Slashdot Mirror
Kansas Board of Ed. Adopts Intelligent Design
kwietman writes "The Kansas State Board of Education voted 6-4 to allow science students in public schools to hear materials critical of evolution in biology classes. The new curriculum mentions that theories of life arising from similar building-block molecules through purely random processes can be challenged by recent findings in the fossil record and by molecular biology. Not all were happy, however. 'This is a sad day. We're becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that,' said board member Janet Waugh. The new standards will be used in statewide standardized testing; the students are still expected to know 'basic evolutionary principles.' As part of the decision, the Board of Education also went so far as to redefine science itself, saying that it is 'no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.'"
So, why is it that the Kansas board of "education" will not allow science and religion to be separately taught? 1) Primarily because they have an agenda that is religiously biased. 2) Because if they allowed a religion class, they would be hard pressed to only teach their version of religion and not also teach Islam, Judaism, Hinduism etc...etc...etc... which these types of people believe would not be acceptable. After all, thinking for yourself is scary.
Look, before all you ultra right wing whackos start modding me down, you should realize that 1) I am religious and 2) I am also a scientist and see no conflict between religion and science and 3) the Intelligent Design camp are absolutely and completely biased and corruptive of both religion and science. Schools teaching ID are absolutely doing a disservice to the students who are forced to take this curriculum.
And those in the Kansas government should know that this issue is making Kansas a laughing stock world wide. There is absolutely nothing that you could do to get me to move my family, science or business there. Speaking of business, we are in the initial stages of moving technologies we have developed into the privately funded domain and early estimates are that we are sitting on significantly large markets right out the door with significant expansion likely in a variety of areas. Kansas does not remotely have a chance of attracting businesses like ours given the educational climate required for our work. We need students and employees who are well prepared in the sciences and are capable of thinking independently, and if the school board succeeds in misleading their students, they are of no use to us.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
There are implications, I believe, for our present American situation: parasitic governments, namely, have something to fear from Darwin; what exactly, remains to be seen.
Wish my teachers had to admit that Evolution isn't as solid as a Mac :). Seriously though, it's pretty obvious if you study the theory that it really does have a lot of areas where uncertainty reigns. And I get really annoyed when people pretend that it's water tight, often solely because they don't like Jesus.
Wait, so if science isn't the study of explanations for natural phenomena, then what is?
Even intelligent design is an explanation.
Now it's up to the colleges/universities to teach Kansas schools about natural selection.
"Going for a science degree, huh? From Kansas, are you? Interesting..."
That they believe in Creationism. After all, living in Kansas they're probably convinced the world is flat, too...
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
They are among us.
I can't think of anything more to say about this. STUPID.
Just wait till 2006 when the Kansas State Board of Education will have to face the voters on this issue.
I find it rather humorous that you can redefine science based on the word of some ignorant administration officials. Their definition brings voodoo, astrology, and hollywood into the realm of science.
Looking just across a Kansas state line, all I see is a barren wasteland.
So, does anyone have some valid criticisms about evolution that aren't fallacious arguments?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!!!!!!!
-- The World
...noodly appendages.
Thank God we'd never elect a fundamentalist like this to a high government office; the do enough damage in the schoo.... fuck.
I think it is quite wrong to teach ID in schools, not because it's a weird theory but because children in school have learned to believe everything they are taught (I know I was) and don't have the critical thinking required to question those things and decide on their own (that comes later, about at the end of highschool/beginning of college). I remember some pretty outrageous things teachers told us (they obviously didn't know any better) that I believed until much later, and it's a sad realisation when you think that if something like this is false, everything else could be, as well.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
I have to say that this is truly sad for the students of Kansas. Not only do they have to waste time learning something as stupid as Intelligent Design, but as they move on into College, they will now be the laughing stock of their class...
poor, poor Kansas.
My sig can beat up your sig.
Evolution is not random. Mutations are random. Evolution is not just mutation. Evolution is the natural selection of beneficial mutations. The Kansas board of Education is promoting psuedoscience.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Take off every sig. For great justice.
"You don't know anything about the origins mankind! I *do*!"
And the seven-fold path to wisdom needs to be placed next to the ten commandments on public property!
Yay, now I'm going to move to Kansas and get my kids to learn about the FSM!
Wait, what do you mean they're not teaching about His Noodliness? I thought the purpose of this exercise was to expose schoolkids to other theories! Now we see the religious oppression inherent in the system!
HAH! I just wasted a second of your life making you read this, but I wasted a minute of mine thinking it up. DAMN.
Someone needs to shoot this bastard.
Dumbasses rejoice!
This bit 'o' news is the most depressing thing I have ever read. We deserve a zombie apocaplypse for this sort of behavior.
allow science students in public schools to hear materials critical of evolution in biology classes.
This is not at issue here. You can have all of the material critial of evolution you want in any biology class anywhere in the United States. Criticism is a fundamental part of the scientific process. What you can't do is then turn around and say "because we don't have a good explanation, God did it."
There is nothing wrong with scientifically saying "your explanation is flawed," "that theory doesn't explain all phenomenon," or even "we don't know." But there is a problem, to quote Asimov, with saying that "Dragons must be pushing the moons."
The ______ Agenda
Look at that last part again--the board rewrote the definition of science. That's astonishing--and by doing so, the board has admitted outright that "intelligent design" isn't science. If it were, they wouldn't have had to change the definition. They're now saying that science class should include supernatural explanations--everything from leprechauns to poltergeists to the balance of bodily humours is now a legitimate part of Kansas' science curriculum.
The Kansas Board did not adopt Intelligent Design. Instead it did two things:
1)It said that schools should present evolution as a flawed theory. This has the effect of students looking at evolution and saying "oh, it's not good enough to explain what we see...". A side effect of this is that the students now become more receptive to kooky ideas like Intelligent Design.
2)It redefined the meaning of science. According to the new definition, science is no longer is limited to searching for natural explanations for natural phenomena.
These changes are more damaging to education in the long run compared to adopting Intelligent Design alone.
The theory of evolution has some holes, and it's most likely not 100% correct, but it's a very good working definition. It's just like our understanding of the atom, we have a decent working definition that has need for improvement but that is not to imply that it isn't mostly true. Instead we don't call it too complicated and offer up a non-scientific theory. It all boils down to the fact that denouncing evolution with non-science is unacceptable in a science setting.
What does that one guy named Jesus have to do with anything? So you decided to believe a book written thousands of years ago by some guys, which has been found to have inconsistancy, rather than what the vast majority of scientists think? Your choice. But when you force that crazy choice on students that's just bad. Did you know that less than 10 years ago there was still a movement in the US believing very seriously the earth was flat?
Why is this not in the Poltics section?
We all know this is just going to devolve (if it hasn't started there) into an "Christians are stupid."/"Evolution is wrong." forum.
Was there any new scienctific insight that merits inclusion in the Science section of Slashdot? No?
Or was is a political act by a political group?
mmmm.
Congratulations you got around my filters/preferences for the frontpage.
If you want to stop ID in it's tracks, get the ABET committee (the Higher Education Accreditation Committee) to do one of the following:
1. Refuse to accept students to ABET accredited college who have been schooled in ID supported school districts.
2. Allow students from ID supported school districts to attend college, but force them to take college level Biology, Evolutionary studies, and basic science as a pre-req to any degree; be it astrophysics or dance.
Watch a grass roots revolt happen in those districts as soon as the kids find out they'll have to repeat basic science education, perhaps increasing their overall time in higher ed. Watch ID get kicked out fast!
- The Crusades
- Republicans
- Focus on the Family
- Galileo and many others (their persecution)
Seriously, I'm sorry. Please don't think that someone cannot follow Jesus and try to be at peace with the world. Don't mod me funny, I mean it. I'm sorry.I'll probably get modded into oblivion for this, and I may indeed be quite wrong, but is there anything wrong with allowing "materials critical of evolution" to be taught? Correct me if I'm wrong, but is there really no scientific basis for any criticism of evolution? Isn't it only fair - and rather scientific - to explain both supporting and critical evidence? I didn't RTFA, so if they're teaching intelligent design in particular, then that's an entirely different situation...
This will totally ensure that my children will have people to pump their gas and clean their homes!
-_-
My second reaction is that I can only hope is that actual science teachers in Kansas can use this to get the children to discuss hypotheses about the designer(s) that supposedly created the "intelligent design". What if examining the fossil record causes kids to think about the flaws in the designer or the possibility that multiple designers participated? (see my prior post) Such a discussion should create enough discomfort among the religious right to get them to withdraw these mandates to teach this theory.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I just couldn't resist it:
"Toto, I don't think we are in Kansas anymore."
and headlines for tomorrow:
"'Salem Re-Introduces Witch Trials!"
This ruling's great, since a large religious angle they'd try to please with this is nullified with the vatican rejecting intelligent design! Some catholics may love the republicans, and Kansas may bea conservative state, but any rationalization for this stating religious motives is bunk.
I'm happy, because this means that regions in the U.S. (not-Kansas) will have fewer difficulties attracting business than those fundines in Kansas (fundamentalists).
I'm sad, because as Kansas continues to deterioriate into a rabidly backward and conservative area, more and more destitute as each year goes by, government handouts will be seen as the only way out.
You reap what you sow. As the (some of the) rest of the U.S. watches Kansas deteroriate into nothing, I hope we have the intelligence to leave them in the gutter.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Which ironically proves there's no such thing.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
I look forward to an enlightened, civilized discussion about this controversial subject.
This is why there should be no public schools. People don't have a "right to education". That's just bullcrap. And in the end, we're always going to have a whole bunch of people that are pissed because their "truth" isn't being taught in the schools. If all schools were private, each demographic could teach whatever the heck they wanted, and we wouldn't have these kind of fights.
And before you claim that thusly educated people wouldn't be able to survive in a diverse country such as ours, keep in mind that plenty of privately schooled people are perfectly able to function in a population of people who do not share their beliefs.
Awesome, just awesome. I saw one of these proponents speak on an episode of Penn and Teller: Bullshit!, and his logic (or lack thereof) was amazing. "Wouldn't it be great if the state let the parents sit down with their children and choose as a family what they're going to believe?" Uh, no, simply for the reason that SCIENCE IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC PROCESS. You can't ignore facts just because you don't like them. Of course, given that this is the same Middle America (tm) that still believes there is a PROVEN link between 9/11 and Iraq, and that we've found actual WMDS...
The new standards say high school students must understand major evolutionary concepts. But they also declare that the basic Darwinian theory that all life had a common origin and that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life have been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology
;)).
This is good. Evolution isn't dogma. It SHOULD be challenged. And the problems with it SHOULD be taught. If there is scientific evidence that the current theory on evolution has problems, this shouldn't be ignored in the classroom.
In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.
But they go one step too far. I wanted to make a post on how this was a good day for science and education. How the Kansas education board was looking forward, and not turning evolution into a dogma that mustn't be questioned. That it didn't matter who was the driving force behind this positive change. However they went too far when they redefined science. They've injected their religion into it. This isn't a good thing. It's a real shame, that they had to turn a positive thing, into such a negative thing.
People wonder why the world has difficulty taking America seriously anymore. The only thing that America can be taken seriously in, is their weapons. America's good at blowing things up (not so good at building things though). I hope y'all are proud (minus those who agree that this is a bad thing
Mod this 'troll' if you want, but he's right. While the article says it makes things easier for intelligent design's proponents, it doesn't say that the Board has adopted ID. True, the language was drafted by ID proponents, and it did sort of break the concept of science, but TECHNICALLY they didn't say they'd be teaching ID - just that they'd teach things "critical" of evolution.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
It's very simple, really, and it has nothing to do with whether it's "right" or "wrong." ID is not science because it's not provable. Fundamentally, ID says "we can't don't know how this could have happened naturally, so it must have been designed." This is inherently unscientific. If you don't know how something works, all it means is that you don't know how it works! Scientists aren't allowed to make assumptions.
Besides, even if they did have evidence for ID (as opposed to merely lack of evidence to the contrary, which is all they actually have), it still wouldn't be science, because it explicitly requires an influence that's not bound by natural laws. No experiment can be designed to test the "theory," because the point of it is that it's untestable.
There might be an "Intelligent Designer," or there may not be. Who knows? But it doesn't matter anyway, because the issue is outside of science!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
This is a very sad day for our society. I didn't think I'd see the day when a religious agenda could overthrow the scientific method. Somehow I dont think they are going to teach other alternatives such as the Native American Spiritually which has a deep repect for nature and the land. I don't see them talking about Islam in Kansas or Buddhism or Athiesm. Of course all these topics should have been in a 'survey' course of religion, not in a science class. I only hope that the science teacher refuse to teach these topics because to do so would be to practice a pseudo-science and be unethical.
They don't even realize that every aspect of their religion (whatever it is) has EVOLVED from older religions and beliefs.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Great. Now how are you going to grade someone's paper in science class if he goes on about mystic cabals casting spells that drag objects based upon their psychic signatures towards Hell at the center of the Earth?
How about tests? Will there now be a "E. Fill in your explanation:" for every question?
Science class becomes indistinguishable from Creative Writing 101.
Several religions, including the Vatican, have said that ID has nothing to do with religion. According to them Genesis is a story, telling how the world was supposely made by a higher being, and that only idiots would take it literally. The Vatican actually supports evolution as being compatible with their religion.
I was born in kansas educated as an engineer and have been a devout atheist since I could crawl. Ironically my father (raised in kansas) is a molecular geneticist and director at arguably the worlds leading research institute. I can only imagine what may have come of him (and in turn myself) had he been influenced by the people at the reigns of education in kansas today. All I can say is someone needs to take back control out there.
Hmmm ... IMO, if there was an intelligence test for the Intelligent Designer, they'd probably score somewhere below 60 or so. Either that or that designer is a consumer products genius -- only manufacturers of consumable goods "design" items with inherent flaws, built-in obsolesence and finite lifetimes.
If someone tried to tag me as the Intelligent Designer of life-as-we-know-it, I'd slap them with a defamation lawsuit or send them straight to Hell, whichever was in my power to do.
I'm trying, but plane tickets to Sweden are expensive, and Australia is even more so. Canada's already packed with fleeing hippies, and France would lynch me.
Finally.
The baby jesus smiled today!
' As part of the decision, the Board of Education also went so far as to redefine science itself, saying that it is 'no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.'
on next week's agenda, they redefine education to be 'no longer limited by such trivial things as facts and the truth. Education will be a wholesome, enriching, and upstanding kind of thing.'
the week after that they will be voting on whether or not it should be mentioned in sex-ed that nocturnal emission's are the devil's work and if they should require that santa claus's personal history be included in every history curriculum.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
You misspelled "IN SOVIET RUSSIA, Darwin scares YOU!"
... al dente!
As a proud University of Kansas Jayhawk Alumni (1992 Bachelor of Science Computer Science) I have a perspective on this - Not all of Kansas is this conservative.
There are several isolated centers of liberalism (most notably NOT the oxymoronically named town of Liberal, KS) which include Lawrence, some of Topeka, the Kansas City suburbs, and parts of Wichita. However, the vast majority of the state is very Red.
This debate highlights several contrasts in Kansas culture. Many small towns resent the power that the bigger population centers hold over Kansas political power, and are more vehemently conservative because of it. They feel they must fight for their views to be heard.
Another factor here is the ever-more-computer-enhanced jerrymandered redistricting that has been taking place nationwide (most eggregiously in Texas 3+ years ago). As a result, since politicians are more secure in their political bases, they feel free to pander to their most vocal (and most extreme) constituents, since there is no need to appeal to the center. This also selects for more extreme views.
Lastly, this is a confusing trend in the light of the long Kansas tradition of progressive politics, starting wwwwwaaayy back with the Grange organization, which pushed for social-security-type platforms to support destitute farmers in the 1800's.
Even more confusing is the last-10-years trend towards confusing conservative social policies (less freedom for the individual to ensure compliance with moral laws) with conservative fiscal and governmental policies (more individual freedoms and less overall government interference). The freedom-to-farm act (an attempt to liberalize the agriculture market and reduce dependence that farmers don't want on subsidies) contrasts strongly with strong corporate farm interests that advocate for greater involvement, which also contrasts with traditional Republican less-government-is-better.
Also throw in there the strong German-American and now hispanic Catholic elements that, at the recently increasing behest of Rome, are catching on that Intelligent Design is contrary to scriptural meanings, that it confuses the spiritual (some would say 'religious mythical truths') and the scientific truths to the vast detriment of both.
All in all, things are a bit confused and I suspect that when the voters start pushing for actual policies to solve problems (during the next recession, let's say). I just don't know when they'll figure it out.
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
Next will be: the USA really is only for Christians, kings really do have divine rights, and the pope is infallible. Seriously, if the religious lobby there wants to rewrite science to fit their views, why not other subjects?
what is this world coming to? ID is not science. bleh...
digital01.org
Kansas will end up serving as an example for the other states. Any economy these days, be it that of a town, city, state or country, cannot exist without a strong scientific and technical foundation. This sort of action will only serve to deteriorate such a base. While the other states will advance technologically, and will thus propsper, Kansas will not.
Kansas' economy will not be able to evolve as effectively as those of the other states. It may take some time, but that will be the result of taking a stance against science. There will be an exodus of talent from Kansas, in addition to a lack of new talent being produced from their anti-science school system. It will not become a theocracy, however, because without a solid economy a state fails to function. Thus it may very well become a deserted state.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
...but they don't know. And even if they knew, they wouldn't care. That is the problem with faith, being laughed at will reinforce their beliefs.
I can't beleive that they accepted a new definition for science. The definition is so open that explaining something with supernatural ideas is now valid. I guess that in Kansas dowsers, mediums and astrologists now have the same place as a PhD in physics or biology.
What is worst, is that people believe that science is a democracy, so this vote will reinforce creationism, giving it more strength among those that were not sure if they should follow creationism.
This shows once again that what "you know who" once said is true: "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Since the Vatican has publicly gone out of its way lately to oppose intelligent design, could they now theoretically excomunicate Kansas?
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
It's okay to rewrite the definition of the word "science", but not the definition of "marriage"? All hail the double standard!
Evolution is the foundation of our current understanding of Biology. Everything from DNA to resistant viruses is predicted by evolution.Sure. The problem is FINDING anything that is both scientific and critical of evolution.
I implore all thinking Americans to do the opposite. Please stay and fight. Only we can make change. Write letters, protest, spread information, lobby for the spaghetti monster in schools too. Do everything you can. Ever wanted your oppurtunity to make the world a better place? To affect the well being of millions in a positive way? Now is your chance. Stand up and shove the truth down their damn throats if you need to.
Regards,
Steve
Everyone knows ID freaks are just whoring for attention. You'd think the slashdot crowd would be better at recognizing a clever troll when they see one.
Well then, it's a good thing you didn't get put in charge. Then again, it looks like the people who did get put in charge aren't much smarter.
English is easier said than done.
Webster's Dictionary: Kansas Edition I'll have to remember that book for my next trip to Kansas.
Didnt the Vatican just come out and say Evolution fits in with Intelligent Design and that the current theory of Intelligent Design the Bush Admistitration is touting is complete and utter bullshit? Why yes I beleive they did...
Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
http://www.venganza.org/
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
My favorite line: "These changes are not targeted at changing the hearts and minds of the Darwin fundamentalists," Calvert said.
Wow. Now I can be a fundamentalist, just like those wackos that go kill people in the name of god. Except I'm worse, because I might teach someone science! Oh, it's a wonderful day when I get to stand next to GWB and OBL as a nutjob over my adherance to hokey old science stuff.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
From cnn "In August, President Bush endorsed teaching intelligent design alongside evolution."
The very top of this country's leadership advocates ID; so begins the slow spiral into a dark age of education and science. Other then voting most of this addle-brained out of office there will be little the plebian society can do to stop this onslaught of dark age metality.
This *is* a sad day. As one with a very young child soon to start in the school system, the moment any School board in my area begins this debate I will pull her out of public education, as well I will campaign to stop this spread of illogical thought. Maybe it is time to promote the damn Speghetti monster theory of evolution in Kansas since they have opened the door for any crack pot scheme.
God Save the children of Kansas for their parents surely are lost.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
Why don't they just legislate away the second law of thermal dinamics. That would at least have some benefit... Oh wait...
i've read else where that this is actually a serious concern... lets hope google can find a link quickly... this one looks okay: the university of california is fighting a lawsuit because they refuse to certify as "meeting university entrance requirements" high school courses that teach ID
Sorry to say this, but the US has ALREADY made itself laughing stock in the scientific world. The fact that ID is a talking point at all in science curriculums totally blew it for you... as did your government's stance of stem cell research.
So much good, solid science comes out of the USA. So many good people. It's a damn shame.
it is truly a sad day.
Heck I expected Utah to do this...not Kansas.
Anyways, now people can claim the theory of why people from Kansas are numbskulls: intelligent design.
O man...the irony of it too.
and didn't a lot of ivy league universities such as Berkeley, Harvard, etc. turn down students who were otherwise qualified if their biology class wasn't really biology but theology?
Wonder if the state of Kansas has those private school vouchers so kids can go to private schools instead of public schools so their futures aren't tarnished?
It is a shame who happened but the outcome was never really in doubt.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
There is nothing wrong with scientifically saying "your explanation is flawed," "that theory doesn't explain all phenomenon," or even "we don't know." But there is a problem, to quote Asimov, with saying that "Dragons must be pushing the moons."
Wish I could mod you up. 2500 years ago, Hippocrates (think Hippocratic Oath) promoted a quasi-scientific approach to medicine at a time when superstition and prayer were the dominant treatments. From the first chapter of Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World:
"God of the Gaps." I always liked that description.TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Hello everyone, I'd like to inform you all that scientists are stupid and you should NEVER listen to them, there is no such thing as evolution. After my stint with Cocaine I found Jesus, and he taught me all about Intelligent Design..
