and here is the sig file that was referred to:
>Education is the most powerful ally of Humanism, and every American public
>school is a school of Humanism. What can the theistic Sunday Schools,
>meeting for an hour once a week,and teaching only a fraction of the
>children do to stem the tide of a five-day program of Humanistic teaching?
> Charles Francis Potter
What I have never understood about this approach to the problem, it assumes
that all of the evolutinists are merely brainwashed dupes. In other words,
they had no ability to think for themselves and simply accepted what they
were taught in school. This is a bad approach for several reasons.
1. What you can apply to others, other can equally apply to you and assume
that you don't accept evolution because the preachers brainwashed you.
2. The argument is an ad hominem and no ad hominem is logically valid.
3. You can't handle people like me who spent 15 years as a young-earth
creationist who did not believe in evolution. Yet I changed because of the
facts that I was seeing. I resisted that educational brainwashing that you
imply exists, yet when I saw the data for myself I was forced to change.
4. This approach "solves" the problem without ever having to examine a
single scientific or observational fact. It is a retreat from the data. I
think it is merely sticking our heads into the sand.
5. It is arrogant. It assumes that only you and others like you have been
smart enough to avoid the brainwashing. It implies that you are endowed
with omniscience.
These are just a few of the problems I have with the brainwashing theory of
why people believe evolution.
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm