To sum up .....

1/ TEACH EVOLUTION by natural selection as a 'life process' in a science class, NOT as an explanation for the origin of life.
Spell out the limitatons. Do NOT speculate about how it relates to origins in said science class.

2/ TEACH ORIGINS as 'various theories' including ID and 'spontaneous life', but not in a science class. (cultural myths are fine with me)

3/ SPELL OUT the moral implications of EACH view, in a philosopy/social studies/civics class.

There.. all happy now ?

But in a Christian school, we will teach that God created, and teach science only as far as it has gone, not in an adversarial way.

Their seems to be a plethora of articles concerning "mental health".

I figure this is just another one.

Who cares - faith is what matters not proving Darwin wrong and not demanding a load of psuedo hogwash conveniently packaged as "intelligent design" yet lacking in any substance is the answer to anything - except it is simple enough for George Dubya to get his head around - which tells us little or nothing.

I am still faithful to the theory - their was Wolfie Mozart, thus God must exist.

David Latimer,
You mention the bird flu virus can mutate and adapt to become a human flu virus.

1. What new gene not already in existence has been added? I believed it is picking up genetic material found in the common human flu.

2. Isn't it merely a cross breed? That the flu virus already exists in birds but it is already capable of infecting humans, but the threat is if it cross breeds with the common flu virus found already in humans then it becomes a danger to humanity.

3. When will it mutate into other than a virus? This is the dynamic of evolution. Cross breeding of similar species or viruses does not create a new species. This is the claim of evolution!

Quote, "Let us look at Darwinism in an important current context. The extent to which the public understand the potential risk of a bird-flu pandemic stems from the biological science taught in schools, in particular, evolution and mutation.

SWILKIE
don't go yet mate. You seem to suggest we hold a 'hyper predestination' view.

You are confusing 'fatalism' with knowing Christ. We do believe God has a plan for our lives, and for the world.
But that does not in anyway suggest we have less a role in shaping it.

Christ used a number of parables to show this. He showed that "of Him to who'm much is given, much is expected"
The unfaithful servants who just put away the talents they were given, were berated severely. Those who used their talents in creative and beneficial ways were congratulated and rewarded in those parables.

Believing that 'All authorities are from God' does not mean we will vote for a lousy government.

My position on ID is spelt out in the last post above.

>Posted by Rainier, Sunday, 23 October 2005 2:23:59 PM:
>
>"Whitewombat, Isn't the sudent asking for your help to understand >the other form of music? Is it because you don't understand the >other form of music to explain it or is it a matter of you not >considering the other music form worthy of theory?"

Well that may stretch the analogy too far. Lets just say that if a teacher is teaching topic X (eg evolution), a debate on the merits of Y is unwarranted.

Looking at it from the other end, as a professional - time is short, there are many people in the world eager for knowlege. Speaking for myself (and I am impatient), I am not willing to spend much time teaching/mentoring those who are not interested or who want to debate endlessly. Unless of course they are paying exceptional rates.

Response to BOAZ: I am very happy with your summary. Teach science and the scientific method in science class. In English class learn to debate. In religion and/or philosophy class learn about creationism and/or metaphysics. Note in public schools, 30-40 minutes of religious instruction is provided at the primary and junior secondary level by volunteers from local churches/mosques/temples ect..

Response to Philo: I carefully wrote that sentence to make the point that science education is important and relevant in our daily lives. Science has a lot to learn about viruses, but I understand they are subject to evolution and mutation (antigenic drift), but not classified into species. I only recently learnt about antigenic shift (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigenic_shift) as it's called. You may be interested to know, there are competing scientific theories on the origins of viruses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus#origins). No doubt science teachers have been asked many hard questions about bird flu in recent weeks.

Since we are summarising: I support both religious teaching (and for athiests, humanism) so each of us have morals, values, ethics, community and spirituality. The scientific method is there so we can learn and discover independently of our religous/cultural perspective i.e. so we can agree on some things; in the case of biological change and diversity, slowly work towards agreement.

The offence of "intellegent design" for science supporters like me is that it tries to take advantage of the fragile integrity of science, so to bypass US constitutional restrictions on church and state.