Whirled views evolution

BatesLine blogged There was a Readers' Forum op-ed in today's Whirled written in opposition to Intelligent Design. You can't read that online, but you can read the thorough rebuttal by Dan Paden at No Blog of Significance, specifically dealing with the question of the fossil record. Dan's concluding paragraph:

Evolutionists frequently amaze me. To sum up their public position, they say: We don't agree on whether evolution happened gradually, in tiny steps, or rapidly, in great, big jumps. We don't agree on mechanisms for driving evolution. We don't agree on the implications of the fossil record. We don't have a workable scenario for the origin of life other than spontaneous generation, which, embarrassingly, Louis Pasteur disproved more than a hundred years ago. We can't even agree on the value of the Hubble Constant.

In other words they can't prove anything, except they know that God was not involved (but they can't prove that either.)

But by gum and by golly, we expect you, the public--great unwashed mass of idiots that you are--not only to kowtow to us and believe that this same body of evidence that doesn't even produce agreement amongst ourselves somehow establishes evolution as a fact, but to pony up the funds to indoctrinate your own children with this idea. Once again, I kid thee not. That's what they say.

Another Reader's Forum op-ed in today's Whirled dealt with the proposed display of Genesis 1 at the Tulsa Zoo. John Sieler, who volunteers at the zoo and at the Oklahoma Aquarium, says that the reason it's appropriate to display a Hindu idol, a pantheistic slogan, and Maasai theology at the zoo is because all of those have to do with the cultural context in which animals are encountered, while the proposed creation exhibit was for the purpose of making converts to Christianity:

The question is not what symbols are displayed, but why. It is necessary to talk about cultures; it is illegal to use public property to advocate one religious viewpoint. Conservative Christians are evangelical -- they want to talk about their faith in order to promote it and gain converts.

How do you know that. Did they ask you to include a phone number that someone could call to join their church?

But they incorrectly assume that any mention of another faith is for the same purpose. No Inuit or Maasai ever asked the zoo to put up an exhibit in order to recruit new members.

This comment is either ignorant or disingenuous. Here is the proposed creation display. It is simply the text of Genesis 1:1-2:3, from the King James Version, with a photo illustrating an aspect of each day of creation. A disclaimer was to accompany the display: "Accounts of creation are contained in the literature of many cultures. This display is an example of one widely held view of origins."

The display is not a copy of the Four Spiritual Laws or any other gospel tract. It does exactly what Mr. Seiler claims the other religious zoo displays do -- provides a cultural context for understanding how some people regard our relationship to and responsibilities with respect to animals and to the natural world. For centuries, the Judeo-Christian understanding of creation, with its emphasis on man as the pinnacle of God's creation, made in His image and placed by Him over the rest of creation, have shaped the way western cultures treated animals.