Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

What's your opinion?
My opinion I wrote an essay on, and put it on my website.

Bibliography'D


[delete is posted in the past]

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Although I am Catholic and beleive in both, I think neither should be taught. If we tell one story, we have to tell all the others. Including Norse, Chinese, and don't even think of all Native American and African creation stories.

And even thought I beleive in both, some Catholics and other Christians might take it to the extremes and remove themselves from their beleifs completely.

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No, I lied. I'm never going to have a good sig. So just forget about it.

Before I begin, I will say that I believe in Creationism.

I believe both should be taught and all other ideas. I believe it should be taught with all facts presented. But the truth of the matter is, neither can be fully proven. Both take an act of faith.

So what I am saying is, both should be taught as a theory, and not as fact.

Pastafarianism. Bobby Henderson sent a letter to the Kansas school board, saying basically, You teach creation, you've got to teach my theory, too: a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world 5,000 years ago and made it look older than it really was. And Pirates are His chosen people, and the lack of Pirates in the past hundred years or so is the reason behind global warming.

It's hard to take him seriously, though, because at the end of the letter, he writes: "I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence."

Me? I don't know. I mean, is Creationism science? Is there any evidence to back it up? Can anyone really prove a single fact about the way we got here? I'm still making up my mind on those things, and in the meantime, every Friday is a religious holiday.

I definatly agree with that... er... question? I'm not too sure that creationism be taught in school (although really, I'd rather it not be.) but I want evoulution to be taught in school because that has the most facts supporting the theory and something about a theory thats based on us not being related to apes even though we look almost exactly like some of them (I'm sorry if I don't have my facts straight, but you have to see my point here!) sounds a little fishy to me.Then again, I'm an athiest, so if I was any religious at all, I might have a different perspective on the matter.

Creationists and ID people try to say that "Evolution is just a theory!" meaning that it should give reason to teach their own "theories" as well...but the truth is that in the scientific world, the definition of a "theory" is something that has had a lot more scrutiny and proof and is generally accepted as being scientific truth throughout the community--not just a bunch of ideas that have had little testing behind them. It's a play on semantics that I think spawns further confusion of the issue.

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

But wouldn't an ID person be as likely to accept evolution? Most of the ID people I know accept evolution, but reject the notion of natural selection.

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THANK YOU CLEVER DANIELLE.

i thought of the church of the flying spaghetti monster when i saw this thread. the whole debate confuses me for this reason: i think creationism is total crap BUT i respect people's right to believe in it.

so i am inclined to say please keep it out of school (public school anyway) but then again i am a pretty open person and i know it won't have any radical effect even if it was taught, just like many people i know who are creationists that weren't affected by learning evolution in biology class.

i guess i liked how my high school did it. my teacher told us it wasn't exactly proven because it is essentially impossible to prove darwin's theory because the time span of natural selection and evolution is so immense. he gave students the opportunity to leave the class if they didn't want to hear him talk about it and he also said that some people believe in creationism. i think that solved the issue pretty well and took all of a minute to say. and does creationism need to be taught? can't someone just say: god created the earth and the animals and people on it. bingo. done. i don't know much about it. and as far as intelligent design: that really annoys me because it pretends to be scientific by publishing "studies" and stuff but it really just is tacit creationism. if you believe in creationism at least be honest about it but don't hide behind the pseudoscience of intelligent design.

Creationism doesn't really have a place in a classroom, that's the thing... I mean, I'm fine with teaching it alongside evolution, but only if you say "Okay, here's that theory, now here's the evidence:" See, if you're talking about evolution, you have something to fill that blank. If you're talking about creationism, you don't. So, at that point, all you're doing is mentioning creationism. That's all you can do about creationism in the classroom, unless you choose to omit the lack of evidence, which would be lying. (to anyone who just jumped to that point in my paragraph and thinks I'm calling creationism a lie: I'm not, I'm calling a failure to mention the lack of evidence for it while mentioning it in a classroom a lie) And of course you're not going to lie in a classroom, so you mention that there's no evidence, so there's not really a point in mentioning it in a classroom setting.

Until (I believe) God comes back, the only evidence you can really have for creationism is faith.

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Well, I can't go deeper into this quite yet, but aside from the whole "faith versus evidence" argument, one problem that people from the evolution side have is a lack of knowledge on the entirity of what a Creationist (who's done his research, scientifically and theologically) truely say what happens. There is a difference, trust me.

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Wha? How can someone reject natural selection? I mean, evolution is just a theory, but natural selection is just common sense. Organisms that are more fit to their environment are more likely to survive long enough to procreate. That's... pretty solid.

I'd think more people would be the other way around; rejecting evolution but accepting natural selection.

Yeah, that is essentially what all of the people that I know that are creationists/IDers believe in.

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Yeah, I'm puzzled by that too. Natural selection is a big part of evolution. Some species adapt to their environment and multipy accordingly, and others lose out in the competition - they die off. You can't have evolution without that formula.

I believe you should teach both, but to certain extents. I believe that in public schools, evolution should be the main focus, not creationism or intelligent design. I think that because there should remain a seperation of church and state in public schools. In private schools, I don't really care what they teach. They can teach intelligent design or creationism all they want, though I think that they should teach intelligent design more. (Going on the notion that the private school in question is a religion-based school, such as a Catholic School)


Agreed. Natural selection is basically the biggest part of evolution. If you don't have natural selection, you don't have evolution.

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You've summed up my opinion nicely. I'd love if public school introduced a religion course early on so that kids can be exposed to beliefs from all over the world. We're a multicultural society and I think learning about other cultures' beliefs is the best way to become more tolerant of them. But please keep creationism and any other religious theories in social studies where they belong, and not in science class.