Fast Forward a couple months
Ok everyone the Scientists say that new bird flu thingy is bad, so listen to them and panic, fear for your lives because we are all going to die a horrid flu like vomity death...thank you and goodnight.
The Kansas Board of Education says that "science" no longer is bound to NATURAL explanations.
So, by Kansas' new "definition" of "science", then ID is "science".
In a related story, the Ghostbusters cartoon is being recommended for inclusion in Honor's Physics.
"Kansas Board of Ed. Adopts Intelligent Design"
How about "Kansas Board of Ed. Allows Alternate Views"
They're not exactly advocating intelligent design, just saying that those theories are out there and evolution (a THEORY) MAY not be completely true.
Personally, I believe that the Board was indeed touched by His Noodly Appendage...
The central claim of [un] ID is that the complexity of nature is beyond explanation or comprehension. There is no attempt to observe, hypothesize or experiment...
So won't you please explain to me how this qualifies for inclusion in a science class!
--> Yo Mama Don't Dance, and Yo Daddy Don't Rock 'n' Roll --
The Spaghetti Monster made the universe.
see sig. see sig run. run sig run.
You get a professional job there first, and then they pay your plane fare. Worked for me (Australia).
Time will prove then wrong! The important thing is that you
understand why they think evolution is wrong...those are people
like the others from the past who made fun of Pasteur, Darwin
and Copernicus' work. I have a challenge to those who belive
evolution is wrong..go study the common accepted theory about
evolution before Darwin's work. Hint: They believed they could
create rats with flour and wet stockings underneath of a home!
As the son of a pastor, I am very dissappointed in this decision.
I'm no scientist, and I don't have any deep knowledge of evolution and the proof and theory behind it (at least that hasn't stuck with me from 10th grade biology,) but to my knowledge, evolution has deep scientific background, despite not being a proven fact.
In an alternative vein, Intelligent Design/Creationism does have a few specs here and there that support it, but not nearly enough that would indicate the theory without some religious notion already in place.
I am a big contendor of the seperation of church and state. I believe that anyone, religious or otherwise, should be. Why? While Christianity may be the leading religion in America right now, people should think about how it could be if Islam or other religions were the mainstream, and how their beliefs could affect Christians in that kind of world. Just as I don't want to follow their beliefs, I should not try to make them follow mine. This goes with atheism, too.
If there is another scientifically backed theory that states an alternative progression of life, then it should be taught alongside evolution. Intelligent Design is not that theory, and this "Board of Education" is using personal presumptions and beliefs to affect the education of thousands of children, many of whom will probably go on to perpetuate this.
And redefining science? That's just ludicrous. Next, they should redefine math to remove all calculus and algebra; this will make it easier for these children to pass standardized tests after going through a lackluster education.
And people wonder why America is looked down upon these days. Boo to you, Kansas. Boo to you.
(For the record, I believe in a mix of creationism and evolution; God created stuff, and evolution happened, with God nudging it here and there.)
Evolution is a phenomenon. It can be observed easily, even in something as trivial and obvious as dog breeding.
Natural selection is a theory that explains why we have the natural species that we do. Sexual selection is a different theory that explains, inter alia, the appearance of species that reproduce sexually.
Mutation is a theory that explains certain aspects of evolution, and is used in the theory of natural selection.
All of that aside, we all need somebody to ridicule as yokels. It makes is feel better. Europe has Austria, Australia has New Zealand, and the US has Kansas. It's the natural order of things, and must not be disturbed.
In 1999 the Kansas Board of Education voted to delete references to evolution from Kansas science standards. This had the net effect of removing the teaching of evolution from the state's science curriculum.
Subsequent elections altered the membership of the school board and led to renewed backing for evolution instruction in 2001.
Science is more than just an explanation of nature. A theory is useless if it is not backed up by evidence and observation.
Intelligent design, while it is an attempt at a theory, is in no way science. It cannot be backed up by observation. The fact that it has to draw so much from ancient literature, rather than observation of nature, just goes to show that it is closer to a mythological interpretation than a scientific theory.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
"I don't see it as unscientfic, who's to say Aliens didn't create us."
You have a hypothesis? Go forth and test it.
Untestable hypotheses, ideas that are neither provable nor disprovable, aren't science.
Those scientists do tend to get a little dogmatic about their "logic" and "reasoning".
... synonomous with reasonable, intelligent ... damn, implies a basis in logic and reasoning...
Like they can stand up to the poor critisized religious folks "book with questionable authorship and editing practices, that should not be questioned".
If you have a group that's made of a mixture of the above two groups, and you have to push one of the schools of thought on them, which one would be reasonable... oh wait, "reasoning" comes from the first group, so sensible,
New bumper sticker:
"If you can read this, you are not from Kansas"
Incredibly, this got passed. This is horribly wrong, and defeats the point of science.
:)... And I get really annoyed when people pretend that it's water tight..." (-Another slashdotter)
Unfortunately, the theory of evolution is that tight. It's a theory. "In scientific usage, theory is not the opposite of fact. Theories are typically ways of explaining why things happen, usually after the fact that they happen is no longer in scientific dispute." People misuse the word theory a lot, and it's common to misunderstand it as the opposite of fact. I think if more people were aware of the meaning of the word theory, and therefore what it means to say "the theory of evolution", there'd be less confusion.
... as a huge victory for their side," I'm a Republican, and I should hope I'm religious, and I will not be trumpeting this as a victory of any sort.
Let's review what science is based on. Known facts that have been determined through repeated testing. Things that we know work, and how they work. Science gives humans the knowledge to build building, bridges, fly into space, save human lives, etc.
And here we are, injecting what supporters fraudulently call the "theory" of intelligent design, into our school classrooms? Last I checked, America's schools weren't fairing so well. We don't need to increase this problem.
John Bacon, said the move "gets rid of a lot of dogma that's being taught in the classroom today."
Say what? We're not getting rid of anything. We're inserting a set of religious beliefs into the science classroom. Science is based on facts that can be tested. You can test evolution. You cannot test ID. ID is a religious belief.
The way my high school world studies teacher did it, and the method I personally agree with, was with a field trip. We took a day, and the whole class (about fifty of us (And not as in class of 2005, class, as in people in a classroom.)) rode the bus to a Muslim Mosque, a Jewish Synagogue, as well as Hinda and Buddist. At each stop, a person from that place would talk to us about their religion and their beliefs. It was wonderful, and, might I add, very educational. My point is, that is where ID belongs. In Social Studies. It's religion, and people need to get over religion being mentioned in school. It can, and should, be done, just in the right place. And we studied it. Along with the creation stories of many of the cultures on Earth, from Greek to Viking.
"Wish my teachers had to admit that Evolution isn't as solid as a Mac
"It will be marketed by the religious right
Unlike the folks in Indiana, who dabble in all manner of regulatory digressions:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_341.htmlRaise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
...to teach whatever they want to their children. Of course mixing religion in will mean that they will no longer be eligible for federal dollars.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
They should make this a required reading:
Why does God hate amputees?
http://whydoesgodhateamputees.com/
FUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKK!!!!!!
This sig is false.
You can't say that without knowing what his "religion" is. There is a healthy way to approach religion. For me, my religion(or rather, spirituality) is about attempting to find resolution to the things science can't begin to touch in my life. Science, on the other hand, is a methodology for ATTEMPTING to find answers about the physical world.
For example, how does one scientifically come to grips with the vast ocean of emotional distress that is the result of an extremely abusive upbringing? By having me talk about what happened? Great, I talk about it, feel better for a day or two, and then it comes back. Talking about wounds like that are not resolution. The next step is by having pseudo science shrinks toss me a container full of pills to "balance my chemistry", essentially hooking me on pills for life. No thank you. I chose the religious/spiritual route and don't need pills. I found the answers I was looking for and resolution for the problems. Some may argue it's all in my head, but in reality, ALL of life's experiences are in our head's, at least as far as the "I" in us is concerned.
As a counter example, how does one religiously explain the physical universe? God, gods, or some unknown force did it. That may be nice for someone with the mind of an idiot, but it is totally unsatisfactory for those with a deep hunger to understand how the physical world works.
What I think YOU and many others do is attempt to apply what you know(or think you know) about a religion(s) to everyone's religion. That is an ignorant and arrogant assumption to make and it falls on its face when you meet people who walk a deeply spiritual path as opposed to the members of the Jesus and Mohammed cults. Try having an open mind. Not to accepting someone's religion, but accepting that for some people, religion is not in conflict with science. The only cases where it is, is where science has become the persons religion. Such people are as fscked in the head as any fundamentalist.
I find it most disconcerting that any one with intelligence could believe so dogmatically in ANY Theory. At the time that those who believed the THEORY that the world was flat (world renown educators and scientists at the time) a group of individuals challenge it, are called heretics, threatened. Why? Fear would be my guess. Evolution is a Theory - just because a majority of world-renown scientists accept it as truth does not make it so. Creationism is a Theory - based on belief. A theory exists - because it can not be proven as fact. Belief in a theory can come from science, religion, history, etc... Stop bashing those who believe differently from you. The very tolerance you claim to have you refuse to give to those who oppose your views.
I can not understand why any intelligent parent would stay there and put their kids through school where they are actively teaching religion in place of a scientific theory. Anyone with half of a brain would move out of their and take their kids out of a school system like that...leaving Kansas with an incredibly stupid population in the end because of the exodus of high IQs...
Will that happen? Probably not...but I guarantee that if I lived there with children, I would be pulling my kids out of the system and getting out of the state.
"In a related story Kansas declares the world is in fact flat and people on the other side fall off."
Not really. Human nature is human nature. The difference is, science provides a mechanism for correction of incorrect, dogmatic views. I am afraid the same cannot be said for non-scientific dogmatism, whether that be religious or political.
Trolls: The high-tech version of those morons that scrawl obscenities in public bathrooms.
Now, if I could only get people to stop believing in a round Earth...
It's Kansas folks. This is what happens when a whole bunch of people have too much time on their hands.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Todo, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore... Yea!!!
this is stupid.
anyone who voted to have ID taught (or accepted) in public schools should re-evaluate their lives.
if they want to teach their children something different from what the school does, they should just do it. if they are so insanely concerned that their kids will learn the wrong thing, perhaps they are not teaching them anything at home?
we live in a country where uploading one movie over the internet can incur a fine of $150,000 and even jail time, and stealing a dvd from best buy might not even land you a night in jail! do you think that i will let a government that can maintain these 2 conflicting ideas teach my children what is right and wrong?
-- lol pwned
It's interesting that, for many, the idea of evolution replaced the religion-based concept of what is now called "Intelligent Design" and is now being threatened (in loose terms) by some kind of backlash from this religious movement, years after it was incorporated into the education systems. Also, cue the jokes about evolution not applying to those living in Kansas.
Don't know what to think about this...
In college, about a decade ago, I was sitting on a bench studying. Two pretty, young girls approached me and asked if I wanted to hang out with them. Uh, yeah. They were from "BCC". Not Broward Community College, but "Broward Church of Christ". Yup, turns out they were recruiters for a bible group. They sat in the middle of a grassy area and read passages from the Bible. The group leader was a charismatic blonde-haired, blue-eyed guy with a faraway look... Then they held hands and prayed... I tried to hold the cute girls hand, but ended holding some dude's sweaty palm.
Now I'm no stranger to Christianity.. I was raised Catholic and later spent a lot of hours in the local Christian church. I've taken Bible classes and confession, Communion, and hours and hours of CHURCH. But, man, it sure felt uncomfortable to be sitting in the middle of campus holding onto some dude's hand (obligatory Seinfeld "not that there's anything wrong with that") whispering and hugging. I tell them that I don't really feel comfortable and they turn on me. No more hugging, but instead the most bitter vitriol is thrown my way when I tell them that I don't believe in heaven or hell.
Fast forward to 2005.. I'm at a friend's party listening to some twenty-somethings discuss evolution. I mention the scientific method and algebra. I talk about the thrill of piecing together clues and testing. Stupid me, I figure that explaining the process of hypothesis and testing would bolster my case. Nope, one woman talks to another, mentions that some "academics" (she says this while glancing at me) are really full of shit (her words).
So you know what, fuck em.
If they want to raise their kids in sweet misunderstanding of what science is about, then more power to them.
The greatest gift that God gave mankind was the gift of free will. You can quote the Oliver Sacks and Penroses of the world, mention the illusion of consciousness, but that's not very practical. We have free will. To deny knowledge is to deny free will. Without knowledge there is no choice. Deny choice and deny free will.
And to any that think I'm an atheist or agnostic or pantheist, you got another think coming. I ache thinking about the suffering that Christ endured on the Cross. I ache in my heart of hearts thinking about the agony that He endured so that I may live. But this has nothing to do with science.
And it pisses me off to know that some moral grandstanders have chosen to make a laughinstock of my church with their political agenda.
KLL
Kansas needs to be natural selection-ed out of the union.
Intelligent design exists in ST-TNG: The Chase and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the Earth is a supercomputer in need of a memory dump in the area of Kansas.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
but why call it a theory? theory sounds unproven; which it isn't. you can observe it every day on a small scale, and infere it on much larger ones.
;-( ).
it is not about which millenium you declare as ape => man transition, or what importance cataclysmic events vs. staedy changes have.
and anyway, it is not one "theory" (think "string theory" etc., which does not have experimental evidence but may be in concordance with/may be an explanation of physical phenomena) but just a basic principle of life you see on a daily basis (just get a bad infection and see the antibiotics losing power
etc.
So what's wrong with keeping the kids happy and invulnerable? (Hey, ignorance is bliss and what they don't know can't hurt'em, right???)
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
...so incredible that the intelligent design creationists must keep them secret for the good of humanity. "If the public hears how bad the fossil problem is, the sky will fall." http://redstaterabble.blogspot.com/2005/10/science -meets-grassy-knoll.html
A rea_School_District
Or just maybe they're all lying. Seems they forgot to offer any of these recent findings as evidence for the trial in Dover. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_
No scientific theory is provable. The only way to test a theory is to try to disprove it. If you fail, the theory is stronger.
ID is not a scientific theory because it is not disprovable. I suspect this is why they had to change the definition of "science".
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
Has anybody noticed that no Kansas residents have added their comments to this discussion?
Oh wait-- Slashdot, news for NERDS... I thought this was Slashgod, News for Rubes.
To reinforce this, it was explained to me that the original translation of the Bible was not necessarily " days", but "periods of my Father" (referring to God) and the like. So, when you consider that Genisis originally stated that it was seven periods of time (length undetermined) instead of seven days, then it doesn't seem that odd that the Vatican would support evolution.
ID is not science because it's not disprovable. There's a difference. For a theory to be considered science it must be possible to develop an experiment that can show that the theory is not true. If that experiment fails then you look for another experiment. If lots of experiments fail to disprove the theory then you can be fairly sure that the theory is sound and can go on to use that theory to do engineering with.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Nothing like a bunch of ignorant bible thumping freaks redefining a field of human enquiry that has been established and developed by dedicated indepedent thinking minds of remarkable genius and clarity far in excess of their own that are so clouded by superstitious balderdash.
Flamebait? Maybe, but the fact remains: the Kansas Board of Education collectively doesn't have even a fraction of the mental horsepower exhibited by Einstein, Darwin, Popper, Newton, Dawkins, Descartes, etc. etc. etc. They have NO BUSINESS redefining science, any more than I do.
I say FUCK THESE PEOPLE. Stop Them Now. Before it's too late.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Isn't it funny... that scientists are often as dogmatic and short-sighted as the religious fanatics they criticise.
Yeah, it's true for most people I guess. This quote comes to mind:Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.
- James Harvey Robinson
Dict dogmatic
This however is not the definition of Science, instead it sounds more like the definition of... yeah that's right.Characterized by an authoritative, arrogant assertion of unproved or unprovable principles.
The Chair Corp. comic(*00-12)
Why is it that the majority of Americans in this country are christian rednecks? It almost makes me want to move to France (if only the believed in execution).
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
So, should students be made to think and believe one way, or is science about theories, alternatives, establishment, proofs, etc., etc?
A few years ago a Denver student made a valiant attempt to open classroom discussion in his school system about alternatives to evolution. He was shot down by the "free minded" educators. No discussion, no alternative, "it's our way and that's it". Is this what teaching science has come to in this nation?
Perhaps a bit misguided, but I still like teaching students to think, not "follow the yellow brick road."
Besides, such great scientist as Agassi, Faraday and Einstein don't seem to have bought into mindless evolution. How many have studied any of them or read any of their writings?
Yes! That's right! Fred Flinstone is a non-fictional work!
If you want more good laughs read on here (click on Excavations in the left column for the above). It's FAQ even goes as far as Environmental (Global Warming) and Space! Because the creator is an expert on both
It's amazingly silly. What's bad is apprantly kids are taken on fieldtrips there, and told that's what the science community believes.
Humans and Dinosaurs SIDE BY SIDE!!!
the basic Darwinian theory that all life had a common origin and that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life have been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology.
What fossil evidence? What molecular biology? Did the school board even review this or did they just take it as given?
How we know is more important than what we know.
You said "evolve". Please turn in your Kansas citizenship card on your way out of the state. Now.
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
You are fucking stupid.
C. Sense...hmm...better make that Common S.
Can the children of Atheists (and other, non-Christians) be excused from science class because of this?
What about children that claim to be? It is their right.
If the words "under God" in can get the Pledge of Allegiance banned or reworded and the Ten Commandments, a work of art, can be removed from public places, why not?
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
Evolution is real and that is how things have come to be (and in the case of humans, some extra-terrestrial interference with our genetics has been thrown into the mix too). However, evolution is not the product of successful random mutations as is commonly believed. The truth is that evolution is guided by an intelligent force.
Love,
duneLotus
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
remember that old TV series? and others from the late 1950's & early 1960's like Mayberry RFD & Leave it to Beaver etc..., that is what most of Kansas is still like, they think it is still the 1950's and they got to keep the hood safe for little Opie Taylor and the Beaver...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
The ID camp has shown that it is clearly NOT God + Evolution. They have shown this by trying to push as much doubt about evolution as possible.
Sorry, I guess I just saw the headline and got carried away -- you're right; I meant "disprovable."
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
There is nothing wrong with allowing "materials critical of evolution" to be taught. There is also nothing wrong with allowing materials critical to Newtonian mechanics, plate tectonics or any other scientific proposition/theory/law. In fact, there is a lot wrong with teaching that such ideas are sacrosanct and above criticism.
Doing science does not involve verifying the truth of any proposition. Science works within a paradigm of falsification -- we try to demonstrate that a hypothesis cannot be the best explanation of a phenomenon. The inability to demonstrate this, along with the elimination of competing explanations, is what gives any proposition the weight it needs to be accepted as the best current explanation we have of a phenomenon.
Science is not a search for truths, nor is it a search for the Truth. This is the one biggest aspects of the nature of science that most people simply cannot comprehend, particularly like those on the Kansas State BoE who voted this in. While scientists may feel their work moves us closer to truths or the Truth, science itself is incapable of achieving that. So, by misinterpreting knowledge propositions like evolution as "that which is True", proponents of belief systems like Intelligent Design are guilty of a boundary violation -- they are bringing in rules from a non-scientific means of understanding the world into the realm of science. You want us to teach that evolution has holes in it? Sure thing! Any good bio teacher is already doing so.
The same problem would be true if things were going in the other direction. There is nothing in science that can prove or disprove the existence of God, no matter what the hyper-rationalistic-atheistic-lunatic-fringe might argue. The existence of a "Being" outside of that which can be experienced is outside of the realm of that which is scientific, and so trying to prove it one way or another is a boundary violation that makes such pursuits non-scientific, no matter how much the pursuer might claim he or she is doing science.
It all comes down to this, put as childishly as possible: If you want to play our game, you gotta play by our rules. Otherwise, go home. And leave the ball, it's ours. And we don't want to play your game either.
I used to scoff at intelligent design, until this video changed my life forever!
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;
Its possible God created the universe in 7 days 3000+ years ago. Its also possible I created the universe with my supernatural powers yesterday then intelligently designed your brains to believe you are more than a day old. So once you allow the supernatural as an explination, every theory that has a supernatural element is now possible. done. Ok now lets spend the rest of the semester learning how a series of mutations can form things like eyeballs without cheating and using a supernatural explination, like a god drives a chariot of fire across the sky to explain day and night.
What is really making Kansas a laughing stock is the reaction from "the educated". Many scientific theories are presented as "fact" when they are in reality "best guesses". "Fact" regarding the natural world has changed numerous times throughout the ages. Over 50% of Americans believe in a supreme being, a God if you will. Yet, the scientific community is afraid of an alternate view being presented. Creationists are not trying to get their viewpoint presented as "fact", just an alternate viewpoint. I don't even think that they are going for equal time, just a bit of time.
Arrogant scientists annoy the hell out of me.
Seriously - they're allowing one alternative "theory", why stop there? I think nothing would be better than seeing the teachers dress up like pirates - it further cements the fact that they're a laughingstock.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Another board member who voted in favor of the standards, John Bacon, said the move "gets rid of a lot of dogma that's being taught in the classroom today."
Sure, and replaces it with the ID proponents dogma instea. Tough break for Kansas - can this be challenged by petition to the supreme court?
Well this can happen in a democracy, but in a while they have the option to change again.
If there were no public education (conceived in Prussia during the late 1800s as an indoctrination system), this would be a non-issue. It's only a problem because the Government has it's tendrils all the way through education, at all levels.
