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Author Topic:   You are hereby appointed Commissioner of the Dept. of Education for Tennessee
truthlover
Member (Idle past 4089 days)
Posts: 1548
From: Selmer, TN
Joined: 02-12-2003


Message 4 of 26 (390933)
03-22-2007 4:19 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by subbie
03-22-2007 3:14 PM


I'm a resident of TN, so I'll give this a shot.
(1) Is the Universe and all that is within it, including human beings, created through purposeful, intelligent design by a Supreme Being, that is a Creator?
"The question cannot be proved or disproved"
Thus, I skip question two per instructions.
(3) Since it cannot be determined whether the Universe, including human beings, is created by a Surprme Being (a Creator), why is creationism not taught as an alternative concept, explanation, or theory, along with the theory of evolution in Tennessee public schools?
1. It is the purpose of the school system to teach science. Whether God created anything or not, the school system's job is to teach the principles and laws that govern the universe. These principles and laws are discovered by scientific study. The school system teaches both the scientific method and what the scientific method has discovered.
2. Creationism is no more than belief in God. The school system does not teach belief in God for two reasons. One, it cannot be proven or disproven. Two, it is forbidden by the constitution.
3a. There are many forms of creationism. If young earth creationism is at question, then the answer is that this can be disproven by science. The earth was not created, by God or anyone else, six thousand years ago. It is much, much older.
3b. If the system of belief known as "Intelligent Design" is at question, then what's being asked is whether we would teach that there are some systems in nature that are irreducibly complex. If there are irreducibly complex systems that did not evolve, then the scientific method will be the way we will discover this. We teach the scientific method, so if irreducibly complex systems exist, we will teach them. So far, no systems have proven to be irreducibly complex.
4. As a final note, there is a sense in which we already are teaching both intelligent design and a creator. We are looking at the creation, leaving alone the unproven and unprovable idea of who or what created it, and we are studying, one, what it was like as far back in the past as we are able to determine, and two, how it got from the past to the present. Thus, all the scientific evidence for or against a personal intelligent designer *is* being presented, because we are presenting all the scientific evidence and the most reasonable and accepted conclusions drawn from that evidence, as well as describing controversies where legitimate controversies exist.

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 Message 1 by subbie, posted 03-22-2007 3:14 PM subbie has not replied

  
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