Council of Europe to vote on creationism

[Crvena zvezda]

Council of Europe to vote on creationism

Resolution opposes the teaching of creationism in school science classes

By Tom Heneghan



Updated: 3:41 p.m. MT

Sept 25, 2007

PARIS - Europe's main human rights body will vote next week on a resolution opposing the teaching of creationist and intelligent design views in school science classes.
The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly will debate a resolution saying attacks on the theory of evolution were rooted "in forms of religious extremism" and amounted to a dangerous assault on science and human rights.
The resolution, on the agenda for October 4, says European schools should "resist presentation of creationist ideas in any discipline other than religion." It describes the "intelligent design" argument as an updated version of creationism.
Anne Brasseur, an Assembly member from Luxembourg who updated an earlier draft resolution, said the vote was due in June but was postponed because some members felt the original text amounted to an attack on religious belief.
Only minor changes have been made to the initial draft.
"There are different views of the creation of the world and we respect that," she told Reuters. "The message we wanted to send was to avoid creationism passing itself off as science and being taught as science. That's where the danger lies."
The Council, based in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, oversees human rights standards in member states and enforces decisions of the European Court of Human Rights.
If passed, the resolution would not be binding on its 47 member states but would reflect widespread opposition among politicians to teaching creationism in science class.
Creationism says God made the world in six days as depicted in the Bible. Intelligent design argues some life forms are too complex to have evolved according to Charles Darwin's theory and needed an unnamed higher intelligence to develop as they have.
Some conservatives in the United States, both religious and secular, have long opposed the teaching of evolution in public schools but U.S. courts have regularly barred them from teaching what they describe as religious views of creation.
Pressure to teach creationism is weaker in Europe, but has been mounting. An Assembly committee took up the issue because a shadowy Turkish Muslim publishing group has been sending an Islamic creationist book to schools in several countries.
Supporters of intelligent design want it taught in science class alongside evolution. A U.S. court ruled this out in a landmark decision in 2005, dismissing it as "neo-creationism."
"The aim of this report is not to question or to fight a belief," Brasseur wrote in a memorandum added to the new resolution. "It is not a matter of opposing belief and science, but it is necessary to prevent belief from opposing science."

[Marulus]

It seems that the whackiness of the American Fundamentalists (aka Creationsim aka Biblical literalism) is coming to Europe. Soon heated debates between Creationists and Darwinists are to be expected. But, in truth, the debate is futile, even from the standpoint of a believer. One thing is the supreme force responsible for the creation (God) of life and all things, animate and inanimate, and another thing the way this process of creation (through how many stages, from which species some other proceeded etc.) happened, how God created the earth and everything.

But the tyranny of words (as I already explicated it earlier, in other threads) is here at work. More important are words and/or slogans than the essence of things itself. In reality, behind the word "Darwinism"/"Evolutionism", there hides, in the public-mediatic discourse, not some concrete scientific explanation of life developed by Darwin and his successors, but in fact the militant Atheism. If you subscribe to Darwin/evolution, you are necessarily atheist and crass materialist by definition. On the other hand, if you are a believing Christian, you must necessarily subscribe to the literalist interpretation of the Old Testament, although all Church tradition, from Philo onwards, always tended to interpret it metaphorically. It was Protestant Fundamentalists from America (although it could be found in some fringe religious movements of Europe as well) who started to insist upon the extreme literalist interpretation of the Scripture (seven days of creation and stuff) and call it the essence of "Christianity", and thereafter to export it worldwide, like Coca Cola.

In reality, both an atheist and a believer can be good scientists, as many examples show. The scientist (and also biologist) explores how the world is working, on grounds of observable facts. The primary cause of everything is not a matter of scientific enquiry sensu stricto. Ever since Descartes (who was not an atheist), one of the founding fathers of the modern scientific method, who stated that the prima causa is not to be an object of empirical-rationalistic research.

But this new totalitarianism expects from you to decide yourself, which side you are on. Needless to say, in both cases you end up being part of their System. It is as false dialectic as that of Left/Right and its voting herds. It is on the one side a sign of stiffening ideological atmosphere in the modern West (in classical ideological empires, like the USSR, you had explicitly only one permitted thought, here you have also one, but disguised as two, how wonderful), on the other side of terrible lowering of the level of culture, knowledge and education, even among the self-styled "educated elites" (in fact, it is only specialized knowledge that prevails and general education is shunned).