If education were entirely private & unregulated, parents could simply send their children to schools of their own choice, which taught curricula to their liking. End of problem.
I agree, that is truly something we often ignore
I came across a quote the other day, I find it hard to belive, and am still trying to confirm that 20% of US citizens (not kids!), believe the sun revolves around the earth? Can that statistic be true? PS I'm learning Mandarian! Better way to hedge your bets, this site looks kinda of cool for that: http://chinesepod.com/ Knee how! :-) (plus you get to communicate with 1.3 billion people!) :-)
Wow I need to post fast before your crap gets modded any higher.
Interesting comment--considering that they are teaching Intelligent Design alongside Evolutionary Theory.
Except this is a science class, and Intelligent Design is not science.
Your comment seems to indicate that, by teaching ONLY Evolution, that's how we develop Independent Thinking? Tell one side of a story? Somehow, that seems more like indoctrination to me.
As we are talking about science class, there IS only one side to this story. This is part of the strategy of ID'ers: argue and argue and argue, so it appears to the layman that there is an actuall scientific controversy on the issue, and if there's controversy, why not "teach both sides" to "let people make up their minds for themsevles". But their is no scientific controversy between evolution and ID, only a manufactuered political controversy.
And as far as "indoctrination" goes, we have our children go to school to learn, not fill their head with random bs and "let them figure it out for themselves." We don't give holocast-deniers an equal time in histroy class and tell students to "decide for themselves what really happened". The same goes with flat earthers in geology. Otherwise people just start to spew crap out of their mouths.
if they knew anything about quantum mechanics (indeterminancy etc) then the board of ed would have to come up with an alternative to that as well-- of course, then they might also have to ban p and n junctions and all that other semi-conductor stuff..............
That's natural explanations for phenomena, not explanations for natural phenomena. Is different, it is.
So then, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is in, right?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I think it is quite wrong to teach ID in schools, not because it's a weird theory
It is not a theory, it is a dogma. Something that you have to swallow without way to disprove is does not belong with science.
It's just a bit of silly politics renaming creationism the pretend that a former court ruling doesn't apply to it.
Universities noticed that they can't gaurentee that graduates are up to spec in English and math so they started giving tests. When I went to school they factord in your SAT scores and then gave you a short writing test and a math test. They weren't very hard to pass, but if you didn't you had to take remedial courses.
If this ID thing spreads, you'll see the same for science. It'll be a simple test most likely, no acid titrations or anything, it'll just see if you have a basic science background, and if you understand what science is. If not, remedial science for you.
Check out nerdb0ts commenting history...
The thing I hate most is the statement that evolution is just a 'theory'. So is gravity. It doesn't mean we fall up if we don't 'believe'.
A law is fact has been established in isolation from all possible confounding variables, and which the limits of are included in the definition. A theory is a law that for one reason or another cannot be tested and confirmed in isolation. Every body with mass exerts a gravitational pull on every other, and vice versa. Hence, you cannot isolate two particles and determine their gravitational interaction, because the rest of the universe interferes. You can get damn close, though.
Likewise, evolution is a theory simply because we cannot go back in time to observe and record the process as it happens. We can take note of changes that occur during our miniscule existence on this planet (recorded appropriately, of course), but we can never say 100% for sure that this is how we went from pond scum to, well, Kansas people excluded, intelligent beings, because we can't observe the process as it already happened.
We have become an intellectual and educational developing country and are in the process to become an economical one. Very sad but true.
A member of the Board came up with a sneaky plan based on the concept - any PR is good PR, even if its bad PR. the KBOE realized that their Flock was so ignorant, so backwards, so underserved, and so unexposed that they used reverse, divine-guided, scientology to bring attention, media, dollars into the state.
This is the scientific method in action. The scientific method:
1) Propose a hypothesis
2) Test hypothesis
3) Change hypothesis according to test results
Darwin's Hypothesis - life evolves with time and natural circumstances to become more and more complex.
Intelligent Design Hypothesis - life shows signs of design and not just adaptation
The problem I see with the Darwinist proponents is they are not willing to ever get to step #3. When life seems to have made a jump (for example the wing - what possible competitive advantage would a half developed wing have served) there is no change in the hypothesis - it is simply ignored (why not, no other theory is allowed to exist - there can be no other explanation). The proof start to become self-defining - evolution explains the development of the wing because the wing evolved. hmmmmm.
While many here are making parallels to Galileo and the heliocentric theory - I see a parallel as well -- the Church did not want a competing theory to their own. What is the harm in allowing more than one theory to exist.
The Kansas board has left the real world to dwell into the land of Oz.
Best. title. ever.
To put it simply, as a Kansan, I am truly embarrassed. From experience with Kansas higher education, it is obvious that often Kansas lose its educated to better offers elsewhere. Thus, naturally, this is just a way to taint the system so that there is no escape.
Finally something to level the playing field since we were so far ahead in science.... Oh, wait, shit, nevermind.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream
'Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight and the gloom of the grave
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Bles't with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when1 our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
We better start working on a new definition for "intelligent" and "design".
God damn religous whackjobs.
He knows the end is near.
"Insanity in individuals is something rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." - Nietzsche
I intend to. Not Scientology, but the Native American religions. We have a number of reservations here, including the largest in the US. I'll take a trip to meet with any tribal chief that will listen and try to convince them to come to the hearings. Based on the past, I'd say I won't have a hard time convincing them. Hey, if they are going to teach Christianity, they'd better teach the native religions too, and it varies by tribe.
They'd have a hell of a time squirming out of that one.
Putting religion aside, remember that it is the theory of evolution, not this is how it happend, as is the theory of intelligent design, rather than ignoring one, at least they acknowledge that some believe the other.
But if they burn, then they were innocent. Nobody expects the Kansas Inquisition!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
This is a sad day indeed. Especialy since religion and science do not have to conflict:
6 2,00.html
http://www.diopitt.org/tea_design.php
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,17162341-137
This is sad that ppl refuse to think.
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." - S. G. Colette
Unfortunately, Scientology is far more subtle and dangerous than that. It's a brilliantly operated cult, and that's what makes it dangerous. They're brilliant about it- cold, precise, businesslike. They make the Waco cultists look like dumb hippies.
While everyone likes to joke about Tom Cruise going nuts on TV and such- meanwhile, the "Church" of Scientology sets up "free personality tests" in public places with smiling handsome people to "help you understand yourself better". There were a bunch of these assholes set up at Boston Common this summer, and they were attracting a regular stream of people who have no idea how evil the cult is.
There's no talk about the endless brainwashing. Or the women who have died after getting kidnapped and imprisioned with no food, water, or medical treatment. There's no talk about how Hubbard was supposedly alive for years but suddenly "died" when the (I think?) IRS demanded to see him in person asserting his signature was faked. No talk about how, when the IRS removed Scientology's non-profit status the organization hired private investigators to investigate hundreds of IRS agents and continued a campaign of intimidation and harassment and lawsuits against them and their families- which ended when the head of the Scientologists and their chief counsel just "happened to drop by" (I shit you not, that's exactly how it was claimed on all sides) the office of the head of the IRS and had a "chat" with him. A day later, he reinstates their NPO status!
Wish I could effin' "happen to drop by" the head of the IRS, walk in, talk with him, and get my cult declared a non-profit again.
Please help metamoderate.
Once again, one need only refer to the related news: http://www.venganza.org/ Flying Spaghetti Monsterism
Quite seriously: I heard plenty of both evolution and intelligent design growing up, with an agnostic scientific father and a highly religious fundamentalist Christian mother. And like most kids in my situation I chose what made the most political sense at the time. In my case it was fundamentalist Christianity -- that side of the family was much more intense and proactive.
;) I got lucky. No disrespect to the teachers who bust their humps for insulting pay -- education is a noble goal, it just doesn't seem to be working that well the way we do it now.)
During school, I denounced evolution regardless of their teachings, and argued with friends, teachers, and my dad's side of the family. But I still learned critical thinking and by the time I was 19 and on my own, I proclaimed myself an athiest and started to grok the evolutionary, organic nature of our world.
Not that such is the ultimate goal -- go with whatever works for you. But I don't buy that school makes or breaks critical thinkers, and I don't think that hearing conflicting (even idiodic) ideas poisons the mind. Any of the kids in Kansas who are going to believe in ID are going to do so regardless of what the curriculum says. Ditto for evolution.
And I don't even think the blow to science matters. Education is pretty much a mess anyways. It's not like we ever taught critical thinking in school. Or even basic logic. It's mostly memorization, without even the context to make use of the info. Most people seem to pick up any useful knowledge on their own.
Cheers.
(PS - I'm a high school drop out who went on to a fairly successful tech career... my opinion on the matter might be a bit skewed
As a molecular biologist I am curious what part of my science actually supports intelligent design?
The problem is that intelligent design is NOT SCIENCE. Science is the logical analysis of observed data. Itelligent Design accepts that it is not possible to describe the emergence of species. At the point where you state that it is impossible to analyze things based on observable evidence you stop being science. If for no other reason that intelligent design is not science I think it should be left out of science classes.
There is an enourmous difference between pointing out the holes in a theory and abandoning the scientific process. That is what they appear to be doing here.
"Oh there are still things we don't know about evolution"
"That means that science can't describe what we see."
"I see... so lets abandon the scientific process because it hasn't really ever definitively described anything"
"Exactly like the 'theory of gravitation' which we also can't prove."
"Well lets still teach evolution but then teach 'crazy' along with it."
"Sounds good to me."
"Agreed!"
As we see more and understand more of how our world works, that means (logically) that god is less and less powerful. Right now (according to ID), god is directly responsible for "X" amount of the world around us, where "X" is everything we don't understand, or haven't observed directly. As we are constantly learning, that means that god is less and less responsible for the world around us, up until the point where we understand everything, and hence god (to quote Douglas Adams) disappears in a puff of logic.
FYI, this is a common argument from the creationists, known as the God of the Gaps.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
There is a way out, folks. Take this link, for instance. It seems to me that this article, while still being grounded in hard science, is a bit "critical" of evolution.... what with all the "we don't knows" and "it is speculated"s... and to be honest, you've got to fess up to these sorts of things, or normal people start to suspect you're hiding something.
Not a science class, mind you, but a class about science. We need to teach kids froma fairly young age (grade 7 I'd say) what science is, what it isn't, how it works, what it's limits are, and why it's good. That's a real big part of the problem here and the reason that the fundies can get this shit as far as they do. They get more moderate religious people supporting because they don't understand science and so buy in to the "Us vs Them" thing in regards to beliefs.
All kids should be introduced to Karl Popper's philsophy and taught about empiricism and falsifibility. They should be given a sold background in understanding how good science is done, and how to identify bogus science.
This would be good not only for shit like this ID debate, but for fakers in science as well. All the time we see studies, espically scoial or psychological studies, that are poorly done and over generalize their results. However, people are inclined to listen to them since they come from a scientist, a position of authority. It would be good if more people had a better fundimental of science and could say "Well that's just one study on weak evidence, let's wait and see what happens," if they understood that it's not a study that proves something true, but many that show it is probably not false.
Hell for that matter I think a religious studies course would be wonderful. Do an overview of the most major religions in the world, past and present. Give students an overview of what they believe, how they came about, and so on. No preaching, no declaring any of them to be true or false, just a presentation of what the practioners believe and how that came around.
But both of those are wishful thinking, and I know it.
Kansas will end up serving as an example for the other states.
They already do. Educated people have been fleeing Kansas for decades.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
People who don't believe in evolution should take last year's flu shot.
Look into the occupations that are protected by NAFTA. If you are in there, you pretty much just have to show up here (Canada), and get a job. You'll get your work visa automatically.
If you aren't protected by NAFTA, then you'll have to get in under the Skilled Worker class. Look at the CIC website: http://www.cic.gc.ca/ If you qualify, you'll most certainly be accepted.
Note: our economy is booming. There is a skilled worker shortage here in B.C., for example. Unemployment is at a 30 year low.
Canada welcomes smart, skilled Americans who don't mind leaving God at home.
We should celebrate this with a day of mourning, for the children whose future has been compromised by this decision. The effects, unless rapidly reversed, will be more devastating to these children than any natural disaster. This disaster was man-made, and the parents allowed it to happen. They could stop it. hey could pull they children from school. The teachers could strike. The ancillary service providers could refuse service. The adults in this situation could make a choice. If they sit by and allow this travesty to proceed, you can't blame those that enacted the policy. They become only the messengers.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Bigoted and closed-minded critics claim that intelligent design "effectively promotes the Bible's view of creation." For them, what's happening there in Kansas and elsewhere is merely an attempt to get "Christian creationism" in through the back door.
Tenzin Gyatso would probably be surprised to learn that he's promoting "Christian creationism." It's true that his new book criticizes what he calls "radical scientific materialism." And, like Phillip Johnson, the Berkeley professor, he doesn't hesitate to point out that the materialistic worldview is every bit as metaphysical as a theistic one.
Still, it's absurd to label Gyatso's work a stalking horse for "Christian creationism." After all, if you call him by his proper title, he is the 14th Dalai Lama.
In his new book, The Universe in a Single Atom, the Dalai Lama warns readers about the consequences of seeing people as "the products of pure chance in the random combination of genes." This materialistic account is "an invitation to nihilism and spiritual poverty." Correct.
He writes that "the view that all aspects of reality can be reduced to matter and its various particles is as much a metaphysical position as the view that an organizing intelligence created and controls reality." What's more, he insists that both "are legitimate interpretations of science."
In view of the profound differences between Tibetan Buddhism and Christianity, it simply isn't credible to dismiss intelligent design as simply "a repackaging of [Christian] creationism."
The other misrepresentation that can't withstand scrutiny is the one that depicts advocates of intelligent design as being opposed to scientific inquiry.
Nothing could be further from the truth. We welcome scientific inquiry. We want our kids to learn more about evolution, not less. We want them to understand both its strengths and its weaknesses.
What we oppose is the idea that nothing can be taught that challenges the belief that materialism accounts for everything from the beginning to the end. It's not a scientific claim; it's a philosophical or metaphysical one. Like the Dalai Lama, we oppose metaphysics being taught under the guise of science.
It is the close-minded academics who are being dogmatic, foreclosing scientific inquiry. They call even the merest mention of scientific evidence suggesting that life couldn't have arisen as a result of an unplanned, random process as "religion," and they throw it out.
Now, this debate isn't about science. It's about the philosophy of materialism, which insists that it alone answers all of life's questions. It will countenance no rivals. It will smear its dissenters even, now, the soft-spoken monk from Tibet.
I was born in Kansas. I received two degrees from the University of Kansas in Biology and Environmental Science. I still live in Kansas... And yet, I can feel nothing but shame for the sheer tonnage of stupidity my Home on the Range displays on a daily basis.
In the past 30 years Kansas has been known for exactly three things: Fred Phelps picketing dead people because they'z fags 'n' shit, the amendment to the constitution ta keep themz fagz frum gettin' helph unsuruntz and the Flying Spaghetti Monster (may his noodly appendage be forever praised.)
Well, at least I can make a buck selling bumper stickers that say, "Kansas: Helping Alabama not be Dead Last at Everything Since 1861" and "Kansas: Yes, we really are this stupid. Sorry."
although it's not impossible. Can you provide some more info?
Science [sai-ens]: (n) Crazy moon gibberish.
One day I wanted to send good review describing why ID is wrong. But most of scientific literature require expensive subscription and can not be reproduced freely. So public get this free crap. Anyway, for those who have access:
= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1452730 0
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd
As a precedent to the Kansas Board of Education redefining science, I recall, in my days as a graduate student at the University of Illinois, learning that the Illinois legislature (or was it the Indiana legislsture?) had once redefined pi to be exactly 3. (This must have been many decades before Intel tried a similar stunt with the Pentium divide malfunction.)
Also, I recall a short-lived comic strip in the U of Illinois student newspaper which was based on the premise that the laws of nature are legislated and the laws of man are fixed. It was hilarious beyond description, but liberal arts students wrote letters of complaint to the editor because they didn't get the jokes and felt that the strip made fun of them, or something like that. I shit you not. An example of what the writer dealt with was the meaning of red shift in the world of his characters--it dealt not with Doppler effects on light from receding stars, but the tendency of democratic governments to move towards Communism.
If anyone recalls this most excellent of comic strips I would love to hear their recollections. I believe it appeared for only a few weeks in the Daily Illini sometime between 1984 and 1989.
Any economy these days, be it that of a town, city, state or country, cannot exist without a strong scientific and technical foundation.
The Amish would beg to differ, I'm sure.
In my humble opinion, schools should teach neither "intelligent design" nor evolution. Instead, what they should teach is that:
Of course, the schools should also go over the mechanics of evolution.
My point is that schools should not present any point of view on a controversial subject like this as truth. They should present facts, and it is a fact that some people believe evolution is the explanation of the origin of life, so it is fair to teach that and to explain what evolution is. It's also a fact that a lot of people don't believe in evolution, so they should present that fact as well.
In other words, when it comes to the veracity of evolution and other hotly-disputed topics, schools should be descriptive rather than prescriptive. Teaching, for example, that evolution is a fact and that the fact of evolution means there is no need to believe in God would be improper, because you are telling the students what to believe. And so would teaching evolution in a way that tacitly implies that there is no God. And, so would teaching evolution in a way that tacitly implies that it's inferior to intelligent design. Schools should be telling students what they could believe, not what they should believe.
Now, having said all that, if the Kansas government really did define science, then they are going way off course, because they are not teaching facts to the students. They are lying to the students about what science is, which is dumb.
The University of California at Berkeley won't accept for credit high school biology courses that teach intelligent design. If you want to get into the life sciences or medicine, get out of Kansas schools.
1) I am religious and 2) I am also a scientist
... LOOK! AN ELEPHANT! FALLING FROM THE SKY!
I'm a pirate, and a good man!
It takes a little ID to put things in good course.
Science just describes the
Kahn!!!!
I hear there is a great restaraunt at the end of the galaxy.
By providing even lower quality in it's educational system,
they will force parents to home school their children.
Now, many home schooled children score much higher on all
standardized tests, when parents are provided materials
and on-line resources.
So, by forcing parents to abandon the public school system,
they will reduce costs, layoff staff members, close schools,
and actually greatly improve the education of students who are home schooled.
I recomment the take the following steps to improve their schools:
1. Stop teaching english and only teach Latin.
2. Drop sinful Art and Music classes and teach only wood carving and sowing.
3. Replace Football with 'mortification of the flesh' self-whippings.
4. Pep Rallys replaced with prayerful book burning gatherings.
5. Drop Algebra classes in favor of Abacus building shop class.
Yup, in no time all those home-schooled kids will be the next generation of MD/PhDs!
The Kansas Board of Ed. today discovered a new object that, when NOT used properly, can effectively disprove ANY theores in science. They call it General Object for Disproving.
Taken from http://www.slate.com/id/2062009/
An appropriate picture http://gokubi.com/images/unintelligible.jpg
According to scientists, teachers, and civil libertarians, the Taliban has invaded Ohio. Creationists have devised a theory called "Intelligent Design" (ID) and are trying to get Ohio's Board of Education to make sure it's taught alongside Darwinism. Unlike creationism, ID accepts that the Earth is billions of years old and that species evolve through natural selection. It posits that life has been designed but doesn't specify by whom. Liberals call ID a menace that will sneak religion into public schools. They're exactly wrong. ID is a big nothing. It's non-living, non-breathing proof that religion has surrendered its war against science. Creationism used to be assertive and powerful. Darwinism wasn't allowed in schools. As Darwin gained the upper hand, conservatives fought to preserve creationism alongside evolution. They lost the war on both fronts. Courts struck down the teaching of creationism on the grounds that it mixed church and state. Meanwhile, scientific evidence discredited the belief that the Earth was created in six days and was only 6,000 years old. Like the Taliban, creationists were washed up. Their only hope was to flee to the mountains, shave their beards, change their clothes, and come back as something else. Continue Article What they've come back as is the Intelligent Design movement. Gone are the falsifiable claims of a six-day creation and a 6,000-year-old Earth. Gone is the God of the Bible. In their place, ID enthusiasts speak of questions, mysteries, and possibilities. As to whether God, the Force, or ET created us, ID is agnostic. "We simply ask the question as to whether something can form naturally or if there must have been something more, a designer," Robert Lattimer, an ID proponent in Ohio, told the Columbus Dispatch. "Our main contention is that [evolution-focused curriculum] standards are purely naturalistic and leave no room for the possibility that part of nature can be designed." This soft-headed agnosticism matches the soft-headed arguments for including it in the curriculum. They're the same arguments leftists have made for ebonics. According to ID proponents, the committee in charge of Ohio's science curriculum is too "homogenous" and lacks "diversity." It marginalizes alternative "points of view" to which students should be "exposed." A conservative state senator says some people "think differently, and all those ideas should be explored." A conservative member of the state education board says Ohioans deserve a science curriculum "they can all be comfortable with." Behind these pleas for diversity is the kind of educational relativism conservatives normally despise. "Biological evolution, like creationism and design, cannot be proved to be either true or false," writes one ID enthusiast in Ohio. Since evolution is an "unproven theory," says another, "belief in it is just as much an act of faith as is belief in creationism or in the theory of intelligent design." The response of liberals, teachers, and scientists has been hysterical. They accuse the ID movement of peddling "intolerance," fronting for the Christian right, and trying "to force a narrow religious ideology into our schools." If Ohio lets ID into its curriculum, they prophesy, the state will become an "international laughingstock," triggering a corporate exodus, a decline in property values, and the collapse of Ohio's standard of living. They refuse to acknowledge a difference between ID and creationism. "This is just a new paint job on the same old Edsel," says an Ohio University physiologist. The analogy is inside out. Creationists haven't repainted their Edsel. They've taken out the engine and the transmission. Without distinctive, measurable claims such as the six-day creation, the 6,000-year-old Earth, and other literal interpretations of the Bible, creationism no longer material
Ironically, the people who remain in deserted states get to rule the country thanks to America's insane electoral college system. If there were only person left in Kansas, that single person would control an absurd portion of the federal government. So a mass exodus from the loser states is probably not seen as a bad thing by the moral idiocracy -- it gives them even more control over the already poorly-steered ship of state.