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Interesting concept! I've thought that they should do the same thing with philosophy. I was thinking about this when I was watching The Matrix and wondered how easy it would be to learn so much in so little time if we could all just upload data into our brain like in that movie. I figured it'd really revolutionize how children develop and are socialized into the world....anyways, I'm getting off-topic here, so I'll stop.

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

I think that there is a considerable gap between black and white butterflies and explaining the link between humans and apes (let alone single-cell organisms and humans)

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The difference is that evolution is the only scientific belief among the possibilities. It is reasonable to expect a science book to teach science, and not have to digress into issues that are fundamentally unscientific. A study of religious beliefs on the origin of the Earth is fine, and I would have no objections to such a thing in schools as long as the distinction between religion and science is clear.

Oh, and my two cents: natural selection is evolution, heh.

- Kef

Um... that's kinda my point... that if someone were to only accept one of those, you'd expect it to be natural selection...

To clarify:

Natural Selection is the theory espouced by Charles Darwin that attempted to explain how evolution could occur apart from any sort of divine intervention. That being the case, Natural Selection and Intelligent Design are mutually contradictory.

Evolution, on the other hand, is somewhat compatable with ID, because the process could occur within the scope of divine providence.

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Well, we have lots of empirical evidence for natural selection. That the traits of individuals who are more likely to survive will eventually dominate the gene pool is well-understood, well-documented, and also pretty obvious. We don't have so much empirical evidence that humanity evolved that way, although we do have some (homo erectus, for example).

- Kef

Ah, but how do we know that that tendency wasn't designed to function that way? One might even argue that the fact that the dominant genes are the ones that promote survival is evidence for a designer, since in the overall scheme of natural selection, the actual mutations themselves should be completely random.

But here's an interesting question: if evolution ought to be taught because of the scientific evidence in favor of it, then shouldn't the life, death, and resurrection of Christ be taught based on historical evidence for them?

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Ahh, but they are! (Or, rather, there's no scientific reason I'm aware of to believe they're not.) It's just that the randomness of mutations does not imply that the population will experience similar randomness on a large scale. What happens to a particular gene may be random, but what happens afterward is not -- and it's that "what happens afterward" that is the essence of natural selection.

I don't think science really cares whether or not some deity decided that this is the way things should function, or if they just happened that way by chance. In other words, science concerns itself more with the empirically observable. It could indeed be argued that the famous example of the peppered moth is not sufficient to make the case for evolution as a whole, but can we not agree that it is an example of, for all intents and purposes, natural selection?

Certainly I have no problem with schools teaching that Christ was a real historical figure, seeing that he is mentioned by historians like Suetonius and Tacitus. Mind you - there's no actual historical evidence outside of the Bible, that I'm aware of, that he was resurrected though. So maybe that particular issue is best suited for Sunday school or Bible class.

But anyway, the life of Christ is a different issue from Genesis's story of the creation. Whereas there is evidence that Christ existed, there's none for Genesis's story. In fact, all the scientific research done on establishing the age of the Earth and the creation of life points the other way. So either Genesis is an allegory with a certain corrolation with the truth - like Trev-MUN has argued - or it is just folklore. You can present both sides in a school setting, certainly, but stating anything to be fact where there's little evidence is something that no proper school should do.

But to chase a goose real quick, one can also argue the fact that we do have sufficient evidence when you consider the Bible with respect to it's individual parts. With that in mind, you then have at least four primary documents written less than a hundred, and probably less than fifty years after the events that they record, and with satifactory duplicates made well sooner than copies were made for other historical documents, such s Homeric and other Classical works.

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Well yes, you could take that as evidence in itself. Mind you, St Paul and the whole New Testament gang wouldn't really be the most objective sources of info about Christ. So it's debatable as to whether you can rely on their accounts alone - from an objective historical standpoint, anyway.

not to be a nitpicker, but nobody can really be sure of when exactly the parts of the bible were written. i was reading nat'l geo on the john a while ago and i think it cited the first complete collection of all the new testament books without others (present form) in something like 3 or 4 hundred A.D. please correct me if im wrong because i dont wanna get up and find it.

We have papyrii dated to the early 2nd century. Furthermore, the late 1st century theologians Polycarp and Irenaeus have quoted parts of the New Testament, further evidence of an early date.

I presume that what National Geographic is referring to is a complete collection in codex form, perhaps the Sinaiticus or the Vaticanus. But long before there were codices, there were the papyrii of the individual books. What's more important for our discussion is not when they were collected and published together, but when they were written, and for this, we refer to the papyrii.

The problem is that, while WHF is right in saying that the disciples were decidedly biased in their proclamation, the key issue is whether what they proclaimed is right. And for that, we need to look at a few key issues.

One distinct element of Christian thinking in the early centuries is the importance of truth. That being the case, it is highly unlikely that the apostles would have been willing to die for their cause unless they were thoroughly convinced that what they proclaimed was true.

The whole idea of witnesses. We are not talking about a single document that cross-checks itself, but rather a collection of documents written by men whose stories supported each other. Different perspectives at times, but same basic facts.

Barring the fictional accounts of stories like The Da Vinci Code and sources of questionable origin, like The Gospel of Thomas, we really don't have any reliable accounts to contradict the New Testament.

So there you have it:

1. The witnesses were so convinced that what they wrote was true, they were willing to die for it.

2. The documents in question present supporting eyewitness accounts.

3. There are no reliable contrary historical documents.

Not "proof" per se, but anyone setting out to disprove them will certainly have their hands full.

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yeah you make a really strong and well informed point, Didy. you were right that i was referring to codex forms and i know that there were individual books dating earlier (common sense, eh?). the only counterpoint that i have to make is that simply because no contradictory records exist to our knowledge doesn't make something true, it just means that the others were lost to time, but you recognize this at the end of your post.