This is how Bryan Appleyard nicely put it:

Knots need to be unpicked. First, the world is purposefully designed. Sharks have teeth to capture their prey and trees have leaves to capture sunlight. In the absence of any competing hypothesis, it is rational to assume that an intelligence, God perhaps, is at work.

Enter Darwin. He said that, once a stable replicative process is established in nature, then errors will occur. A few beneficial errors will render replicators — organisms — better adapted and, therefore, better able to reproduce. Over billions of years, this simple process will lead to the variety of life we see around us today. Note that Darwin did not say how this system works nor how it began. He had no idea.

Since then, we have begun to understand how evolution works. DNA is the replicator at the heart of the system and errors in the transcription of this molecule result in mutations, most of which are harmful but some of which are beneficial. The combination of Darwinism and molecular biology has created the orthodoxy known as neo-Darwinism.

None of which has — or should have — the slightest consequence for religious belief. Indeed, to a Taoist, Hindu or Buddhist, Darwinism must appear irrelevant, trivial or obvious. Even a Christian shouldn’t really be bothered. Of course, Darwinism shows the Bible is not literally accurate if only because it requires the earth to be billions rather than thousands of years old — but treating biblical stories as metaphors, not literal truths, is a commonplace of Christian theology.

[source]


Just wait for debates over such trivia, debates which will try to avert attention from more important matters, like the fact that the process of enslavement into the global-megacapitalistic-police state is underway, as well as ethnic replacement through mass immigration.

[Sergius]

Originally Posted by Bishop Kallistos Ware

According to St Irenaeus, man at his first creation was "as a little child," and needed "grow" into his perfection. In other words, man at his first creation was innocent and capable of developing spiritually (the "image" (created in God's image - Ljub)), but his development was not inevitable or automatic. Man was called to co-operate with God's grace and so, through the correct use of his free will, slowly and by gradual steps he was to become perfect in God (the "likeness"). This shows how the notion of man as created in God's image can be interpreted in a dynamic rather than a static sense. It need not mean that man was endowed from the outset with a fully realized perfection, with the highest possible holiness and knowledge, but simply that he was given the opportunity to grow into full fellowship with God. The image-likeness distinction does not, of course, in itself imply the acceptance of any "theory of evolution;" but it is not incompatible with such a theory.

From The Orthodox Way.

[Marulus]

InsideCatholic.com - Pope Benedict and Nature\'s Genius

[Savorgnan]

We simply won't avoid any of the American deseases... After liberalism, Coca-Cola, blue jeans, hamburgers, here is cre(a)ti(o)nism...

[Kernunnos]

Originally Posted by Savorgnan

We simply won't avoid any of the American deseases... After liberalism, Coca-Cola, blue jeans, hamburgers, here is cre(a)ti(o)nism...

No, it is extremely worrisome to see a formally democratic parliament banning a theory from schools.

It is censorship again made to enforce the freemasonic point of view on things.

Freemasons who rule EU have a very sly way of applying censorship, and in a even more worrisome manner average people approve it gladly much in the way their forefathers approved kings banning freemasons' books.

What is really worrisome is the conformism of average people, they conform to every doctrine the state has, and they are apparently sincerely convinced that it is right.

Average man is gregarious and manipulators know it well, the great trick of freemasonic "liberal democracies" is in making the dog collar invisible, while dictatorships make it visible so many more rebel or chafe.

[Gnist]

Originally Posted by Breha

No, it is extremely worrisome to see a formally democratic parliament banning a theory from schools.

I agree.

The Swedish government just couldn't wait:

Creationism to be banished from Swedish schools

Published: 15th October 2007 07:57 CET
Online: The Local - Creationism to be banished from Swedish schools

The Swedish government is to crack down on the role religion plays in independent faith schools. The new rules will include a ban on biology teachers teaching creationism or 'intelligent design' alongside evolution.