Parent post is among the most keenly insightful I have read in several years of reading Slashdot. Please mod up to +5, Insightful. Too bad it's AC.
Now, post below with ideas for T-shirt designs and bumper stickers associating the term "American Taliban" with Kansas. Jokes are good, but ideas of a serious nature would be a better way to communicate the gravity of this problem to those who see these designs.
This sort of thing truly is the start of a local theocracy in Kansas. If it isn't contained and/or destroyed it could actually threaten the rest of America the way things are going in the national government. Scary stuff.
Well, at least this will be such a dis-incentive for bright, worldly, intellectual types to live and raise children in Kansas that in short order, the sheer economic depression bound to happen there will make for cheap real estate.
1) Buy a bunch of cheap land in Kansas
2) Wait for current twits to fade away
3) Hope that at least some Kansans come to their senses
4) Watch the local school boards swing the other way
5) Watch local politicians aggressively try to make up for this whole embarassment by doing what they can to woo startups and tech/science companies
6) Start advertising that real estate.
7) Profit! Um, in two or three generations. But your grandkids can still enjoy the proceeds.
While you're waiting, that's pretty good pheasant hunting territory, so you can use the land that way in the meantime.
Speaking of pheasants - ever heard a rooster pheasant break up from cover and take wing? They can let loose with quite a cackle. This is important to pheasant hunters, since you're not allowed to take the hens - only the cockbirds. So, birds that jump up cackling tend to get shot rather readily. I've talked to more than one hunter in the midwest that says, in their lifetimes, they've seen a marked reduction in the number of roosters that cackle when they take to wing. In other words, the quiet ones love longer and reproduce more often... and we're thus selecting for (evolving) quieter rooster pheasants. This is happening in Kansas, too, not that the school board is taking notes.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
...to have created Kansans.
Don't be a drama queen.
Punishing the students for their leaders is silly.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
The new curriculum mentions that theories of life arising from similar building-block molecules through purely random processes can be challenged by recent findings in the fossil record and by molecular biology.
If this is what it says, it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how evolution works. The evolution of life is not random. It involves selection (hence the term 'Natural Selection'). It is selection by various mechanisms of the best-surviving variation from a set of random changes from an original. That is not the same thing at all.
Whoever photographed that is my hero for the next 15 minutes!
Does this mean that Computer Science is finally a real science?
I'm not sure there is a scientist that does NOT concede that evolution has some holes. Or, to be more specific, some areas in which evolutionary explanations rely heavily on events or processes that exist only theoretically.
For instance: the creation of life in the first place. To date, this has not been done in any laboratory, anywhere, by anyone, ever. Period. In fact, we really don't even know what makes a living thing living. And yet evolution depends as a cornor stone that at some point a natural (random some would say, debateable though it may be) process resulted in a living organism. This is a phnomenon that is inexplicable under modern science.
Is it a hole in evolution? You bet.
Fatal flaw? Nope. Valid criticism? I'd say so.
Reason to keep an eye out for alternative theories that can explain everything that evolution explains AND this phenomenon? Sure. That's what science is all about.
Retrograde motion was what led Copernicus to move from earth-centric to sun-centric solar system views. It could be that the life question will lead some genius down the road to an explanation that explains everything evolution does AND the creation of life, which is yet inexplicable.
And this is only one hole. There are serious questions about the development of certain sub-cellular systems that would appear to not work unless the whole system appeared at the same time. Some biologists use these microscopic but complex and integrated systems to quetion current evolutionary theory.
Again, this does not mean evolution is disproved. Only that there are places where evolutionary explanations are iffy, and which open the door that something better could come along.
Remember, gravity looked fantastic as a theory... until Einstein wrote General Relativity and kicked gravity aside. Newtonian equations still give mostly correct answers, and his stuff is still taught in high school physics (which I disagree with). But the new Relativity theory better explains the phenonoma that the Law of gravity explains.
Change happens.
My point: Evolution is not a perfect theory. It has gaps. It has flaws. There are things it should explain that it explains poorly or not at all. Just like earth-centric theory. Just like gravity.
Evolution SHOULD be questioned. Regularly. Harshly. It should be held up and ripped up and down, in and out, beaten and battered and every last flaw found, examined, exposed, and denounced. THAT is what science does. Evolution is not a perfect theory, and should be criticized.
However, just because a theory has weak places does not mean it is dead wrong and should be discarded.
Saying ID is right and evolution is wrong because of a few gaps in evolution is wrong.
Saying evolution is complete, polished, always right and cannot be challenged is also wrong.
Neither is science.
Teaching the problems with evolution at the high school level I think is a good idea. I also think we should teach general relativity and non-Euclidean geometry, so I may have higher standards than most. But that is a seperate rant.
I think an important thing to note is that many of the people that support ID also believe the universe is only 6000-10000 years old. Try and let that concept soak in for a minute. I've spoken at length with a number of creationist (I live in Oklahoma), and they actually believe that the light we see from stars, the very photons traveling through space, were placed in transit by their god at the time of genesis... Holy shit, can you believe that? Trying to argue anything about evolution based on science and logic is utterly pointless.
Casca
If it were correct, people would actually be getting smarter. And that, apparently, isn't happening.
Redefining "science" to be "any grammatically-correct explanation of phenomena, regardless of plausibility or logic, will be acceptable as long as you feel good about the answer."
I hereby coin the phrase New Science, Kansas-Style. See New Math for background if you weren't in elementary school in the US in the early 1970's.
I further declare the so-called Kansas Board of Education to be a bunch of emotional, dung-flinging chimps. I haven't seen much more retarded behavior than this (and I do mean "retarded" from a damaging-to-society perspective.)
Taken from http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s14932 25.htm
Robyn Williams: Professor Derek Denton from the University of Melbourne has just published something of a critique of intelligent design in The Age newspaper, suggesting that some parts of our bodies are so botched that it's an insult to poor old God to hold him responsible.
Derek Denton: There is obvious evidence against such an idea operating in living creatures. The gut is supported by being enclosed in a big membrane called the peritoneum. The peritoneum is attached to the backbone. This is fine for a four footed animal, however, given an animal with an upright posture, for example us, the gut falls to the bottom of the abdominal cavity. The common outcome may be various types of hernia, prolapse of the uterus and vaginal wall and haemorrhoids.
The big maxillary sinuses or cavities are behind the cheeks on either side of the face. They have the drainage hole in the top, which is not much of an idea in terms of using gravity to assist drainage of the fluid. Ear, nose and throat specialists sometimes have to knock a hole through the side of the nose near the bottom of the sinus to help drainage of puss. Apart from horses, which have a very small opening, most four-footed animals operating with head down rarely get sinus problems. It would seem that knowledge of gravity has not been a strong point in the repertoire of the intelligent designer.
The digestive system of grass and herbage eating animals includes a large organ next to the secum, the vermiform appendix in which cellulose is digested. In the human it's rudimentary, it gets matter caught in it, becomes inflamed sometimes causing sever peritonitis and death. Why the intelligent designer put it in at all is conjectural, unless in fact it is an evolutionary remnant from an earlier beneficial function.
One of the marvels of backboned animals is the eye. Indeed, Dr William Paley, a clergyman, whose writings were used to challenge Darwin considered it as the shining example of intelligent design. Paley likened the situation to that of finding a watch abandoned in an open field: it must have a maker who formed it for a purpose. The eye might be compared with a designed instrument such as a telescope, he concludes, 'that there is precisely the same proof that the eye was made for vision as there is that the telescope was made for assisting it'. That is the eye must have had a designer just as the telescope had.
In considering the eye as the marvel, there are facts now known which were not known in Paley's time, about 1801. In our eye and of all other vertebrates the optic nerve carries over a million fibres each leading from a cell in the retina. It is part of a system receiving data from about 125 million photocells. Whereas it would seem a designer would point the photo cells towards the source of light with the wires leading back to the brain, it would be poor design to have the photo cells pointing away from the light with their nerve processes departing on the side nearest the light. This is what happens in all vertebrate eyes, the wires or nerve processes have to travel across the surface of the retina to a place where they all go through a hole, creating what is called the blind spot, to form the optic nerve. The design principle is really not very good. The extremely interesting fact is that with the octopus the wires from the photocells don't point to the light but do indeed go backwards. The octopus eye in this respect is a better-designed effort by the putative intelligent designer than the eye of mammals. How did this come about?
Well, Ernst Mayr, the great Harvard biologist argued that photo receptors in some form evolved independently some 40 to 60 times in animals ranging from worms, molluscs to vertebrates. In the octopus eye it is formed by an infolding of the surface cells on the head, which become thickened to form eye components and it i
As all religious people should be. If you take a close look at history you will see that those societies that bind religion and politics together tightly are the ones that become less and less religious.
Separation of church and state is why religion thrives in the United States. Those who seek to eliminate it will be their own undoing.
As for teaching evolution in biology class, it's like this: evolution can be shown to work using a series of experiments that are repeatable. By doing the experiments, you can see that various bits of (for example) the evolutionary hypothesis are or are not borne out by your results. This provides you, personally, with some level of confidence that when you interact with or upon Nature, within the limits of your experience you can anticipate consequences. This isn't a belief system, this is a school of hard knocks, like Bart Simpson finally realizing that no matter how many times he slams a door on his fingers, it's always going to hurt. Intelligent Design does not add understanding to this process.
IMO, a belief system comes into play when considering what to do with the knowledge gained: ethics. A belief system comes into play when considering how to ponder the questions of why: faith. A problem with weaving faith into a primary or secondary science class such as Kansas proposes to do is that the aim seems to be to cut off the discovery of the workings of Nature before it runs up against someone's preconception of Nature's workings.
Much as I consider that a PETA activist arises from a childhood of clean supermarkets and "Bambi", I feel the driver for creationism and ID in science class is a childhood envisioning the Lord wavying a wand over Creation in a 168 hour week. Much as I'd hope a (in this case) Christian believer's understanding of the Gospels as a whole would become more learned and sophisticated by adulthood, I'd hope their childhood conception of Genesis would mature as well. Frankly, the recipe for Creation ain't in the KJV, and for the majority of the Kansas School Board to in essence decide they've got the workings of the Lord all figured out (the magic wand) is child-like in the most literal sense.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Science and Religion do not have to be mutually exclusive. Many of the greatest scientist were and are religious in one sense or another. The fact is you cannot stand that "evolution" has serious holes that cannot be explained at all and when people point out that the "emporer has no clothes" you attack.
This is the Tipping Point of the Decline and Fall of the American Empire.
You heard it here first.
Maybe Astronomy classes should give equal time to the Ptolemaic system. And what about Tycho Brahe's system? Copernicus Shopernicus, it's just a plot by telescope manufacterers to sell fancy schmancy equitorial mounts and clock drives.
Math classes could spend a little time working on Squaring the circle and finding a counter example to the Four color theorem. The students could even use crayons or finger paints.
This could all make school so much fun! And the students so stupid. One second thought, maybe those are really bad ideas. They could grow up to be President of the United States .
I hope it's before Gym.. magic tires me out!
The Good Life
Why don't we make them a new textbook?
Let's just take the Bible and go through it, multiplying every numeric constant by i. Why? Because it's all imaginary.
Seriously though. What happened to America being on the cutting edge of scientific thought? Is this a step back to the Middle Ages? What must the rest of the world think of us?
I actually had the opportunity to be taught religion in school, only it was a separate class that met once a week and had absolutely no connection to the science class. Why can't we do this here?
with your comments. Please, don't stereotype the religious right from the conservative right (I realize these are, sadly, viewed as the same). While I am (slightly) religious and a scientist, I find what these people are doing completely stupid. Their arguments against evolution cannot be argued with, as they have no use for logic or reason (sounds strangely familiar to the middle east). Non-americans arent the only people laughing at Kansas; plenty of other states are, too. I wonder if being away from large bodies of water makes you inherently more stupid (or at least more open to indoctrination). Now that would be an interesting study.
In any event, this will only serve to weaken Kansas' educational system, nothing more. Kids who are indoctrinated with this BS will simply find that their mindset isn't conductive to the scientific method and stay out of higher education.
Close all universities for all kids from Kansas. Let them life with their Intelligent Design, alone. Let their parents deal with this nonsense. Schools in the US are bad enough. The last thing we need is more waste of time to deal with what is leaving Kansas' schools. All university professors already have to work overtime. Enough is enough. Sorry.
deserted state do you say?? It's pretty much that way already.
Page ii of the working draft of the Kansas Science Education Standards from August 9 (pdf) states specifically that "the curriculum standards call for students to learn about the best evidence for modern evolutionary theory, but also to learn about areas where scientists are raising scientific criticisms of the theory" and that "the study and discussion of the origin and development of life may raise deep personal and philosophical questions for many people on all sides of the debate." Got that?
So what about the Big Bang? Does the ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE not raise deep questions? Are there not criticisms of the Big Bang theory? Where's the Intellegent Design contingent on that one?
Seriously, as a fully-fledged agnostic I'd be much more willing to agree that, yeah, maybe there was some higher power that had something to do with, you know, a spontaneous explosion of matter and energy, than to put God into biology.
And while you're at it, you kooks, there are LOADS of scientific theories which have some amount of criticism. Quantum physics, gravity, fluid dynamics... Where's your God on those? Or are you just gearing up now?
an alien comes down to earth, or communicates through a SETI relay, and says "hey guys, good to see those seeds we launched from rockets 500 million years ago have brought about what we hoped for"
alternatively, we could find some tell-tale sign in the DNA of living organisms.. like a star map to ceti alpha IV pointing out how to reach them.
so dont say ID can't possibly ever be proven. maybe not with a god, but with aliens- it could happen.
and give me a break about "who created the creators".. because using that logic the people who are currently making genetically modified corn at monsanto cant exist, because we dont know who their creators were.
It's only a matter of time.....
What is even more pathetic than substituting religuous jibberish for scientific hypothesis and evidence? How about the fact that, had anyone in Kansas (or the Christian Coalition for the matter) a real education, they would realize that (a) nothing in the bible is inconsistent with the theory of evolution, unless I suppose you are dumb enough to believe that "seven days" mean seven 24 hour periods and that god and earth must share the same frame of reference for purposes of computing such time passage, (b) physics, not evolution, is where evidence of "intelligent design" abounds (of course, the intelligence could be Cylons, but still ...), or (c) the fact that a theory cannot explain everything (wings!) does not make the theory wrong or in need of god to provide the explanation. Any sufficiently advanced science will appear as magic to the uninitiated - I wonder if the good folks in Kansas still attribute tornadoes (which cannot be explained fully by existing theories) to the fact that god is mad that them? And since there are more tornadoes in Kansas than anywhere else, doesn't that mean that they must be more wrong than the rest of the world or at least more out of favor with god? Hmmm.
I have no respect for ID either, but then is Darwinism all its glorified to be? it can explain why giraffes having long necks survived while those that didn't perished, but it cannot explain why giraffes had long necks in the first place. anatomically, a giraffe and a mole both have 8 vertebrae in their necks. Darwin explains that the tall-necked giraffes survived because they were able to eat food, and the short-necked moles survived because they could burrow better - but then there is Lamarck's theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics which says that the giraffe's neck evolved into a longer version after generations of stretching. both theories are equally logical - and a fossil of a short giraffe would prove both theories right! so which one is correct then?!
In questioning the veracity of Darwinism (or in teaching to question its veracity), the Kansas Ed Board have done a commendable job. to redefine science and to teach ID is definitely a bad move, but to let the kids keep their minds open and not hesistate to think unconventionally (and until explained, unscientifically) about such concepts is a good thing. isn't that what science is all about, believing in a theory but always inviting and accomodating a new one that explains a few ideas more?
Would Darwin have come up with his theory if the Lamarckian thought had been hammered as throughly into his brain as Darwinism was into ours?
My sig has been answered.
Some school(s) in Australia have already started teaching ID. If it must be taught, I'd prefer for it to be in philosophy, so long as philosophy has 99% other philosophical content as well.
Teaching criticism of evolution is EXACTLY what science classes should be doing. Science depends on criticism... that is what makes science work.
Teaching ANYTHING as an absolute truth under the label of "science" should be fought. That is not science.
That does not mean that the Kansas School Board is right. Only that being critical of evolution is not wrong.
In reality, it was Brahma who created the world...
At the beginning of the process of creation, Brahma created ten Prajapatis, who are believed to be the fathers of the human race.
He also created the seven great sages or the Saptarishi to help him create the universe.
Thus the universe was born!!
Realize the truth - be a Hindu.
More details, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahma_(god)
Ugh. No offense but that's completely untrue, even though I agree with your view of ID. It's not that ID is not science because it's not provable. Science is not meant to prove anything. The main reason why ID is not science is because it's not testable. Basically you can't prove it wrong.
diegoT
These people are not arguing about the origin of the species, emotionally. They don't care about the truth; that's ancillary. What they care about is that they demonstrate their membership in a particular tribe. It's not a coincidence that the supporters of ID are also rural, love both types of music (country and western), fundamentalist, blue collar, NASCAR-watching, conservative, SUV-driving, uneducated, and Republican all at once. This particular tribe, even though it now controls both branches of elected government and more or less controls the third, still feels its territory constricting around it due to the inexorable march of science and technology. The tribe will get more fierce before it finally succumbs. The utter humiliation of the Bush Administration now occurring will definitely not be the tribe's last gasp.
No. The last time the BoE pulled this stunt, the electorate got fired up and unelected the guilty Board members. The issue died down for a while, then the Phred Phelpsians and the Jerry Jonstonites got their minions back on the Board in an off-year election. We will throw out the redneck trash again in 2006, in time to prevent the new standards from taking effect in 2007.
I am not a crackpot.
Just a little quibble from someone who really enjoyed his "Natural Deductive Logic" class. :)
What is the alternative to natural explanations?
Non-natural explanations.
Yet what would a non-natural explanation look like?
A natural explanation has the form: Because X is Y it does Z. Because the electron is charged it accelerates in an electric field.
What would the form of a non-natural explanation be? And how does it function as an explanation? "Because God wants it the Earth appears old." This has exactly the same form as a natural explanation, except that it is the nature of a third thing that is doing the explaining. But we have natural explanations of this form as well: "Because she is beautiful I am attracted."
In these cases the form is: "Because X is Y, P does Q."
So what is it that makes a natural explanation involving God non-natural?
The violation of Bayes Theorem.
Bayes theorem allows us to draw inferences from effects about causes. But we are told that we cannot infer anything about God from any finite series of events. We are told that God cannot be bid. We are told that God is good, even though he is all powerful and yet allows good people to die painful and pointless deaths.
A non-natural explanation is formally identical to a natural explanation, but involves a subject that we are arbitrarily and without justification told violates Bayes theorem. Yet Bayes theorem is the foundation of explanation in modern probability theory. To "explain" something is just to identify the things that maximize its posterior probability.
So a non-natural explanation is not, in fact, an explanation at all. It is a nothing, merely empty noise with the apparent form of an explanation, like Chomsky's furious green ideas.
Any explanation of an effect tells us about the cause. To claim that explaining disasters by invoking God's will doesn't tell us that God is petty, childish and violent is to claim that God's will does not explain disasters.
To believe otherwise is to proclaim that you do not believe in the basic mathematics of probability.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Intelligent Design has no place in a science class. There is absolutely zero evidence to prove or even support this idea (because it is most certainly not a scientific theory). Want to stop a ID supporter in their tracks? Just ask them to show you evidence of intelligent design WITHOUT attacking (or even mentioning) evolution. Funny so much time is spent on the weaknesses of evolution, but so little is spent justifying ID. "Oh darn, the universe is so complex, therefore it must be designed." Well lets see here.... if a have a string of 100 1's, some may call that not complex because it can be expressed very simply as 100x1, however if I have a string of 100 random numbers that can't be simplified, then it is very complex and it must have been designed...right....that makes perfect sense.
Lord^H^H^H^HIntelligent Designer, please smite our enemies with a plague. Nothing too nasty, maybe just some boils.
Kansas State Government announces closure of all medical facilities in the state. In future, anyone who gets suffers from any medical condition can call upon their local intelligent designer to intervene and make the appropriate changes to remove the medical condition.
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
And that one, while less important to the "big picture" has been foremost in my mind and now, finally I can stop worrying about it.
As a citizen of the state of Texas allow me to exhale in relief and say "Thank God Kansas went first!"
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
We need only find the designer.
If that designer is hypothocized to be an invisible god that does not wish to be found, then that verions of ID is not proveable, and is not science.
If that designers is hypothocized to be an alien race that seeded earth with designed life forms, the situation changes. We COULD find the designer and thus COULD prove that version of intelligent design.
ID does not equal a god and only a god. Any designer falls under Intelligent Design.
And yes, if we hypothocize a designer that can be found, we can in fact prove ID. Or disprove ID, should we find evidence that life was not designed and seeded.
Remember... science deals in best theories, not absolute truths. And not-best theories are not dismissed unless disproven. Alien-design could be on the table for a long time, given that other intelligent life forms are currently in the realm of possibility for the known universe. It may not be the best, but it will probably hang around. And that is OK.
I also believed that stomach acids caused ulcers, because my teachers and the entire establishment told me so. To question that dogma meant the end of your career.
