KK> Debating 101 sez that if your opponent can get you playing his game on
 KK> his game board, it's over already.
 FM> Keith, (grin) you've just destroyed about ninety percent of several
 FM> Fidone
 FM> echoes!!!
 KK> Awful, ain't it?
 KK> A few years ago I used to fall for that stuff all the time over on the
 KK> Evolution echo.  E.g., "Every argument against evolution is an argument
 KK> for creation."  There are about half a dozen ways you can take that
 KK> apart and show that it's completely fallacious, but if you don't _know_
 KK> that, you're a sitting duck for a good debater.
   One reason I try to avoid discussions relative to evolution vs. 
reationism
is that while I KNOW that creationism is simply a religious movement, I 
eally
have only admiration for working scientists in the field of evolutionary
studies - not much knowledge about the subject myself.  
   I read in the paper just a day or two ago that the Academy of Sciences is,
apparently for the first time, providing a paper for the use of teachers and
school boards trying to give them material and bolstering in their efforts to
resist the ignorance that has impelled in so many places the local 
overnments
and teachers to shy away from the solid substance of evolutionary science in
their teaching because they are frightened of the ignorant forces of
creationism aligned against them.  Teachers generally KNOW that creationism 
s
a fraud (even I know that it is a movement that was mostly about making money
selling books) but have not wanted to buck the tide the way Scopes did.  
   Religious fundamentalism HAD at one time developed a means of 
ncorporation
to their satisfaction of the evolutionary knowledge even into their biblical
framework by simply enlarging their vision of "God" beyond the silly
literalism that ALWAYS traps movements in to ridiculous positions.  
   Not even Chardin would have wanted his paleontological studies at an
earlier age to have become evolutionary doctrine despite his speculations
about a "direction" in the evolutionary "within of things" incorporating his
findings into his mysticism.  Science and doctrine, simply put, ruin each
other when they are "forced" together into some kind of merger that destroys
both.  
   The Academy of Science had, apparently, decided to take this unusual step
due to circumstances and I applaud it.  Creationists will, of course, leap on
this as an example (for them) that the sciences are doctrinal.  But I think
they are grasping for straws.  The myth definitely has its place in humanity
but NOT in working science.  But science must ALSO recognize the persistence
of myth as a part of reality - as I think I've seen you affirm as well.
Sincerely, 
                                     Frank
                                                                              
                                                       
--- PPoint 2.05
---------------