-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Scoles [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2001 11:29 PM
To: tips
Subject: Arkansas anti-evolution data sources
For those of you who are still interested, this link came from another
list. It connects parts of the recent (failed) Arkansas legislation to
its sources. Interesting, in that the "authors" of the legislation
claimed that the intent was not to promote a particular religious point
of view.
http://inia.cls.org/~ae/ar_hb2548.htm
--------------------------
Some responses to the site Mike found:
It seems to be a site affiliated with some Christians (Christians Against
Scientific Creationism) who list their mission (as a discussion list) as the
"discussion of theistic anti-anti-evolutionism, and [the] promotion of the
concept that one can be a Christian and accept scientific knowledge and
theories concerning biology. Christians need to oppose the Scientific
Creationists (SciCre) and other theistic anti-evolutionists on two fronts:
These people are promoting both bad theology and bad science or
pseudo-science. Christians making their opposition to SciCre known helps to
show that the theological stance taken under SciCre is a narrow doctrinal
view, rather than a foundational principle. Other topics of discussion
suitable for the list concern how Christians should defend principles, such
as the rejection of claims of "compartmentalized" thinking that are commonly
employed by atheists."
I have no idea what that last sentence means. I am assuming it is typical
Christian obfuscation. This seems like a pretty radical group and whatever
information they put out should probably be open to the same questions you
would have about any alleged scientific information put forward by
Christians.
Since Christians may be behind this, and their hegemony is monolithic, maybe
evolution or anti-evolution cannot be thought of as a particular religious
point of view.
Of course, to be fair, the original House Bill didn't list any sources for
their contentions (I don't know what the standard is for sourcing
legislation), and the site states that, "Below are certain parts of Arkansas
HB2548 and links or references to the apparent source of the quote or
paraphrase." The fact that they chose to use a secondary source that happens
to be a comic book as the "apparent source" certainly denigrates the quality
of the arguments made. Citing the sources cited by the comic book would have
been a fairer argument but it wouldn't have made it look as ridiculous and,
of course, all Christians, including these anti-anti-evolution ones, are
more concerned with winning an argument than they are with telling the
truth.
Rick
Dr. Richard L. Froman
Psychology Department
John Brown University
Siloam Springs, AR 72761
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.jbu.edu/sbs/psych/froman.htm