Until some dude in australia proved everyone wrong and showed that ulcers were caused by bacteria.
Oops. I guess taking comfort in the fact that "everyone" agrees with me isn't a perfect defense of what is true.
Christians and Science Theory is compatible, not the True Christians(TM) of Landover Baptist. What more is there to know: study, no false witness, love thy neighbor, do not kill, do not steal? Scientists have kept the law, inadvertently; they are at the grace of God (Good), but the grace of the wicked people are what is the stumbling block. The content in this post, below, is your justification to annul claims of people bearing witness of themselves that they are "Christian" or at the grace of God or prohibiting the truth, and therefore here is the Truth to admonish them:
2 Timothy 2:15;
[15]Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
1 Thessalonians 4:11;
[11]And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you;
Ecclesiastes 12:12;
[12]And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
Mark 12:25-34;
[28]And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all?
[29]And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:
[30]And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
[31]And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
[32]And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he:
[33]And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.
[34]And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. And no man after that durst ask him any question.
Matthew 5:18-20;
[18]For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
[19]Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
[20]For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Psalm 112:1;
[1]Praise ye the LORD. Blessed is the man that feareth the LORD, that delighteth greatly in his commandments.
Exodus 20:15-16;
[15]Thou shalt not steal.
[16]Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
without prejudice
Of course, I expect Kansas's schools to handle all challenges to the theory of evolution equally, including the belief that we were brought to this world by means of the Flying Spaghetti Monster... http://www.venganza.org/
Schatten Teufel
There is nothing "Common" about Sense
Please join the NCSE http://www.ncseweb.org/ if you actually want to make a difference in the USA's educational system. The organization's goal is to keep non-science, specifically creationism/ID out of science curriculums.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Proof, did I miss the newscast with the scientists that we're able to reproduce life from nothing, man I got to get TIVO
By definition Intellegent Design is in no way a theory. Science is held to a high standard and religion is held to no standard. I'm not knocking religion it just has no place in science. The claim that there are unexplainable parts of evolution is untrue. More gaps are being filled in every day. The individual parts of a cell have been replicated using materials and processes availible in the early days of the planet. The effort now is to bring those elements together. The difference between science and religion is the story of how the world began is roughly 3 to 4 thousand years old and was originally Jewish not Christian, Christianity is less than two thousand years old. Science is a living breathing discipline that adapts as new information is found. Darwinianism hasn't been disproved it has been expanded on. The only things Darwin seemed to be wrong about were issues like speed of change. He thought it was a slow gradual process where as the fossil record seems to indicate sudden changes with long periods of minimal change. This is not disproving Darwinism it's simply refining the model using evidence not availible to Darwin. Religion demands blind faith and offers no proof. I don't want my children learning that the world is six thousand years old in Science class, there's a place for those beliefs and it's called church. There is a massive amount of evidence for the age of the planet and evolution and absolutely none for "Intellegent Design". Creationism is based on an oral tale that was written down on scrolls some three thousand years ago and recoppied countless times since. I've heard people claim the devil put fossils in the ground to confuse us. That is very scary thinking. I thought we got over that a few hundred years ago, guess not.If we head down this road we'll have people claiming once again that the earth is the center of the Universe and we should be teaching alternatives to astronomy. Think it can't happen? I personally think Intellegent Design is just as whacky. I've heard the religious right making nice with the UFO extremist inorder to legitize the "science" of intellegent design. Now there's desperate bedfellows.
Well thankfully only in Kansas, which as far as I can tell has only contributed, Dorothy, and the back drop to "The day after". As a matter of fact we should pre-emptivly nuke the place before their deased thinking spreads.
Amen, brother!
Let's start with
Yeah, right.
Yes, Kansas is a laughing stock. I know I'm quite amused. I'm thinking that there are a lot of houses with wheels in Kansas. I suppose we'll have to start telling jokes about people from Kansas instead of Arkansas. And they call Texas "the buckle on the bible belt." Hmmm...now that I've been ordained (on line of course), I think I might have to set up a church there. I wonder if I get them to give me money and sacrifice cattle. That might go a long way toward furthering my plans for world domination.
Perhaps if we all sit back and point and giggle, they'll realize that what they're doing is incredibly stooopid.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
Will future generations look back and wonder how we let it happen? Will we have to lie about how old we are so they don't blame us for letting it happen?
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
Topeka, Kan, - Today, the Kansas Board of Education redefined Pi to equal 3. Evangelical parents groups pushed for the changes, believing that such a change would help increase statewide scores on standardized math tests. "Pi just never ends! How can we expect kids to remember something like that" said Board Chairman Steve Abrams. "This is a great day! This is the best we could do to help our students compete in the ever-important fields of, you know, math and stuff." Abrams predicted that most other states would follow Kansas' lead within a year or two. As part of the same revision, Kansas also redefined the term "math" in their curriculum to exclude "that really hard stuff like Calculus."
Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, was asked to comment on the decision, but was suffering from alternating bouts of hysterical laughing and sobbing and was unable to give us a quote before our deadline.
but does ID support the theory of the universe running Linux?
As an aside...
:-P.
Last year in high school AP physics, I had a running "fight" (good-natured) with my teacher about teaching Newtonian mechanics in the typical way, with F = ma always. Whereas what Newton really said---and what is compatible with the universe according to Einstein---is that F = dp/dt = d(mv)/dt. Since m can vary with v (according to Einstein), the latter is correct whereas F = ma is not except for v = 0.
It wasn't that I didn't recognize the utility of F = ma (i.e. for v c); I just wanted him to qualify his statements. Of course, I don't think he wanted to, given that few kids in the class knew calculus (i.e. what "dp/dt" meant) and were confused enough already.
Thought that was special and worth sharing
"May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan."
The difference is, there is a wealth of empirical evidence for evolution. The whole of the ID argument is that evolution is too complicated, so there must be a supernatural intervention. There is no experimental or even logical evidence for a designer (creator), nor any explanation for how such a design was made manifest, guided, or executed, not to mention what happened with all the colossal fuckups in the chain of living things. Just so you know: While helicobacter pylori is partially responsible for the formation of peptic ulcers, it is only one factor in a long list. Low gastric pH is a necessity for H. Pylori to grow, but ulcers may arise from such other stimulants as the use of nonsteroidal antiinflammatories, alcohol or cigarette smoking. One of the triad of therapies used in the treatment of peptic ulcer disease is proton pump inhibition, which raises gastric pH and allows for normal mucosal healing. Having said that, Dr. Marshall and Warren are more than deserving of their Nobel Prize. You, on the other hand, need a little education in logic, not to mention medicine.
The universe is made of atoms and empty space. All else is speculation. --Democritus of Abdera, 435 BC
Today I was thinking about this stuff. And I realized, the next time someone tells you that evolution is just a theory, then tell them that gravity is just a theory, then drop something and say "yep, still true."
Its too bad you can't make another universe to do the same, and show that evolution is "still true" if it was in the first place.
Einstein also made the mistake of disregarding certain critical elements of his own theories because they did not fit with his spiritual view of the world. While brilliant, the man was not immune to blindness caused by dogma.
The universe is made of atoms and empty space. All else is speculation. --Democritus of Abdera, 435 BC
"We are going to show that evolution didn't happen, that global warming isn't real, and that smoking is good for you." Intelligent Design Institute of Topeka (IDIoT)
"The Platypus is proof of irreducible complexity. Only an intelligent designer could combine all those elements to make such a venomnous creature." Society to Understand Plausible Intelligent Design (StUPID)
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
A problem in discussing "evolution" is that it is more than just one thing. The topic involves proven facts, solid theory, weak theory, and wild guesses. We've actually seen new species of fruit flies form in Hawaii when populations got separated by lava flows. So, that is fact. The bit about natural selection driving everything is a tad weaker, but still quite solid. Then there are the many less-well-known theories that we aren't so sure about.
Yes, I've decided that 2+2 really IS 5, because I'm Chinese and 4 is such an unhappy number.
In other news, Roderick McGarvey yesterday decided that objects do NOT fall at 32m per second per second, but only at 1 m/s, and so floated off his 27th floor condo patio to the enjoyment of all.
Let the individual decide! I love it!
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Alright, alright, I get it already! You're the third person to correct me, and I already acknowledged the correction the first time. Sorry!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Here is the good news...the pendulum is nearing the end or it's arc. Sad as it seems, screwed up stuff must occur before critical mass shifts direction...it's human nature. Decisions like this one by the Kansas State Ministry of Propoganda...the continued debacle in the middle east...the price of energy...the price of not finding a better source of energy or conserving...the rapid disintegration of our rights...it's all piling up. The thing is, it's not just the liberal zealots who are pissed now. Ask your republican or conservative friends how they are feeling right now. Know a soccer mom? Ask her. To the rest of the world (from an American): We are largely a reasonable body of people. Unfortunately, we have idiots at the fringes just like every civilation throughout history has. As difficult as it must be, please don't judge us by the current atmosphere and administration. We're just like you, except with more stuff. Right, and those of us who can think know how destructive that stuff is and are trying to do something about it. Thank you.
Why is is that the board of education cannot tell the difference between 'science' and 'theology' ?
BTW - Did anyone else take the poll on MSNBC ? Startling results, when I took it only 53% took my side.
theology |???äl?j?|
noun
( pl. -gies) the study of the nature of God and religious belief.
religious beliefs and theory when systematically developed : in Christian theology, God comes to be conceived as Father and Son | a willingness to tolerate new theologies. DERIVATIVES theologist |-jist| noun ORIGIN late Middle English (originally applying only to Christianity): from French théologie, from Latin theologia, from Greek, from theos 'god' + -logia (see -logy ).
science |?s??ns|
noun
the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment : the world of science and technology.
a particular area of this : veterinary science | the agricultural sciences. a systematically organized body of knowledge on a particular subject : the science of criminology. archaic knowledge of any kind. ORIGIN Middle English (denoting knowledge): from Old French, from Latin scientia, from scire 'know.'
I have to say, to an Atheist like myself, all religions pretty much sounds like a chorus of stupidity. At some point a person indocrinated many otherwise rational people with a crazy notion-- in every part of your life but ONE, you will use rational thought to critically think. Why? It's so unbelievably obvious that religion is a good way to be in tune with your fellow man, and a terrible way to describe the empirical world. Faith, in this context, is another word for "lazy."
The difference between Atheists and religious fundamentalists is that it's a rare day you find an athiest pushing their point of view on another person. I don't care what you think. I *want* you to think what you feel is right, and I want you to leave me the F alone. Fundamentalists (not speaking of level headed religious people) insist on making everyone else believe what they believe. They will lie, steal, and cheat their way at any cost under the belief they are working for a great good. This country was founded on freedom of speech, religion (or lack of), and diversity. Live and let live. Sadly, this mentality was driven into them in one of two ways: as a small child or in a time of weakness. In both cases these are times in people's lives when they are vulnerable to suggestion. Sounds abhorrent to me.
At it's core, Fundamentalists dig their heels in about Evolution because it challenges the single most important principal in their worlds-- humans are at the center. We're created in god's image, and "he" is the creator of us. (Yes not all religions, but let's go with this in the context of the Kansas situation.) So, if we're not all that special, where do fundamentalists find their purpose? Their entire worlds come crashing down. Nothing seems more "secular" to me than thinking you're the only unique speck of life in the universe. The sad twist is that people like myself, who believe in Science as a way to understand our conditions of existence, rarely think our place and the world around it is any less special. It's amazing! It's wonderful. We're wonderful. And we should damn well let our neighbor think what they want. That goes for anything shy of inflicting bodily harm on another. I don't think teaching the evolution of humans counts as bodily harm, do you? How about we keep Religion at home, where the Bible thumping Fundamentalists are supposed to be indoctrinating their children with creation myths.
So now we sit and watch Kansas, a state my Aunt and Uncle live in, become the laughing stock of the developed WORLD. I just sit back and think on all the other recent evangelical religion based events that have been so similar, and backfired so badly. Now we can add one more to that endless list. This is the new Monkey trial, folks. It will take some time, but this won't last for long. Reason will prevail.
And if you don't agree with me-- fine. I want you to think for yourself. Just keep Religion at home, please.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
1)It said that schools should present evolution as a flawed theory. This has the effect of students looking at evolution and saying "oh, it's not good enough to explain what we see...". A side effect of this is that the students now become more receptive to kooky ideas like Intelligent Design.
Hopefully another side effect will be that students begin to question both evolution and ID. I remember back in high school, my bio class taught evolution as unassailable fact. I have no problem with students learning to question everything, even if I have a slight problem with them learning to do so at the unwitting behest of ID proponents with an agenda. However, which do you think will stand up better under questioning, a theory that has withstood the harshest criticism of some of the world's best scientists, or an unscientific, unfalsifiable idea that is more criticism of another theory than independent theory in and of itself?
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Judge a work by its merits, and always balance it out. Otherwise you will just be used by whatever little causes you pick up, until you realize that pessimism is not a world-view, and imperfection is a physical law here.
/.
It is quite ridiculous to say, for example, that a Mormon is only nice because she believes some strange God tells her to be nice, and probably wouldn't be nice otherwise.
And a lot of studies contradict the LDS religion, the Muslim religion, and hey, even other scientific studies. Don't tell me you've never seen a scientific holy war?
Say what you will, but I think paranoia and pessimism form the most popular religion here at
They've been a popular subject of every comedian in the U.S. for as long as I can remember. The only other state derided more than Kansas, in the U.S., is Texas. The entire world should have an opportunity to laugh at Kansas to. I really believe it should be a universal right to laugh at Kansas. Why should we limit laughing at Kansas to the occupants of this world?
As a followup to my post, here is the webpage for the Kansas Board of Education: http://www.ksbe.state.ks.us/Welcome.html. There are links to each member's email address. Feel free to send them reasoned, realistic arguments for why the State of Kansas has just become the most ridiculous joke in education since Scopes.
The universe is made of atoms and empty space. All else is speculation. --Democritus of Abdera, 435 BC
The more they deny descending from monkeys, the more they start acting like them.
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
- loves babies and kids
- can't follow condom instructions
- too horny to think
- highly religious (no abortion or birth control)
- does not consider economic consequences
- physically attractive
- charming
- very unpredictable ovulation
- likely to produce twins
Someday, we will return to the historical norm of women almost always being pregnant.I am sure that you were kidding, but one of the Docs that I worked for was Dr Dennis Trent. He was/is a mormon bishop, and yet, in early 1980's won the "USA top lab" award for the science that we were doing. IIRC, he had no issue with evolution. He was proof positive that Mormons have no real issue with Science.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Australia has Tasmania; we may have some degree of animosity toward New Zealand, but would never dream of directly insulting the intelligence or social merit of our sheep-shagging brethren!
...and are you sure it's the natural order? It seems a little complicated to me; can't we attribute it to some act of God? Pretty plese?
Invisible to moderators.
As an atheist, I hold no quam. So many good things have come as a result of level headed religious people that I could never damn an entire religion based on it's zealots.
Zealots are generally weak minded people who need a guiding force to find purpose in life. People who use religion as a tool to enrich an otherwise rational existence are doing themselves a service. I may not agree with the conclusion but I respect it. I just reach enrichment in different ways.
So thanks for all the soup kitchens, the homeless shelters, the beautiful architecture, the scholars, the scientists, the teachers, and so forth.
But, yeah, these Fundamentalist wackos leading the charge in Kansas give your religion a shiner...
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
Yeah, I noticed only after I posted... sorry for that. = )
diegoT
apart from one made anywhere else?
The one from Kansas goes backward a lot faster than it goes forward.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
These are the same Kansans who put Robertson (R-KS) in the Senate, where he's covered up the government failures and even collusion in the Qaeda planebombings and lies sending us to invade Iraq. They're the ChrisTaliban.
--
make install -not war
The issue here is that they redefine science. Truly a sad day.
Well it ain't getting any cheerier. That's an Associated Press article, and it's running verbatim in a lot of papers and news sites. Defending evolution, AP quotes:
Is that the best they could have done? Our defending scientist is dead and the God quote is fictional, so our camp is now, apparently, led by "The Science Guy"? So, uh, did we show up the ID side or what?
I read Slashdot for the articles.
These things are there for everyone to see. Many great scientists have even EYE-WITNESSED Lourdes healings in progress. Like world renowned Dr. Alexis Carrel (Nobel Scientist) who witnessed one cure PERSONALLY. Read about it here http://www.pamphlets.org.au/cts/australia/acts1518 .html
But hey you wouldn't want to KNOW about these. It just might make your ID bashing a little bit insecure...
The new curriculum mentions that theories of life arising from similar building-block molecules through purely random processes can be challenged by recent findings in the fossil record and by molecular biology.
What theory is that? No one proposes "purely random processes" are part of the origin of life. Elements, molecules, radicals combine in certain well-defined ways. You don't just bump molecules together and they combine "purely randomly." What was that commandment about bearing false witness against your neighbor? Looks like Lying For Jesus is still very much in style.
Edith Keeler Must Die
..for the Darwin award.
Just because have not perished individually, they have proven as an organization -- beyond all doubt -- that they are unworthy of the human gene pool.
And while that does not meet the strict criteria, surely they can make an exception in this case and bend rule number one:
"Death or Sterility."
But I claim, it indeed passes the test! For their action causes death of the human capacity of thought and logic, sterility of the idea pool of the children of Kansas. Thes children are the very people that is their only hope from Kansas from becoming, well, another Kansas.
Kansas Board of Education for Darwin 2006!
"theories of life arising from similar building-block molecules through purely random processes can be challenged by recent findings in the fossil record and by molecular biology"
I'll bite. What's wrong with that statement? ID curriculum aside, I've never had anyone give me a good explanation as to why Evolution cannot be challenged. Are not good thinkers supposed to challenge?
Whereas it would seem a designer would point the photo cells towards the source of light with the wires leading back to the brain, it would be poor design to have the photo cells pointing away from the light with their nerve processes departing on the side nearest the light.
Oh dear, I must debunk the debunker, even though I generally agree with his position.
The most common CCD design is the back-illuminated CCD. In this design, like the human eye, the photocells are on the back side and the electrical traces that conduct the signal off the chip are on the side facing the light source. Only very high end research CCD cameras use front illuminated designs. Obviously a CCD is designed, and most have us have personal experience that the design works pretty well for its purpose. So I can't agree that it would be a poor design to place the sensors on the back of the detector array.
Edith Keeler Must Die
I keep telling the software developers I work with that they need to do more analysis of the problem they are supposed to be solving and actually come up with an intelligent design instead the crap they code. Maybe I should send them to Kansas.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
All 8 of the Dover school board's intelligent designers just had their asses handed to them by the voters today.
Kansas Board of Ed. Adopts Intelligent Design
... the Inquisition is already here.
The New Dark Age is almost upon us.
Hell, in the wake of the Patriot Act, what with privacy violations, National Security Letters, legalized torture of foreign nationals
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I think the two theories would do a better job working together instead of each trying to be the only true way. I think we'll be in trouble either way if one wins over the other. They can co-exist and change as needed.
I'd like to bring forward the following:
What are the odds of, you on your next birthday both winning the lottery and being struck by lightning, sequentially?
The probability of that happening is essentially zero. I could probably count on one finger the number of times that has happened in the entirey of human history.
That doesn't make it any less significant for the one guy it did happen to, however.
It's the same thing for evolution...just because the mathematical chance of it happening, was effectively zero, doesn't make it any less important that it did happen. And, keeping in mind that the measured age of the Universe was something like 134 billion years...that's 134,000,000,000 years at a minimum, there's that much more time for chance to take its course.
Besides, all it takes is the first reaction to go "right" and you've got the framework from which evolution could progress. There's a guy in California, who recently came to speak at the University of Central Florida, who has created working cells from raw materials. Now admittedly they don't *do* anything, just produce a single protein from raw materials until they explode, because he can't get the opposite reaction to work, but still -- this guy created, from raw chemicals, a working biological process. He artifically created biological life, in a test tube.
If this guy can do it in a few years of experimenting, what's to say it couldn't have happened naturally given 13.4 billion times the length of his experiment? When you start playing with numbers so big, they all start to mean absolutely nothing at all.
Or, look at the Apollo missions. The analogy I heard presented on the way they had to land was akin to hitting a target the width of a sheet of paper with a basketball on the ground from the top of the Empire State building. That's a very slim chance -- but they did it every time.
Ya know, actualy tryed to find out what the people of Kansas think about this before you make accusations about the intellegence of people who live there? This has happend before, the people elected a bunch of right wing nut jobs who added creationist ideas into the curriculum and later were removed when those idiots were not reelected and replaced with people of common sense. As an atheist student living in Kansas I for one will be hoping that ID or Creationist ideas will fail to make it into any of the science classes I am taking now or will be taking in the future.
If we can't duplicate with intent that which is theorized to occur through purely random processes, then that should tell you all you need to know right there. The next thing someone is gonna say is that their AMD64 X2 CPU came about via "natural selection". Get your head of your ass and read the first part of Psalms 14:1,
Oh, and to bring it back to your origional point about /.ers, What makes you so willing to jump down the throats of /.ers when you're making the same general broad characterizations and misinformations? Oh wait, you must be new here.
"The bass, the rock, the mic, the treble. I like my coffee black, just like my metal" - Mindless Self Indulgence
i'll be sending this to their board of ed in a few moments:
--
To: Kansas State Board of Education
I do not live in Kansas, but as a citizen of the United States, I am
embarrassed by the decision of the Board to Mandate the teaching
of "Intelligent Design" in Biology classes. Congratulations on
making the your State, and the USA by extension, the laughing
stock of the Education World.
If you truly intended to provide a "balance" between Science and
Theology/Philosophy, then perhaps it would have been better to
require the availability of an Elective course covering such material.
