Darwin's Revenge In Kansas

Moby-One GNUbie writes: "Kansas voters reject 2 of 3 anti-evolution state school board members, proving that my home state has more brains than many gave it credit for. Some good news on that front should be refreshing for everyone." Check out the initial war of words when I had posted this originally.

Comments

Here we go again

[AbbyNormal]

Where is Jon Erickson? We need a non-biased, non-judgemental view on this important situation!

Seriously though this should not even be an issue in education. IMHO, Certainly people are entitled to their own opinions/thoughts and actions however when it comes to state sponsered eductation, religious views should be expressed but NOT solely expressed. If they are solely expressed then students (of whom my Federal taxes go towards their benefit) are left with only one piece of the puzzle, and this is basically no better than state sanctioned censoring. I have no problem with teaching Creationism but it should not be taught that IT is more true than evolution.

are they serious???

[ponxx]

I do not live in the states and have only vaguely followed this debate, mainly because i didn't think anyone in their right mind could think the earth (and presumably the univserse???) is 6000 years old. Is there actually a serious following for this in the US?

I can't even see where i would begine to name examples that makes this complete nonsense... geology, plate tectonics, starlight from millions of light years away...

Do these people also believe that Noah put two of each animal in his Ark, and maybe the dinosaurs were extinct because they did not fit??? It would be interesting if someone actually managed to build a complete theory on this, and surely of similar amusement value as the "Discworld" series...
Speaking of discs, have they accepted the world is not a disc?

Many Miss the Point

[Ho-Lee-Cow!]

While the Religion of Science continues to mask its tracks behind the rhetoric, the whole Kansas issue underscores something blatant and simple about the whole argument: That the Origins of the Universe are a philosophical, not scientific issue.

I will have to disappoint many people by pointing this out to them, but the arguments in play in this confrontation -are- philosophical and religious, not the 'science' that many have been slinging the mud about.

Does the State have the right to establish Religion? No. So in mandating a viewpoint which is widely unprovable, and pushing it off as fact, are they not doing just that? But then, if I were opting for the Public School approach, I would be suing to have the Gaia Hypothesis removed from all curriculum because I feel that the State has no right to use my religion in a classroom setting(Gaia being a Greek God and I being a Greek practitioner have issues on this--big ones).

Mind you, I am against near-sighted thinking of all sorts, but I do understand why those of religious conscience would want the 'facts' of the Big Bang played down in reference to the philosophical issues at stake. However, there is no way to deny that Evolution is and does happen, but the issue should not be placed as 'fact' to support a position that undermines religious conscience, which it is clearly presented as in the classroom setting.

Those who believe that God did it in 7 days, those who believe in an Intelligent Creator/Creatrix, and those who believe in the scientific point of view ALL have a place at the table. They all should be discussing how to approach the philosophical issues in a way that allows science to be taught as a mechanism for discovery of how our world works, not as a club to suppress the other camps.

Evolution at work

[Rand Race]

"Charles Darwin and his theory got revenge in Kansas on Tuesday..."

I was hopping they had been clubbed to death by stronger, smarter, and faster school board members, but:

"...as voters turned out two of three state education leaders who last year led an effort to downplay the theory of evolution in school science classes across the state"

Damn