Re: 90%

Susan B (susan-brassfield@ou.edu)
Sat, 11 Sep 1999 10:07:33 -0500 (CDT)

Stephen quoted Gallup:

>Only 10 percent said they believe in evolution with no participation from
>God. Seven percent had no opinion. The views have not changed much in
>recent years. A 1982 Gallup poll, asking the same question, found a
>virtually identical distribution of opinion."

Obviously this fills you with great glee. However, it completely refutes
your contention--and that of your hero Philip Johnson--that science is some
kind of religious movement which uses evolution to indoctrinate our
children. If that were true why isn't it more successful? After all, most
children attend public schools.

The truth is, that the Kansas School board is merely more up front about the
Christian agenda. When my daughter took biology in high school 10 years ago,
evolution had been whittled down to a single page in her text book.
According to younger children of friends that offensive single page has been
deleted in subsequent HS text books. The religious right has already done an
excellent job suppressing knowledge of any science which contradicts their
mythology.

The evidence you have provided handily supports that.

[big snip]

>"You would think they [the United States and England] would not be very
>different as nations," Bishop says. "And here, Americans are almost five times
>as likely to take the Bible literally than people in England."

hmmmm. . . and England has an official state religion. Perhaps we've been
going about it all wrong!!!

>Spilhaus was dismayed that the Kansas science standards diluted not only
>evolution but also left out any mention of the Earth's age. "Boy, if you start
>talking about the age of the Earth, you're talking about going away from
>something that science considers pretty solid ground," Spilhaus says. "There's
>very little doubt in our minds that the Earth is 4Ç billion years old.
There is no
>credible evidence that supports a young Earth or that supports the so-called
>creationist science."
>
>But Spilhaus may not want to take a vote on that.

best not. We need those fossil fuels, those medicines and the physics that
supports them.

Stephen, in order to completely suppress evolution you are going to have to
suppress all of western science. It all entertwines. Everything exists in
the same reality. Therefore evolution depends on the existence of deep time.
Cosmology and geology provide that deep time. Evolution depends on a carrier
for information.The study of genetics and DNA support that. Mathematics
supports those disciplines. Physics supports it all.

The Kansas school board decided not to suppress knowledge of "micro"
evolution. They know it's dangerous to take antibiotics without a knowledge
of variation and natural selection. However, even if you guys were
successful in suppressing all knowledge of "macro" evolution, someday some
bright kid who knows why he should take all his antibiotics as his doctor
told him to do, is going to look at an array of fossils arranged solely by
age and say "oh! right, it's been happening all along" and all your work
will be for naught.

Susan
--------
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--Martin Luther King, Jr.
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