Of course, to be fair, you would also have to include detailed
sections covering _all_ other religeon's teachings of the Creation,
but I suppose it would be optimistic of me to think the Board would
be so broad-minded.
It is no surprise then that we will be continually falling behind other
nations in Basic Science, Medicine, and other technology disciplines
when Non-Scientific material is mandated to be taught alongside
Real Science _as_ Real Science. I will be trying my hardest to ensure
that my children learn Science the way it was intended to be taught,
without religeous overtones, even if it means teaching them myself.
Religeon has it's place, and it is not in Science Class.
Sincerely,
Christopher Gee
--
So there.
"...that's as white as it gets; all the bits are on..."
Science is like open source, its good for a lot of the time, but it's not right all the time.
I think it's really arrogant to say science knows all and if you don't believe in it and believe in some religious Bible then you must be stupid.
Science continues to change daily and what we thought was the truth isn't and that keeps changing.
Science is something everyone should take seriously, but I don't think its an end all to be all.
It's a bunch of man's own theories on things and we know how imperfect man is.
Given that a prominent (former) Kansan (who now claims residence in his wife's new "home state" of North Carolina) is a famous proponent of remedies for "E.D.", I favor the latter selection.
The way things on this earth are going... I'm heavily doubting the "Intelligent" part of this design...
I think this is a good idea, because you must realize that there are teachers that use their position in order to impose darwinian views on Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, etc. students. As long as intelligent design is taught as coming from a higher power, whether that be polytheistic or monotheistic in nature, as a valid option, then we will not be taking any religious perspective, just allowing for the possibility. Another thing that has to be avoided is creating this science vs. religion perspective in schools, because it really is a simple minded over-simplification of issues.
More jobs for those of us with brains.
unzip ; strip ; touch ; grep ; find ; finger ; mount ; fsck ; more ; yes ; fsck ; umount ; sleep
Now that Intelligent Design is a "scientific theory" Creationism is nothing more than a branch of theory under Intelligent Design, same as Flying Spaghetti Monster - just another branch under ID.
Theory means you put the concept under a microscope and examine contridictions, ambiguities, and mistakes.
I can see a teacher now justified saying in calss, "Children, creationism, a branch of ID, is nothing more than a theory. There are many holes in it. For example:
#1 Genesis 1 tells us that the first man and the first woman were made at the same time and after the animals. However, Genesis 2 states that the order of creation was as follows: man, then the animals and then woman.
#2 Genesis 1 sets forth six days of creation, but Genesis 2 speaks of the "day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens."
#3 Genesis 1 states that the fruit trees were created before man, but Genesis 2 indicates that the fruit trees were created after man."
Now children can be exposed younger to the errors in Gensis 1&2, two of the more if not the most contridictary Bible chapters.
I know how Christians argue that Genesis 1 is the creation of concept unversially and Genesis 2 is the creation of specific on earth.
But do you really expect little kids to note the difference? What ever taught first to the little kids is the concept they will accept. And you have just passed on the education into science teacher, whom let me assure you, will not all be christians. Good Job!
Intelligent Design might have won this round. But they don't know what they got themselves into - they have just made creationism a mere branch in a fallible theory as suppose to unquestionable divine guide.
You might have thought our founders seperated religion to protect science. But I see the seperation as a protection of religion from science.
You won the battle, but you might have just lost the war.
I have only one thing to say, really.
Doooooooooom!
Thank you.
Evolution is testable, falsifiable, and even demonstrable.
- Evolution makes some rather stringent predictions about the sorts of plants and animals we should expect to find, and the ones that we shouldn't. For just one example, we should expect to see animals that are systematically willing to die for a chance to mate, but not for something to eat or drink. And that is in fact what we do see. There are hundreds of such predictions, and they have all turned out to be correct,
- Darwin himself pointed out several ways in which his theory could be disproved, and many others have been discovered since. Yet for all the ways it could be falsified, it has not been.
- We can actually see evolution happening, in everything from domesticated animals to germs. Why do you think doctors worry about overuse of antibiotics?
--MarkusQI think science requires a disproveable hypothesis, not a provable hypothesis. Otherwise, you could say that intelligent design would result in life as we know it today because that is God's will. Hey! There is life as we know it today! There has to be a way to disprove a scientific theory. Like gravity. If I put two masses near each other, and they DO NOT follow my formula, then I would be wrong. Of course, gravity has been proven right repeatedly. But there is a way to disprove it. There is no way to disprove intelligent design.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
As an atheist, I hold no quam. So many good things have come as a result of level headed religious people that I could never damn an entire religion based on it's zealots.
As a cthuluist I just pray that I am last to be devoured by the eldric horror in the ocean.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Maybe in the hands of ten Kansas politicians! Who else would represent our best hope for a sound, fair and balanced definition of Science!
Every time something unbelievably stupid happens in Kansas, or Texas, or Florida, I feel a little happier that I live in California. It's kind of like watching talk shows. Watching stupid, shallow people demonstrate their worthlessness in public gives you a smug feeling of accomplishment.
Wouldn't it be better to be the first? You know, so you don't have to watch everyone else die?
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
The Apollo example is bad. When 'slim chance' met orbital mechanics, orbital mechanics won easily. And thus, Apollo landed. That was not random... that was intelligently guided. Careful... that way lies dragons.
But to your main point... dead on.
I think it was Hawking who said something like: In a universe of infinite size and infite duration, everything possible will have happened an infinite amount of times.
Life could have formed by random processes. It could also have been planted by aliens, who themselves formed from random processes, or dropped off by a passing comet, or arrived on a Chesterfield Sofa.
The probability argument looks nice... but when you stop to consider everything else it brings to the table, it may be a sleeping dragon that is best left alone, out of sight of the loonies of the left and radicals of the right. (yes, the loonies of the left are behaving themselves right now... doesn't mean we should tempt them)
Let the board members know about it:
http://www.ksde.org/commiss/bdaddr.html
It is easier to believe in an all-powerful creator instead of the mathmatical improbabilities of evolution: So why would ID not be treated as valid science, when it is easier to understand and vastly more probable?
HAHAHHahahahahHAhahahHAHAHAhahahahahahHAHAHAAh. So when I wiped the tears from my eyes I had to think of all the less intellegent students that will come out of Kansas. Then I thought of the increase of poverty, crime and abortion that is sure to follow and the tears returned.
Truth is a matter of perspective. Wear the other guy's shoes before you dismiss him.
i saw where some didnt want the measure to pass b/c it would be a separatation of church and state issue of religion. i wish the media would invite people who would keep bringing this point out. God != religion. Christianity is NOT a religion.. its not about a religion, its about a relationship with God. you are upset b/c the board is trying to define certain things? the supreme court defined a sentence from a Dansbury Baptist letter from Thomas Jefferson to mean complete separation of religion from public or a preference over it by the gov't when the letter in question was not about any such thing but about an established church taking over the religious sect.. which is exactly what they ran away from in Europe..where the Anglican church were telling people how and where to vote, instead of voting in their own free will. Its funny that after reading this letter, he got on his horse and went straight to the capitol of the United States to do none other than to take part in DAILY worship that was held there..and at the capitol building no less. doesnt side like much to me that he wanted religion away from the public life at all, unless he changed his mind within 2 hours.
There is an awful lot of Kansas bashing going on here. While it is warranted in my opinion, I think you all should be aware of what Kansas has given to science and engineering.
- Clyde Tombaugh, who grew up in Kansas, discovered Pluto. He actually got into some amusing arguments with the administration while he was in the Physics and Astronomy department at KU, but later went on to graduate from KU.
- Helium was discovered in Kansas by Hamilton P. Cady and shown to be abundant, not a rare element found only in the sun as was earlier thought.
- Two astronauts hail from Kansas. NASA maintains an office at KU and assists students researching in the aerospace field.
- Your favorite text based web browser, lynx, was developed at KU. Michael Grobe, an organizer of the project, still works at the university.
- Boeing, Bombardier/Learjet, Raytheon/Beechcraft, and Cessna all have made significant contributions to the aerospace industry through their accomplishments in Kansas. Learjet, Beechcraft, and Cessna are all originally Kansas companies.
- Every American commercial passenger aircraft had some design or manufacturing work done in Kansas.
- The world's fastest commercial airplane, the Cessna Citation X, is manufactured in Kansas.
- Garmin, a world leader in GPS technology, is based in Olathe, Kansas, a Johnson County suburb of Kansas City.
These are just a few items that I thought up off the top of my head. My background is in engineering physics, digital electronic systems, and aircraft design, so that is what I am most aware of. I live in the wonderful city of Lawrence, Kansas, and work for one of the world's foremost aircraft design companies. It makes me sad to see what is happening to this state. Before you condemn Kansas, remember what positive things it has given the world.
I don't know where to begin to poke holes in most of the arguments made here.
"Evolution is the foundation of our current understanding of Biology. Everything from DNA to resistant viruses is predicted by evolution"
Did you know that as viruses "mutate" or "evolve", they are loosing part of their DNA? They don't become resistive because they effect a positive change, or an addition, to thwart antibodies. They become unrecognisable because they have lost part of their idenity. At least that is a scientific theory. Or don't ID people know how to formulate scientific theory? So if evolution "predicted" resistive viruses, wouldn't it then be considered the Deconstruction of Species?
How many of you here understand molecular biology well enough to debate someone else on the subject? I know of plenty of Christian scientists who can. Some of the most intelligent people of our time have believed that science is not harmed if an intelligent designer created the reality we know currently. And we still can't prove or disprove some of Einstin's theories.
The fact is that we will never understand how the earth was formed, or how humans came to be here. Why? Because none of us were there. That doesn't mean however that science is hericy. If it were not for scientific discovery we couldn't carry on this debate over the internet.
Liberally minded people like to think themselves more capable of independant thought because they don't subscribe to this Christian mumbo jumbo. While you yourselves have taken up evolution as religon, and will blindly believe anything someone else tells you. I say blindly because as I have already stated unless you can adequately debate molecular biology, or some of the other sciences, you can't really form a completely independant opinion. And each person who does posess the capacity for such scientifc deduction must make up his/her own mind on the subject. So where does that leave the rest of us? Look at the possibilities, judge for yourself which one of them suits you best, and enjoy life. As you go through life you may find more evidence that supports of refutes your belief, at that point you have to make a decision to stick with your current belief system or "Convert" to another. Notice that I didn't use convert in a Christian only context. But in the meantime, don't ridicule or try to make light of someone elses belief, they may know something you don't. Maybe you could ask them to share it with you so that you can add it to your list of ideas.
Science thrives on "Prove It". Well, Intelligent design is throwing down the gauntlet. Most of the worlds population believes in a "god" or "creator". Every civilization has it's own brand of "religon". Intelligent Design espouses none of these, it simply tries to prove it, or make scientists prove otherwise.
All Intelligent Design is trying to say is that humans may not be the most intelligent beings in the universe, and that, The, most intelligent being created life here and has left us to figure out why. Meanwhile, all we can do is quabble about what the meaning of Science is.
1) I am religious and 2) I am also a scientist and see no conflict between religion and science
Hear, hear! Religious scientists need to present their beliefs and support of science in particular in public forums, because the loud Christians (and other religions are represented as well, I'm sure) are destroying the image of religion.
I had a Chinese person tell me yesterday that she believes all Christians hate science and believe science is not real. Seriously, what the fuck?
And so I don't get modded down for expressing a religious point of view on Slashdot:
Religious, anti-science fundies need to shut up!
"The World"?! Is that you France? Strange, but I don't see thousands of cars on fire in Kansas at the moment, and no one's laughing over here. Strange group of kids here at /., and even stranger group of adolescent mods who encourage them...
We have both Newtonian and Einsteinian math to solve problems in gravity, but we still wave our hands and mumble "gravitons" and "gravity waves" when we discuss the vector of this mysterious force. Obviously gravity is a tougher nut than the other physical forces that we have encountered. It didn't help that Newton actually devote a lot of time to the occult field of alchemy.
I think that education does overemphasize the "facts" of science and history at the expense of the process. I had a few classes in college that really opened my eyes to the holes in our knowledge of these fields. But we won't fix these holes by just waving our hands and mumbling "intelligent design". In fact ID is the EXACT equivalent of saying "we don't know how this works". That's not an explanation; it's a placeholder for further work. Our educational system just needs to work harder on saying "we're never really sure how everything works, but here's our best explanation so far."
I was under the impression that the process by which variation within a species turns into variation between species--the process by which new species emerge--was still debatable. Not that anyone is seriously saying "a wizard did it", but I'm unaware of speciation being observed in the lab.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Did the Board of Education have a discussion on that, too?
... then let evolution in the marketplace "thin the herd".
...
... i wonder if anyone here:
/. ?!
if i'm hiring in the sciences, i for damn sure am going to look askance at anyone "edgikated" in Kansas schools
sure! there are exceptions, but these yoo-hoos have just established market perception that Kansas-educated == idiot.
hmmm
Kansas State Board of Education Contact Information
h**p://www.ksde.org/commiss/bdaddr.html
reads
I have been reading these posts for about an hour now and am largely disppointed by the widespread misunderstanding that abound "in both camps".
I am a creationist, and, I hope, a thinking man as well. Personally, I see too much left unexplained by evolution for this to be the complete answer. Does this just mean that science just hasn't had enough time to develop answers for everything? Perhaps.
This topic seems to strike a nerve among many people, a topic that is as polarizing as any I've seen. Aside from the ever-useful and edifying ad hominem attacks towards Christians, evolutionists might be wise to investigate some of these scientifically sound claims that are being made by bona fide *smart people* of science. Personally, I'm not afraid to look evolution square in the eye, kick the tires, take it around the block once or twice, and still not buy into it because of evidence that I see that brings doubt to evolution.
Things like:
Evolution from lower life forms indicates an increase of genetic material from the lower form to a higher. Sure, dogs are bred to weed out undesirable traits and to accentuate desirable ones, yet this is still a dog. In 100,000 years of breeding, I'm not going to get a dog that has the slightest bit more genetic material than the one I started with 10,000 years ago.
Initial assumptions used in radiometric dating. Radiometric dating methods compare a radioactive element to it's 'daugher' decay product. The basis for radiometric dating methods assumes three things: a constant rate of decay, an isolated system where neither the radioactive element nor the decay product is added nor removed, and third that the initial ratio of parent to decay product is known.
For myself, I have many other pieces of evidence that provide me with a 'preponderance of the evidence' indicating the fallability of evolution. I am not writing to try to support ID, but I am writing, rather, to support the notion that thoughtful criticism of evolution is a good thing and should be supported. The same critical thought, I would hope, that creationism, pastafarianism, and others should welcome and stand on their own merit.
Unless you're afraid of what you might find, that there actually is a God of universe.
Yep, I see a whole lotta fear out there.
Scientific theories must be falsifiable. See? A theory must be able to be proven wrong. Not only does it have to predict what will happen if it is true, it must also make predictions about what will happen if it's false. There is no faith required in science.
That brings me to the major WTF about Kansas. You can teach ID if you want, but to say that you are going to redefine science to go outside the "natural" is mind-boggling. You cannot test something that is not of this world, un-natural. So there is no science going on in whatever the heck you would be doing there.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
http://www.ksde.org/feedback.html
So we agree, a rational person may entertain as science some form of ID conjecture.
Sorry there, bub. Intelligent Design is a form of Occasionalism .
Can't explain things just perfect? God power intervenes and moves the physical material. Why do we need physics, chemistry, or biology? God's pulling the strings. He does it all! After all, physics, chemistry, and biology only contain theories. Why did we need to know those unprovable formulae for gravity, optics, electricity and relativity anyway? We will NEVER be able to figure out exactly how to calculate those things!
And to say evolution has no predictive power is unreal. Know you nothing of genetics? Did this bird come with a longer beak because birds with longer beaks are more likely to survive, therefore be its parent, or because God gave the bird a larger beak because he knew the bird would need it to survive?
You name drop. But facts are not understanding.
Why? Because evolution is a philosophy that has crawled its way into science classrooms.
I saw the arguments that ID can never be proven scientifically but guess what, i believe that evolution can't be proven too. Even if we get millions of thousands evidences linking one animal to another, we can easily "speculate" that they might belong to one family but we will never get a valid conclusion.
It's like being able to get thousands of millions of portraits of people that are 90% similar in features but still we cannot make a conclusion that they belong to one family.
So all in all, this evolution thing is just a philosophy. We claim we're getting links when we get evidences but we only actually acquire several beautiful stones and speculate that those stones belong to one necklace.
If the design were so intelligent, we wouldn't have idiots like these running the world.
http://www.iscid.org/papers/Behe_ReplyToCritics_1
People, let's not just assume that evolution has "won out." ID does have merits that evolutionists need to seriously contemplate, respond to, or allow there to be dialogue and both views taught in school.
It don't get more backwards than that!
Taken from The Abstract Factory
http://abstractfactory.blogspot.com/2005/10/only-d ebate-on-intelligent-design-that.html
The only debate on Intelligent Design that is worthy of its subject
Moderator: We're here today to debate the hot new topic, evolution versus Intelligent Des---
(Scientist pulls out baseball bat.)
Moderator: Hey, what are you doing?
(Scientist breaks Intelligent Design advocate's kneecap.)
Intelligent Design advocate: YEAAARRRRGGGHHHH! YOU BROKE MY KNEECAP!
Scientist: Perhaps it only appears that I broke your kneecap. Certainly, all the evidence points to the hypothesis I broke your kneecap. For example, your kneecap is broken; it appears to be a fresh wound; and I am holding a baseball bat, which is spattered with your blood. However, a mere preponderance of evidence doesn't mean anything. Perhaps your kneecap was designed that way. Certainly, there are some features of the current situation that are inexplicable according to the "naturalistic" explanation you have just advanced, such as the exact contours of the excruciating pain that you are experiencing right now.
Intelligent Design advocate: AAAAH! THE PAIN!
Scientist: Frankly, I personally find it completely implausible that the random actions of a scientist such as myself could cause pain of this particular kind. I have no precise explanation for why I find this hypothesis implausible --- it just is. Your knee must have been designed that way!
Intelligent Design advocate: YOU BASTARD! YOU KNOW YOU DID IT!
Scientist: I surely do not. How can we know anything for certain? Frankly, I think we should expose people to all points of view. Furthermore, you should really re-examine whether your hypothesis is scientific at all: the breaking of your kneecap happened in the past, so we can't rewind and run it over again, like a laboratory experiment. Even if we could, it wouldn't prove that I broke your kneecap the previous time. Plus, let's not even get into the fact that the entire universe might have just popped into existence right before I said this sentence, with all the evidence of my alleged kneecap-breaking already pre-formed.
Intelligent Design advocate: That's a load of bullshit sophistry! Get me a doctor and a lawyer, not necessarily in that order, and we'll see how that plays in court!
Scientist (turning to audience): And so we see, ladies and gentlemen, when push comes to shove, advocates of Intelligent Design do not actually believe any of the arguments that they profess to believe. When it comes to matters that hit home, they prefer evidence, the scientific method, testable hypotheses, and naturalistic explanations. In fact, they strongly privilege naturalistic explanations over supernatural hocus-pocus or metaphysical wankery. It is only within the reality-distortion field of their ideological crusade that they give credence to the flimsy, ridiculous arguments which we so commonly see on display. I must confess, it kind of felt good, for once, to be the one spouting free-form bullshit; it's so terribly easy and relaxing, compared to marshaling rigorous arguments backed up by empirical evidence. But I fear that if I were to continue, then it would be habit-forming, and bad for my soul. Therefore, I bid you adieu.
UPDATE (22 Oct.): If you're a creationist or IDiot [0], and you're suddenly possessed by the urge to comment on this post, please don't bother. I know what you're going to say. When I was an undergrad, I read talk.origins for a while, and I have seen every single creationist argument under the sun. I spent many an hour watching people knowledgeable about evolution debating creationists: patiently debunking the same tired arguments over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, responding in good faith to arguments that
The 'intelligent design' moniker always makes me expect intelligence in the designed product. Decisions like this seem to falsify the theory - after all, neither the design nor the entity that designed something like this seem to be distinctively intelligent.
http://www.iscid.org/papers/Behe_ReplyToCritics_1
I'm personally convinced that people get so emotional because they don't know how to respond to the ID people and throw up language like this. As Behe nicely shows, the evolutionists do a very poor, if not dishonest job, in trying to address his claims.
Furthermore, I'm tired of people whining about ID not being falsifiable. It is falsifiable, come up with a model that shows how life can happen on its own. Some people are trying to do that. I hear about the research every now and then, so far all it's gotten to was sphere membranes forming on their own, that doesn't explain how DNA and reproduction came about.
Always keep research moving forward, for God sakes. I think it would be wonderful to find that life was planeted here on earth by another species. It would give all of humanity unification, purpose and direction; to "go where no man has gone before" :) And hopefully it would put a happy end to this bitter argument, both sides could be satisfied with a rational explanation for this phenomenon we call life.
ahhhh, the amish, one of the biggest pillars of todays international economy.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster is my Homeboy!
Pirate populations are rising!
May you be forever touched by His noodly appendage, Kansas bored.
Science officially redefined as Pseudoscience. +1 to L. Ron Hubbard Assimilation Skills
Uugh, someone get a bucket, I think I'm gonna TRUTH!