"Pupils must be protected from all forms of fundamentalism," said Education Minister Jan Björklund to Dagens Nyheter.

Some Christian schools teach biology students that the world and the organisms on it were created by a supreme being. This is often presented as another valid scientific theory alongside evolution - something most scientists reject.

Religious Education will remain on the curriculum and it will still be allowed to start the school day with prayers. But in classes teachers will be expected to stick to the curriculum.

"End-of-term services in school are great," he said, and added that religious education would remain a school subject. But all elements of religious worship would have to be completely separate from class teaching.

Most independent schools in Sweden are privately owned but funded by government grants.

Björklund also said the Swedish National Agency for Education would double the number of inspections of both council-run and independent schools. He also announced a ban on anonymous financial donations to schools and said he would make it easier to close schools that were breaking the rules.

The stricter rules will be introduced in next year's education act.

TT/The Local (news@thelocal.se/08 656 6518)

[Marulus]

"Pupils must be protected from all forms of fundamentalism," said Education Minister Jan Björklund to Dagens Nyheter.

Except from liberal-freemasonic fundamentalism, to which all children, and all people in general should be subjected and indoctrinated with.

Some Christian schools teach biology students that the world and the organisms on it were created by a supreme being. This is often presented as another valid scientific theory alongside evolution - something most scientists reject.

If I understood this correctly, by the word "evolution" they don't mean any concrete theory on the origin of species, but a dogmatic assertion that there is no God. So this seems to confirm what I said in my earlier post: it's the tyranny of words (juxtaposition of good words vs. bad words, in this case: evolution versus belief in God). Incredible manipulation. They don't want to posit a possibility that there are some people who think that, for example, there was evolution guided by God.

[Elysium.]

I've never understand the debate itself.

Couldn't God have created Evolution?

[Strengthandhonour]

^
that's exactly how my parents see it.
Specially my father. he is a very proud catholic. He believes in evolution. It says it doesn't stop him from believing in god. Just because evolution exists it doesn't mean that it couldn't have been the work of god.

[Elysium.]

Originally Posted by Strengthandhonour

^
that's exactly how my parents see it.
Specially my father. he is a very proud catholic. He believes in evolution. It says it doesn't stop him from believing in god. Just because evolution exists it doesn't mean that it couldn't have been the work of god.

I don't see how it is yet possible to find any evidence to disprove the existence of a God. It would make sense, in my mind, that you would have to be God (at least an omniscient being) to disprove a God.

[Martín Zalacaín]

Originally Posted by Elysium

I don't see how it is yet possible to find any evidence to disprove the existence of a God. It would make sense, in my mind, that you would have to be God (at least an omniscient being) to disprove a God.

Who needs to disprove when you can bomb the population with your nihilistic propaganda until they forget about God?

[Elysium.]

Originally Posted by Gonzalvus

Who needs to disprove when you can bomb the population with your nihilistic propaganda until they forget about God?

Agreed. And that's all, in my mind, it is. There's no way someone can logically enter a debate with multiple intelligent parties with a topic as ridiculous as this.

[Gnist]

Originally Posted by Plethon

They don't want to posit a possibility that there are some people who think that, for example, there was evolution guided by God.

There are plenty of people who believe in guided evolution. Even evolutionists who say they don't believe in God sometimes believe that way, in an aristotelian fashion where everything has a purpose.

But from the point of view of the stricter theory of evolution, there is no such concept of guidance. Nature is variation at random - in the modern variant this is mutations happen at random - and the best adapted survive. No purpose, no guidance or anything of the sort is needed to explain nature - or so they say. And that's exactly the reason why there's no concept of guidance in the theory of evolution: Ockham's razor makes the God assumption superfluous. The bottom line is that the theory of evolution doesn't even evaluate the question of God's existence.

Back on the question: I think that a ban of this sort is bound to create anti-spiritual sentiment, simply because it's basically a ban on an existential question. It will take effect also outside biology class.

[Marulus]

Originally Posted by Seekers

There are plenty of people who believe in guided evolution. Even evolutionists who say they don't believe in God sometimes believe that way, in an aristotelian fashion where everything has a purpose.

Exactly. There is such thing as theistic evolution.

Originally Posted by Seekers