Big Bang?!#@!

[lsavage at westmont.edu]

I think most people on this list are above the overt generalizations that so 
plague the Creation/Evolution debate in this country. (So lets please try to 
avoid them.) Not all Creationists conflate 'Evolution' with 'Natural Selection' 
or think Darwin created Hitler. Not all Evolutionists are Heathens hell bent on 
destroying God, either. 

In my opinion polarizing the issue will only upset everyone. Instead we need to 
appreciate the fact that each argument requires us to evaluate what we believe 
and how we've come to believe it. Because belief is a type of faith (at some 
point and in some way). It gives teachers the opportunity to discuss methods of 
arriving at responsbile conclusions... which is something I would very much like 
to see children learn in school.

Quoting rcfchess at aol.com:

> Yep; it's typical stupid thinking, linking two things that have nothing to do
> with each other, cause-and-effect-wise. It's like saying someone drank milk
> and then jumped out a window, so therefore drinking milk causes you to jump
> out of a window. Brilliant, f'ing brilliant... 
>  
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ben Johnson <bjohnson02 at insightbb.com>
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Sent: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 10:40:55 -0400
> Subject: re: Big Bang?!#@!
> 
> 
> A Dog and the Mind of Newton
> Posted by Carl Zimmer 
> It's bad enough to see basic scientific misinformation about evolution
> getting tossed around these days. USA Today apparently has no qualms about
> publishing an op-ed by a state senator from Utah (who wants to have students
> be taught about something called "divine design") claiming there is no
> empirical evidence in the fossil evidence that humans evolved from apes. I'm
> not sure what we're supposed to do with the twenty or so species of hominids
> that existed over the past six million years. Perhaps just file them away
> under "divine false starts."
> But history takes a hit as well as science. Creationists try whenever they
> can to claim that Darwin was directly responsible for Hitler. The reality is
> that Hitler and some other like-minded thinkers in the early twentieth
> century had a warped view of evolution that bore little resemblance to what
> Darwin wrote, and even less to what biologists today understand about
> evolution. The fact that someone claims that a scientific theory justifies a
> political ideology does not support or weaken the scientific theory. It's
> irrelevant. Nazis also embraced Newton's theory of gravity, which they used
> to rain V-2 rockets on England. Does that mean Newton was a Nazi, or that his
> theory is therefore wrong?
> http://www.corante.com/loom/archives/2005/08/11/
a_dog_and_the_mind_of_newton.php
>  
>