USNG: 14TPU4605
I agree partially with your argument. I think that the bottom line of science is not provable. For example, the simple fact of describing space-time with 4 numbers is no verifiable, it doesn't have any physical consecuencies. Or interpreting the wave function in quantum mechanics as a distribution of probabilities. Per se, that's not verifiable either, and there are even other equally valid interpretations. All of that comes to the concept of paradigm. We as scientists accept as a group "working assumptions" which seem valid and seem to be a useful. What do I mean by useful? I mean that they provide motivation for experiments and theoretical research. When those assumptions go dry, that is, when they are not useful anymore, they are challenged by other different assumptions, and if they're proved useful in the sense before, scientists finally take them. But in the end, they're just useful assumptions.
But my point is different, I think that science's purpose is to understand HOW things work so we can make verifiable predictions for the future. It doesn't matter if the assumptions are right or wrong. What science wants is to make bridges and to know if they're gonna break or not. Science is our refined technique for making tools, a technique that let us evolve into what we are now. But that's it, science doesn't care at all about why things are the way they are. Or about making people happy. Or about fulfilling the spiritual needs of every human being.
And that's what religion is about. It's not about explaining the unexplainable, but just one way of developing our spiritual half. And I think that is really important. But ID people are trying to apply religion where it doesn't apply, they are trying to explain why the world is as we see it, and the Kansas board of education is trying to call it science. The Kansas board people are plain stupid, I feel sorry for them. And the religious people behind ID are just wasting time, they fail to realize the true meaning of religion. And there were many like them in the history of humanity. I hope they will understand their role and importance for each one of us, and help us be complete human beings.
This is just my opinion, I wanted to share it with you...
I tried to figure out why this upsets me so much and I think I know why.
Believing in the natural selection mechanisms (recall that Darwin never called it "evolution") requires a certain amount of faith in the system. We can all go to museums and look at fossils. Indeed it's not that hard to go to a mountain and find fossils yourself. But most people, including me, will never be able to date geological layers based on percentages of radioactive isotopes, or other esoteric methods. For that, I trust the system. I trust that the information that comes from our universities and research labs is generally correct. Why? Because it has proven to be correct over and over. Because we wouldn't see the kind of progress that we see if the system didn't work. There is no conspiracy. There is no bias. The system seeks truth and produces truth.
When people don't believe in the system, for whatever reason, they reject the foundations of human progress. If they don't believe in natural selection, then they have no reason to believe in anything else that the system produces. When they teach others that natural selection may be wrong, they are teaching them to distrust the system. If natural selection is wrong, then anything else may be wrong too. Vaccinations, for instance, may be harmful. Chlorofluorocarbons don't really damage the ozone layer. HIV doesn't cause AIDS.
So the problem is not the waste of resources in teaching something that is wrong and useless. That is actually pretty marginal. The real damage is caused by the legitimization of the mistrust of our academic and scientific communities.
Frankly I would not be surprised if the pain and suffering caused by this mistrust exceeded that caused by fundamentalist Muslim terrorists by a large factor.
At some point in the recent past (the recent past being anywhere from now to 8 months ago) I added you to my foes list. I usually do this to people who've said something very stupid, people I have no desire to hear from again. Clearly, this was a mistake. I have corrected this error.
...... the Kansas State Board of Education is not a product of intelligent design.
What's so troll about this?
...this means they'll start teaching about the Flying Spaghetti Monster. :D
Here's the new map of the US.
I've only gotten through the first several pages, but at least those are flimsy arguments at best (the rest could be great, I don't know, I don't have the patience to continue). His basic claim in that section is the inabilitty of evolutionists to recreate something he would consider "irreducibly complex" suggests intelligent design. First of all, the very argument is biased in his favor. Scientists do not hold that there is anything irreducibly complex. Any definition that is created is Behe's. They can guess at what he would consider irreducibly complex, but as Behe shows, if they prove that scenario, he is entirely free to say "I don't consider that irreducibly complex".
From the point of view of a geneticist, if there were anything irreducibly complex, a gene would be as good as any other. Behe has no backing to his claim that the gene isn't "irreducible enough", other than the fact that his focus seems to be on larger scale cell structures and not the intricate details of the genetic code. If anything, the fact that the e.coli were able to adapt an existing gene to serve the purpose of the deleted one (increasing in efficiency 10x according to Behe's own comments) just show the process of evolution at work!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
after all, they just want to "think different". i know that's supported on /.
The truth is that we don't know the answer beyond any doubt.
As long as this is the case, both darwinism and ID is a just a theory.
Everybody has the right to explore, research or favour any of the theories - and nobody has the right to "ban" any of the competing theories.
Shouldn't this be under "politics"? I have yet to see any real scientific data, papers, or debate that shows ID is really a confirmable scientific theory.
Furthermore, I'm tired of people whining about ID not being falsifiable. It is falsifiable, come up with a model that shows how life can happen on its own.
You're wrong, ID is not falsifiable. Even if we can prove ways that evolution could have happened, such that it doesn't seem as unlikely as it does now, it would do nothing to dispel the notion of ID. Until science can prove that evolution did happen (which is likely impossible), ID cannot be dissproven, we can only prove that evolution could have occured. It's a fine distinction, but it does mean that ID is not falsifiable, that's the best thing about it for those that cling to it, they can simply say this is how it happened without having to worry about annoying little details like evidence.
Medicine is applied evolution and one of the big things that these people are pushing these days is letting workers refuse to service others if it goes against their personal beliefs (like pharmacists refusing to give out birth control/morning after pills). So I propose that we get every doctor in the country to force patients to sign something saying that they know evolution is a fact. If they refuse, then the doctor should refuse to help them since the patient obviously doesn't believe in medicine, and that goes against the doctor's "deeply held values and beliefs" to help someone who rejects the very thing the doctor is trying to do for them.
:P
Now you might be saying this is too extreme and that doctors have an obligation to help people, but let's assume that these ID people get the educational system changed over time so that science is subordinate to the correct religious beliefs. (Don't think this will stop at evolution, it will carry over to all areas of science that contradict their interpretation of the Bible.) Over time, it is likely that fewer medical advances will happen which means that more people will die sooner and live less healthy in the future when they could have been saved had medicine progressed more. That means the ID people are murdering future people. So, to lessen the power of these people who are trying to kill off people in the future, you let them die off faster today.
Or, we could just lock them all in a big room with the Al Qaeda people and a lot of guns and see whose side God is really on.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
Does the CCD have a blind spot, Spot? No? Good boy, Spot.
Dammit, people, stop confusing Republicans with Conservatives. Republicans are just fundamentalist Democrats. Like Democrats, they believe in a government-planned economy, erosion of rights, and moving power away from localities toward the federal government.
Advocacy for the teaching of creationism in public school, is a left wing position. It's the left wing -- almost the very definition of liberalism -- to ignore the status-quo, ignore the law, and do whatever feels right or seems like a good idea. It's just that the left wing is split on the topic of "whatever seems like a good idea." Some people on the left, think it's a good idea to only teach science in science class, and some people on the left think it's a good idea to include some religion too. But regardless of this split, all the people on the left are arrogant enough (or pragmatic enough -- I guess it depends on your point of view) to say that the government should have this power, and the debate is not over whether it should be wielded, but how it should be wielded.
The right wing looks at the law, sees that it is illegal for the government to force religion on people (by spending their tax money on teaching it to kids) and then they say, "Nope, we can't do it." This right wing is split too. Some of them are satisfied with what science has told us about life, and some are downright convinced that science has it wrong and there really is a mystical force manipulating everything. But regardless of this split, they are united in agreeing to uphold the law and not turn the taxes into tithes.
Religion doesn't separate the left from the right. Attitude about power does.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
You need to understand exactly what a theory is, from a philosophical perspective. If I wanted to, I could claim that nothing, not even your own knowledge of yourself, is real knowledge, because it is based on observations you make as a human, which are subject to error. You're taking a similarly radical position when you claim that ID is not falsifiable. In this case you do the best you can to come to a rational conclusion, and many of the foundational questions in science have been answered with weak arguments. You go ask a true skeptic about either of the two topics and he/she will tell you there are two many unknowns at this point, to come to a solid conclusion, whichever side you take. There are a lot of good books on the subject, The Emergence of Life on Earth: A Historical and Scientific Overview, The Spark of Life: Darwin and the Primeval Soup, I've read the latter and recommend it, the former is next on my hit list.
Let me just respond by saying that I grew up in Texas. I was a gifted student, and so supposedly I got the attention of the best teachers in primary school. However, after one semester of introductory college biology, I learned that I had missed some very important bits in high school. For one:
THE ENDOSYMBIOTIC THEORY, which is the idea that cells as we know them are actually a combination of several simpler forms of life. (Which explains, for instance, why mitochondria reproduce semi-autonomously, and why cells are confined inside a membrane, and why we have nuclei.) It wasn't a difficult theory to explain. In one 45-minute period, all the cell-part-coloring exercises that I had done over and over finally made sense. Why the hell wasn't I taught this in school, when it made everything so much easier to understand? I'm willing to bet my 4-year degree that it had to do with the evolution "controversy."
If we can teach kids using the Bohr model of atomic structure, which we know to be innacurate, surely we can use the theory of evolution. Sure, it may not be entirely right, but it sure makes learning easier and more intutive. Turning science class into a debate over the long-reaching philosophical implications of theories - a debate that relies upon very advanced scientific knowledge to really understand - takes away from the focus of teaching kids the science they need to understand the debate. I, for one, vouch that the assumption of evolution, as I experienced in college and lacked in high school, aids students in the understanding of concrete, provable science: cell structure, genetics, chemistry, anatomy, statistics. Assuming ID does not help. After my experience, I believe that is the only question worth asking.
...you could sell bridges, perpetual motion machines, and really just about anything to people who will accept "design" (it's not intelligent or a theory) - they are demonstrating theat they are not skeptical (as the nature of science is) and will be much more susceptible to any marketing scheme.
I wonder that P.T. Barnum thought of Kansas when he brought the circus there.
Let's cancel music programs, slice mathematics programs, then add pointless "how to use a condom" classes and now add some coursework in creationism.
What's really sad is that if Intelligent Design is taught as proposed then it really isn't Christian. The christians pushing this are too blinded by this idea to realize they are mandating deism. And deism really does reject a lot of what christian's believe. (like angels, modern miracles, talking to god).
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
You never left Kansas!
Many comments in this topic are making reference to what Kansas just did as an advancement of conservativism, part of the neo-con adjenda, typical of conservative Republican thinking, or various other greater and lesser permutations thereof.
For my own part, I am a Republican, and consider myself to be conservative (while at the same time ever striving to keep on top of what that moniker "conservative" truly means).
I consider myself spiritual, but not religious. I am a supporter of science, its practice, its achievements and advancement for humankind. I am for stricter interpretation of the US Constitution, separation of powers (i.e. anti-judicial activism), lighter tax burdens, smaller government, wiser spending with less pork (something the President has been terrible about), right to carry concealed weapons (for those who pass an official training course and have no criminal past), anti-DMCA, anti-special interest and corporate special interest influence, gosh I could go on, but you see the picture.
I'd be willing to guess that a majority of the minority of Slashdotters here who consider themselves conserative (based on a few past Slashdot polls with light political topics) think along similar lines.
I support Science, I disdain the "skulls full of mush" ideological virus that is Intelligent Design, and I am offended by being lumped in with the other supposed conservatives down there in Kansas and other places, who are trying to push stuff like this.
ID isn't conservative. At least not to me.
"And that's the Word"
Skulls full of mush phrase stolen from the Rush Limbaugh program; and that's the Word phrase stolen from the Colbert Report and used without permission but with great delight.
USNG: 14TPU4605
I was taught some bizarre stuff in public school in a small Canadian city.
In high school, I distinctly remember being taught about something called alpha. We were taught a process for going into alpha mode, so that we could achieve deep relaxation and become better learners. One teacher sold a tape to which we could listen.
My high school ran an annual wellness fair during school time. Students were required to go to seminars (including one on alpha waves, hosted by the teacher selling the tape). The wellness experts included iridologists and other quacky people.
My seventh grade teacher used to write the assignments for the day on the board, then lie on the floor and meditate until lunch. He'd go out for lunch, then come back, write on the board, and lie down cagain. Sometimes he would get up and explain why communists were going to kill us all. Once, he took us on a field trip to a nearby marsh and pointed out houses where he believed communists lived. He made us write year-long projects on Communism and told us that Gorbachev was plotting to kill us all, Glasnost and Perestroika being sneaky tactics. He also spent a lot of time asking us how we knew there were black people in Africa, if we hadn't been there. (When a friend dated his son years later, I found out that he was a Holocaust denier. He had also been asked to leave his previous school for making statements about the Holocaust, according to a friend whose brother had him for fourth grade at that school. He also made the 4th graders write massive projects on communism.)
My fifth grade teacher made the girls prepare tea for him at lunch. When my mother complained, he told everyone that I was not allowed to make tea because I would poison him. Complaints to the principal resulted in major difficulties. Hence, my parents were reluctant to report other teachers when they did weird things.
Two of my eighth grade teachers spent much of social studies and English class teaching us about nuclear weapons. I remember having to calculate how many cruise missiles would fit in the classroom and how many people this would kill.
At least I didn't have science in Kansas, though.
-- SYS 64738 --
It appears your grasp of Buddhism, Science, Religion, and rational thought is strong my friend.
What you have just described is indeed accurate. I it conforting to know there are still people who think for themselves. Good for you my friend!
The USA is becoming the laughing stock of the world - as it slides down the thin razor blade of life. Torture chambers - Unitelligent Design - Mens National Basketball gets knocked of by beef ranchers in Argentina - and on and on.It looks like the Empire (The Evil Empire) is over.
"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind." -- Albert Einstein
I *do* know that things in a vacuum fall done at the same rate, and flapping wings can't help you fly in vacuum, so I consider this theory disproven, so empirically I can prove that no fairies meeting this description are causing the illusion of gravity.
Come on now, haven't you heard of Intelligent Locomotion?
--
You could BugMeNot, or you could just click. You decide
Embrace your inner monkey, dammit!
I think more universities should be doing this, a boycott of this unscientific theory being taught as scientific. They should take it a step further:
1. Less likely to accept someone from Kansas. This will outrage parents who want their kid to go to college.
2. Require an extra group of core biology and scientific reasoning classes for students from Kansas. This will end up costing the parents more money, who will hopefully rethink who they vote for.
The college system of this country needs to stand up to this bullshit.
Mississippi is now 49th in Education.
I had a high school teacher tell me that the wax in a candle didn't burn. He said the entire candle evaporated, even though he couldn't explain why a candle burns much longer than a raw wick, or why my house wasn't full of re-condensed wax.
He also told me that there was no way water would expand when frozen, because all matter decreases in volume when it changes to a solid state. (Water expands because it forms a crystalline structure, but anyone who's ever tried to freeze a water bottle can tell you that it expands.) This guy was also an I.D. proponent, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with it.
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
Hahahahaha hahahahaha !! I love the US !!
You come to Slashdot to talk about independent thought?
I've raised my kids to know they are Created, not simply overevolved pond scum. The how of our getting here is not so important as the why of it. We're here to do the right thing and to help those around us.
Still, they know that only the fit survive to breed. They know that the survival of the human race is important, that one human person, whether old and used up or conceived last week, is more valuable than a hundred planets full of other species. They know that folowing ideas and principles (such as liberty and justice) can be worth all the people on a hundred planets.
They know that their children and their ideas are how they will be judged. Independent thought is a requirement, and can't be trained out of a person anyway.
So take care when spouting off about things you don't understand.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
so much so that I also submit that we fire the meat inspectors and protect against avian-flu/BSE/Ebola/Parasites by saying grace.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
First of all, evolution is falsifiable. It was one of several competing theories where evolution won out because it explained more and was not proven incorrect. Evolution has three basic statements:
Any of those statements is falsifiable. You can demonstrate that all individuals are functionally identical (variation does not exist), that they do not pass on their traits to offspring, or that premature death of an individual has no effect on traits passed to the next generation. Before we knew as much as we currently do about biology, any of those negatives might have been a sensible statement. Now that we can see mechanisms of inheritance in action, evolution is very hard to counter. Over time, it has gone from a predictive theory or guess to more of a simple description of what we see happen. Contrast Lamarkianism:
This is also a falsifiable alternative to evolution. The first statement is obviously true, but the second statement, that individuals can pass aquired traits on to their offspring, has been demonstrated as false. If a mouse gets its tail cut off, this has no effect on the length of its offsprings' tails. What is Intelligent Design's falsifiable statement?
Now, note that the statements about evolution above do not say anything about where life came from or how it happened. You can infer from watching evolution in action and looking at common gene sequences that life has a common origin, but this is not required by evolution. If we discover that space aliens created cats (I live with cats; this is believable ;-) ), it does not derail evolution, it merely asserts that cats came from different stock.
Now, as to your statement that knowledge is not real and therefore any theory is as good as another, science deals with this very nicely: Occams Razor and the Doctrine of Utility. Put together, it comes down to this: one theory is better than another if it affords the most utility (explains and predicts the most) with the fewest assumptions. Science aknowledges that assumptions come in somewhere. Now, lets look at ID. It has one non-falsifiable statement, that (all) life was created by an intelligent agent. Great. What does that explain or predict? Absolutely nothing. Does knowing that life was designed tell you more about how frogs work? No. Does it tell you whether there is potential
The principle idea that the people promoting ID are after is paradigm shift. The trouble is that they are proposing to re-institute the paradigm of 'the world was created by our all powerful Lord...' ('...' can also be rewritten as 'so don't even try to explain it'). A paradigm overthrows its predecessor by using facts, or things that have been proven to be true, which were established within the previous paradigm. None of our current theories are 100% foolproof or without another possible advancement in our understanding of them. But that's not why they are there. The object of science is to solidify our understanding of the way the world around us works. In order to do this we must have a solid, unbiased set of assumptions. These are the facets of paradigm. Once we are able to put together something that is so revolutionary and brilliant to replace our existing paradigm, then we get rid of it but not before and not without acknowledging its importance. So, if you support the idea of ID, please do some testing, show me and the rest of the world why Charles Darwin and Lamarck were wrong. If you can do so without using the words "because God..." (feel free to insert previous '...' definition at will), then not only will we listen, we might just write it into our textbooks. The biggest problem with the board's decision is that by opening students up to "new explanations" and saying "He did it" we are in fact taking away from any curiosity they might have about the topic since it is then presented as a closed book. (whether that book is the Bible or a biology textbook is up for interpretation). Of course I think most of the people promoting this theory already know that if students look at it critically, and consider Darwin's theory in observation of nature and the immense amount of time which (and there is significant proof of this) has passed, will see that there is simply no place for ID. It's taking a supercomputer and trying to replace it with an abacus... sure it works, but only on a limited basis and only if you're into thinking simple.
The flying spaghetti monster does exist. In reality it is a proven fact that after visiting an Italian restaurant and consuming spaghetti, beer, port, anisette, beer and at times tequila the legendary flying spaghetti monster will appear. However its most natural habitat seems to be (oddly enough) the same as the porcelain god's. Its other possible habitats include concrete, tarmac, carpeting and cars. In either case, the flying spaghetti monster usually will return to it's ancestral homelands within 24 hours through a "water disposal system".
~S
Now that the intelligent designer must exist (since it's tought in a science class..) all these people are going to hell for sure since vatican thought that it was a bad idea.
Here the intelligent folks ... who brought intelligent design to Kansas.
http://www.ksde.org/commiss/bdaddr.html/
I wonder if writing to them would change their minds. I wouldn't count on it, however it might be worth a try.
While this is a truly sad decision, nature essentially remains untouched by it. Whether politicians aim for higher votes, or people cannot cope with the idea of our ancestors being just apes and carbon based lifeforms as such, rather than a designed species of their own does not really matter in the big picture. Also, science or not science is a question best addressed in the academic community, which spreads all over the world, where in some sane places discussions of that kind are safely locked away in lunatic asylums. Have a little confidence guys. The upshot is just that in Kansas, there won't be any great science for the next few years.
Black holes were created when god tried to divide by zero
We live in an amazing age. We have sent monitoring equipment beyond the solar system. We can land crafts on Mars with almost boring routiness. We can clone animals. We aspire to manipulate Earth's rotation around its axis.
The accomplishments of 50 years ago would have been mind boggling just 100 years before. The accomplishments of today would have been almost beyond belief 50 years ago. The achievements of 20 years from now would seem incredible today. Sure we're still waiting for flying cars, but we've just about gone beyond the wild imaginations of Star Trek.
I don't understand why it is so improbable to believe that there might be some being out there with a 1000 year or 1 billion year head start on us. It is not beyond my imagination to think that in another couple hundred years, nobody will bother with ant farms. We'll each have our own little toy universes to manipulate and fool around with. It's the natural evolution of reality shows! You watch what happens and tilt things one way or another when you feel like it.
Using the ideas of spontaneous life, it is more probable that a Tour-de-France racing bike would form spantaneously from coincidental chemical reactions. The complexity of the bike would be many many orders of magnitude less than a living organism. If many billions of complex organisims capable of sight, motion, thought, etc. could evolved from random molecules over, say several million (trillion?) years, it is conceivable that the bicycle I found in Phoenix last year is one of a few dozen that have formed spontaneously under specific conditions over that same period of time.
Why is it that so many people think it would be stupid to believe that the bicycle "evolved", while also thinking it is religious fanaticism to believe that life itself might have been engineered in the beginning?
I don't happen to believe that my bicycle evolved. I do believe in natural selection, etc. I think life adapts and changes (read "evolves") over time. But I have no idea how to make life from non-living matter. I have never found any science that can make something inanimate be alive. For that matter, what is the biological difference in a person the moment before they die, and the moment after they die? What is "life"?
