or nothing to do with
> how we are here.

I am saying no such thing. There are lots of believers in evolution who
also believe in one or more god and who believe that evolution happened
because that is the way their god planned it. 

There's nothing wrong with that.

> 
>> Teaching science means teaching what we have learned from it. Science
>> does not claim to offer absolute truth (that's religion's job).
>> Information gleaned from science is just that, the information we
>> have gleaned to date, subject to refinement as we learn more. 
> 
> Actually, you (anyone) hasn't learned a lot. You have gathered
> information and interpreted it to fit evolutionary theory. (Note the 
> operative word here - theory!) Personally I have found many professors
> of science and anthropology who were unwilling to even discuss
> their material and simply stated we "know it (evolution) is true"!

Hey stop talking to that strawman. I'm over here.

Coming form the perspective of someone advocating for creation, it is a
little disingenuous to accuse evolutionary scientists of gathering
information to fit their theory. The fact is, science does not consist
of any one or two scientists trying to build a theory. It consists of an
entire community that is competitive and brutal in its criticism. If a
particalur scientist were to do as you say, and cherry pick evidence to
support what they believe, those who reviewed their work would call them
out on it. Or some other scientist would have found the more complete
picture. 

Unlike those advocating creation, the goal of science, including
evolutionary science is to FIND THE TRUTH, not coddle some divine truth. 

> 
> Unfortunately, many in evolutionary circles would like you to believe
> that no one believes in creationism but ignorant people. Reality is,
> many (thousands) of educated scientists believe in creationism.

I don't doubt that educated people believe in a god or that a god
created the world. I don't even doubt that educated people (scientists
or otherwise) believe that the earth is 6000 years old (despite the
utterly overwhelming evidence to the contrary) or that there was a great
flood that killed everyone that wasn't on some giant boat (see last
parenthetical comment). I do, though, think it would take an incredible
amount of cognitive dissonance for an intelligent and educated person to
hold those beliefs. But, the human mind is capable of amazing things. 

Lane