Someday some scientist may have some simple answers to all of this. They may be able to create and destroy life on a whim--demonstrated to elementary students on the same day a match is used to suck an egg through a narrow bottle neck. Perhaps the teacher will be clumsy in extinguishing the life at the end of the demonstration, and it will evolve a bit over the weekend, and begin to contemplate Intelligent Design.
you cannot separate science and religion. The only true way to solve this issue is allow parents to decide which schools their children attend.
Though I strongly disagree with the Board's decision, I wonder why it is theirs to make in the first place.
No it isn't. Evidence supporting evolution is there in the fossil record as well as in contemporary observed instances.
Now, it's always possible to interpret that same evidence in some way that doesn't contradict ID, such as the failed experiments of the conjectural designers. That is about as close as you can come to saying there's a "lack of evidence to the contrary" of ID: it doesn't contradict ID (when interpreted according to such a hypothesis), but it doesn't support it either, because support for ID requires evidence of the existence and actions of the designers, in addition to evidence that modern species did not exist from the beginning of time. This is Occam's razor: Not that multiplication of entities is a fallacy, but that the introduction of new entities calls for supporting evidence. It's a simple rule of fairness! The fossil evidence doesn't support the existence of an entity that was responsible for designing the species that populate this planet.
Science can't prove anything, it can just not disprove things.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
I'm personally convinced that people get so emotional because they don't know how to respond to the ID people and throw up language like this.
Well, here is the problem. The ID people absolutely refuse to engage in real scientific debate, which is how you actually get theories into school textbooks. Instead, they try and force their ideas in relentlessly by any means possible. Hence the reaction is more one of a parent getting angry at a child who will not play peoperly than 'not being able to respond'. ID advocates are intellectually lazy and immature; play by the rues like everyone else or don't play at all.
Most humiliating would be a developing world country, think Venezuela or Cuba, offering free biology courses with a big label "SCIENTIFIC" or "OBJECTIVE" to Kansas students...
Looks like America is going back in time while everybody else is going forward. That's what happens when you have a bunch of religious dickheads running a country.
Your estimate of the age of the universe is about an order of magnitude too high.
The last time they did this, if i remember correctly, was in the year 800. it marked the beginning of 1000 years of mental darkness on this planet, ending in the renaissance. we will have people transcribing web pages onto vellum and hiding them in monasteries. let's hope that the next renaissance comes sooner than the last one did *sigh* ...
We know that your bike did not evolve because ...
Your bike does not compete for resources against other bikes, and survive to breed only if it is a better and more capable bike than other bikes, nor does it pass on its favourable characteristics to its offspring bikes. Your bike did not get to be a good bike because its mom and dad bike were good bikes, and so your bike did not inherit good traits. Finally your bike's offspring also do not even exist, let alone inherit any good traits from your bike.
whenever science cannot yet provide an answer. Back in the 1400-1600's a scientist would be brought in front of the inquisition for suggesting that the earth was not in the centre of the universe - today we know better. Result? Religion changes course and attack another bit of science where proof is not yet indisputable.
So once again religion is out for blood on a subject that is difficult to undisputably prove - apparently there is no room for statistics in religion (except when clinging on to that 1% margin of chance that it MIGHT be something else).
When will religion give up and allow people the personal freedom to choose.
-.sig sauer-
Nov 8 (AP) - In Masschussetts today the legislature passed a law requiring that all houses of worship must now give equal coverage to "Evolution" in any sermon that contains reference to God Creating The Earth. Furthemore, all newly printed bibles will contain footnotes and 10 extra pages about Darwin's Theories in The Book of Genesis.
How does it feel, Ye Olde Bible Thumpers, to CHEW UP YOUR OWN BITTER PILL ???
You can bet that mom and pop have prayed the gospel right into Junior Sixpack from birth through puberty.
I'm of the firm belief that people simply shouldn't be allowed to do this. A child is completely dependant on its parents for just about everything. An unscrupulous person can get a child to believe just about anything. You could get a child to believe the world was doughnut shaped and made by the great pastry chef in the sky. Essentially, this is what most religions more or less actually do.
The tradgedy here, is that when a child is indoctrinated in this way, it is more or less permanent. Forever more, for the rest of their lives, that person will believe what are essentially complete fantasies. Gods creating the eartg in seven day or out of their dreams. People seeing angels or coming back from the dead. Gods and Godesses battling on earth through human proxy. It's terrible.
Not only that, but a considerable amount of doublethink will be required on the part of that person to maintain these incredible beliefs. This will in turn lead to a very cognitively dissonant person who secretly, even to themselves, realises that it's all hogwash anyway, but is so insecure about it that they torment themselves into believing it. Whenever I see a religious person, I see a tortured soul.
I view religion like I view gun control. There may be some spurious benefits, but overall, religion has far more cons than pros and we'd be better off without it. Religion promotes intolerance, bigotry, tribalism, ignorence, hatred, sexism, etc, etc, etc. Some people argue it promotes love and kindness, but from what I've seen, this appears to be a purely random event. What's worst of all, being religious means obeying the will of unelected clergy, and anethema to any democratic society.
To indoctriate your children into such a nonsensible and divisive thing as a religion, I personally view as a morally repugnant act. Let them choose when they reach majority if they wish to join you or not. But to essentially yoke their minds forever to the will of someone else is something which cannot be viewed as anything but wrong.
We're supposed to have freedom of religion. But where is a child's freedom from religion?
May the Maths Be with you!
Is there someplace where we can vote to deny the teaching of Kansas? Intelligent design of the United States could never have made such a state.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
The USA has been way too high on itself for too long. It's good to see that this country is taking steps backwards to allow other lesser developed nations, such as China and India to overtake us in the sciences and, by extension, surpass us on the economic and miliatary front. Those of you in the rest of the world, you should be thanking the Kansas School Board, not laughing at it. Shame on you! ;-)
You are right, France is not laughing, but the Rest of the World is and loudly.
This is Ridiculous. Go USA to the Dark Ages.
Alchemy and Numerology are both closer to science than ID as well.
Both give testable predictions and are falsifiable!
Wouldn't it be better to be the first? You know, so you don't have to watch everyone else die?
What? I've already paid for the tickets!
For many years, the US has held a lead in technology, science and business. A lot of that was down to a high-quality educational system, one which many of us outside the USA admired. Now you're fucking it up, but government fiat. Sad for you. Good for my children.
ian
Your beef is with Abiogenisis, not Evolution. Evolution is mearly a theory that explains how one organism changes over time into a different organism. It does not attempt to explain how life itself began. The current theories for that are frankly, shitty. I say that as an atheist & evolutionist; the Primordial Soup theory is very, very weak. That doesn't invalidate evolution in any way though; it just means we need to put a lot more thought into explaining the occurance of life.
I don't really believe the universe was some random accident yet that's what they taught in school.
There's not a scientist in the world who can verify "the big bang". It's just a theory subject to change.
Am I supposed to believe it to be true or question why bigfoot hasn't come knocking on my front door?
Why did my lineage become human and another fungi?
you know what to do.
I don't see any of these people appearing on the list you posted.
The problem I have with including "supernatural" explanations is that they tend to be assumed to be a scientific no-go area. On the other hand, any *real* scientist, when confronted with a supernatural Designer, would instantly reach for his supernatural jar of chloroform and dissecting kit.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Why are there only two theories? One that is based on real-world facts and exhaustive peer-review collected over the centuries. And one solely based on a document that hasn't been updated in 2000 years, and claims that all land-based life on Earth are descendants from a few pairs of animals brought together on a wooden ark at a time when all of the Earth was covered in floods up to the highest mountains?
Care to explain why your non-scientific version of creationism should be taught in a science class and not the Indian/pagan/Chinese/Muslim/Aboriginese claims for the origins of life and the Earth? What makes your version of creationism stand out *scientifically* from the others?
Are you sure you're not simply pushing your religious agenda?
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
McVities, the manufacturer, successfully argued at a VAT Tribunal that Jaffa Cakes were cakes (and yes, the "goes soggy" / "goes hard" distinction was a key factor in their victory) and not, as HM Customs & Excise claimed, biscuits partially covered in chocolate.
As a sop to the topic, I would think that we could all agree with the Kansas school board people that Jaffa Cakes are definitely the result of Intelligent Design.
"As part of the decision, the Board of Education also went so far as to redefine science itself, saying that it is 'no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.'"
I've never been to Kansas, but I'm afraid we must conclude that their legislators are fucking morons. No doubt possible.
Oh, and lets not forget "self-important".. what the hell makes these cretinous hicks think that they can legislate a new meaning of the word 'science'? The scientific method has been around a hell of a lot longer than the state of Kansas, and, indubitably, will be here long after..
Essentially, Kansas has just made it impossible for any student to fail their "science" exam. After all, they have expressly stated that wild speculation unsupported by evidence is now acceptable... anything you don't understand, or can't be bothered calculating, simply insert God.
When God proclaimed, "Let there be Light!",
the Big Bang brought an End to the Night.
And God knew what came next;
ev'ry Cause has Effects:
Man evolved, since pure Knowledge is Might!
WHY CREATIONISTS THINK GOD IS STUPID
God did not know that the Big Bang could produce clouds of hydrogen gas, so He had to Create them, Himself.
God did not know that Gravitation could coalesce the clouds into galaxies and stars, so He had to Create them, too.
God did not know that if some of the stars were very big, they would shine very brightly, use up their hydrogen very quickly, create heavy elements in the process, and finally explode, seeding Space with clouds of dust, so He had to Create the dust clouds, Himself.
God did not know that the clouds of dust could mix with slower-coalescing gas clouds, and ultimately Gravitation could cause stars accompanied by Earthlike planets to form, so He had to Create the Earth Himself.
God did not know that when ultraviolet sunlight, geothermal heat, lightning discharges, and radiation from rocks bombard simple chemical molecules (like water, carbon dioxide, ammonia, methane, and various salts), and did so for millions of years, then complex organic molecules could gradually form, break, interact, reform, re-interact, rebreak, and reform in multitudinous ways.
Also, God did not know that some organic molecules are tougher than others, and could tend to persist.
God did not even know that less stable molecules could randomly obtain a degree of protection if they managed to loosely link to the more stable ones.
Certainly God was ignorant of the fact that loose groupings of molecules constitute a crude degree of organization, and that an energy-rich environment could naturally promote more stable organizations over the less stable.
We hardly need mention God's further unawareness of the simple fact that the more stable an organization is, the more complex it is capable of becoming.
Yes, it is entirely due to God's lack of knowledge of the principles of feedback (wherein simple chemistry, energy, and Time could combine to drive molecular organization toward enormously complex dynamic stability) that God had to Create Life all by Himself.
This same lack of information about the evolutionary process ultimately forced God to Create sexual reproduction and multicellular life, also; He merely made it look like a billion years or two had passed, before He got around to it.
Then there was all the experimentation with life-forms that God had to conduct, occasionally rejecting up to 90% of them at once with global extinction events, before finally populating the land masses with various mammalian types.
And God is so unoriginal with His Creation that he had to maintain the same amino acids and genetic code, from viruses to bacteria, through every plant and animal.
Further proof of God's lack of originality comes from the fact that the more closely two species resemble each other, the more genes they usually have in common.
Why, God only needed to alter 2% of chimpanzee genes to "Create" Man.
As if chimps and humans couldn't possibly have merely evolved 1% in different directions from a common ancestor.
A PERFECT GOD WOULD GET CREATION RIGHT THE FIRST TIME!
ONLY AN INFERIOR ENTITY WOULD HAVE TO TWEAK AND TWIDDLE WITH CREATION, UNTIL MAN FINALLY APPEARED ON THE SCENE.
When Creationists Accept the Evolution of Galaxies, Stars, Planets, Life, and Man as a Masterpiece of Total Omniscience Regarding the Consequences of Just One Act, Only Then Will They Cease Insulting God's Know-How!
Very well said.
We need to mod Kansas Flamebait!
"Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
I'd recommend looking up the biological / game theoretic basis for values. "Religious" or "spiritual" seems to just be a complication...
Also, I recommend looking up the amount of "moral problems" in religious vs secular areas. Divorce, teenage pregnancy, STDs, violence, etc, etc, etc - they tend to follow the religious.
My personal view is leaning more and more towards "Religion and spirituality is evil. They both put Something Else as more important than the basic human values, and that lead the practitioners to be evil."
Most - though not all - atheists I know work carefully on their ethics and try hard to be good people - and try hard to understand what being a good person is. Most - though not all - religious or "spiritual" people I know "follow their feelings" and do evil.
It's sad, in a way - religion can be a great solace, and I'd be all for it if it didn't lead to evil.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
In short, it's the same wishful thinking that says humans have free will that says the universe was created as an act of will. You either accept random accident as the cause of everything (including your own actions) or you accept that somehow will can overcome that. The long version:
Embrace the Horror!
It's well worth reading.
when our Biology teacher mentioned the notion that Creationism might possibly be a required topic within Biology. I wasn't the only one, the whole class laughed, along with the teacher. Thank God that each individual is able to think for himself. My guess is that any attempt to teach ID will be met with similar guffaws, and looks of complete incredulity. H.S. kids didn't suddenly get dumber. It's actually quite funny that people can believe in such idiocy. Why is it always the goobers in the mid-west though ?
What IS an unnatural explanation to a phenomenon anyway?
If something exists, surely it is a natural part of the universe.
Children have no use for scientific theories; a boy wants to play basketball, not calculate the ball's trajectory. If he is taught an incorrect theory of trajectories, it is of no consequence to him.
Thus the only justification for teaching science is to develop the student's mind. Yet is is madness to develop a student's mind by inculcating in him an uncritical attitude towards received wisdom and a habitual trust of experts and intellectual authorities. Doubt is not the result of a bad education but of a good one.
(This is an important moral issue. Only think of eugenics.)
Left Overture, go!
Miracles out of nowhwere. Out of nowhere.
Because it's the way it is. When even the Catholic church thinks Intell. Des. is bull, you've got a pretty narrow ledge to tred.
Let us rejoice, for this is only the tip of the iceberg. Now that science has been redefined, it's time to Teach The Controversy(tm) about all kinds of subjects, after all, we now know that every viewpoint is equal, facts be damned.
History: What if I don't want to believe the holocaust really happened? In fact, while we're throwing out the baby and the bathwater, let's get rid of the whole damn tub too. Can you *REALLY* prove World War 2 happened? It's only a theory, man.
Physics: None of your liberal hippy crap heliocentricism for me, thankyou. I choose to believe that Earth is the centre of the universe and all the other bodies just have really funky orbits.
Geography: And speaking of Earth, there are those who still think it's flat. There's a controversy for you to teach.
Mathematics: The concept of 1+1=2 offends my religious views. I believe that 1+1=God. I also believe that "God" should be an acceptable answer to any and all exam questions, as ultimately He is the answer to everything.
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
First off, the slashdot summary says that the schoolboard is allowing the teaching of arguments that are critical of evolution. How in the world could that be a bad thing? Science is supposed to stand-up to scrutiny, isn't it? It's supposed to be debated on it's merits, not blindly memorized and reguritated on a test in a biology class.
The MSNBC story has got to be one of the worst news articles I've ever read. It mentions intelligent design repeatedly, as if evolution has been thrown out of schools, but it doesn't say anything about what is actually in this "standard".
This whole information-free story is just an excuse for ranting and ravings... I can hardly believe comments saying this is the Inquisition all over again, are actually being modded up.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
If the parents of these kids teach ehem to think about what is being presented in school, as they should have been doing all along. Put aside for a moment (please!) the merits of evolutionary theory, ID, and any other approaches and think about the value of a teen-ager who can think about anything other than cars, boyfriends, clothes, music, and sex.
These kids might even be able to smell the BS when the O/S "ID people" tell them Windows is better than linux....
Oh, we're supposed to waste time debating fairy stories? Why do we have to make the effort to deal with your delusions? How does it become the responsibility of the scientific community to cope with fictional and fairly random explanations of the world made up by people with no idea of what they are talking about? It's like letting your dog crap on the neighbour's lawn and then writing to him to complain about the mess his lawn's in.
The document you linked to is garbage by an idiot. The abstract establishes this, with his self-defined idea of "irreducibly complex" and systems which collapse if one component is removed. This is ancient stuff and is just a rehash of the watchmaker argument, which has long since been dealt with.
Even if it hadn't been, the idea that someone can say "I don't understand how that works, therefore God exists" and not be laughed out of the room says a lot more about the room than his childish argument.
they don't know how to respond to the ID people
Well, that's the whole point of the ID scam. By putting forward totally irrational arguments the supporters of this superstitious drivel can then point to the inability to build a rational rebuttal as "proof" that there's something to it. The correct response to ID is Pauli's famous quote "This isn't right. It's not even wrong". It is nonsense in the literal meaning of that word.
Trying to engage its "arguments" is doomed to failure. If I tell you that I believe that Winnie-the-Pooh was a real bear who could walk and talk and really did live in the Hundred-acre Wood, there is no point in entering a debate as I am clearly mad and no argument would suffice. The same holds true with ID. There is no evidence whatsoever for it; it is simply a statement of faith: I don't understand this, therefore it can not and will never be understood by anyone therefore something greater than even my titanic mind must have designed it. Like I said: garbage.
Your education was truely wasted if you've fallen for this con-trick.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Religion is about why, not how.
However it is we came to exist has absolutely no theological value to me as a Christian, only why we exist. I am free to beleive that Evolution or some other scientific process is how we ended up here today, and I can beleive that it is because God wanted it to be that way. Many reputable scientists would agree that the two ideas are not mutually exclusive of each other.
This may be the best thing to happen for everyone else. Once Kansas becomes the victim of a self-imposed economic failure, even most religious fundamentalists will realize that factual science is a necessity.
Oh, I don't know. The Amish seem to get along with life quite nicely. Perhaps Kansas will become like the Amish community, although frozen in time in the late 20th/early 21st century rather than the 17th century.
Scientists have recently designed genetically-modified species. Therefore---wait for it!---species now exist that are not the result of selective pressure.
And hence the theory of evolution is simply false.
New York Times:
November 9, 2005
School Board
Evolution Slate Outpolls Rivals
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
All eight members up for re-election to the Pennsylvania school board that had been sued for introducing the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in biology class were swept out of office yesterday by a slate of challengers who campaigned against the intelligent design policy.
Among the losing incumbents on the Dover, Pa., board were two members who testified in favor of the intelligent design policy at a recently concluded federal trial on the Dover policy: the chairwoman, Sheila Harkins, and Alan Bonsell.
Kansas students will need these in the future, I guess.
What a fuck-up.
I ignore unpleasant truths every day.
Well... some of us evolved anyway...
Is this true? Is the policy printed somewhere? Seeing it might make me feel a little better. As a physicist entering my PhD, I'm terrified of the anti-scientific trend I'm seeing in the United States.
Look behind the curtain...
:)
I guess the next step is for them to start giving "history" classes about Dorothy & Totos adventures over the rainbow. And what will be the next "Big thing" in research projects for Kansas Universities ? Finding which sort of cheese the moon is made of.
Ho ho ho. Oh ho ho ho.
At leat the rest of us now know which state will be providing all Americas future needs for parking attendants and toilet cleaners.
Personally I predict that people with this level of intelligence will become extinct within a few hundred years due to being unable to cope with the mental demands of life within a human society - thereby proving Darwins theory of evolution
Ho ho ho
Oh I really am enjoying this
ho ho ho
You learned logical argument at home, from your parents; they also presumably taught you to read and write. But there are many children whose negligent parents teach them nothing at all and instead leave everything to the public schoolteacher.
It really is shameful that the best schools are so often attended by the children who least need them, and that the worst schools are imposed upon those who would most gain from good instruction.
Technology is not the same as biology.
In other wordds, its a different modus operandii, asshole.
Shouldn't this be in the "It's funny, laugh" section?
You fools! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAH!
You are such idiots and dolts! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!
You don't need to be defeated by another nation, you will be defeated by your own stupidity and need to immanentize the eschaton! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Depends on whether or not they can keep an exclusive license for producing the educational materials, and still maintain their current prices. I'm sure the CoS would be delighted to have using their materials remain expensive, and become mandatory for every high school kid.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
When the left-coasters and big business concentrate wealth in their own "family" and geographically, draw away the local intellectuals, for generations, people in Kansas have their own determination of what is important to them.
Hint: it is not Science.
...to sue? Perhaps we should put Darl McBride to some use his experience with massive frivolous lawsuits to force Flying Spaghetti Monsterism into Kansas Schools. I don't see how it could make things worse.
the more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the pipe
In other news, Kansas state government declared that all oranges must be sold with at least one apple. The apple doesn't have to be edible, it just has to be an apple. But one speculation, it must be OUR apple.
I just hope that the rest of the US follows soon. This way the US will go into a new Dark Age, and this will bring down the American Empire.
The main problem with "intelligent design" is that it comes disguised as science while violating most requirements for a scientific field of study. So teaching ID at schools essentially means misleadings students about what science is really about. Teaching ID is another step towards a scholl that teaches belief systems, not scientifically established theories or facts. This kind of teaching will establish the impression among students that it does not really matter how you come to conclusions, that the only thing that counts is ones's believe or faith that something is true.
That is only one step from what happens in religious schools like we knew from Taleban Afghanistan: that only one faith is the real true one.
Kansas makes a democratic decision about teaching themselves back into the middle age. As somebody not living there I don't really care. Except that I am sure that this kind of ignorance and stupidity can occur everywhere on this planet, not just in Kansas.
And that thought is indeed scary.
As another poster alluded to, you are seeing the *effect* of years of drain of intellectualism and wealth from Kansas.
Add Michigan to that list: too many years of "good jobs" in the auto industry has left a whole state that now talks about supporting itself from tourism - despite the fact that it has well-known and regarded educational institutions.
That statement is simply false when it is supposed to mean "intelligent design". Intelligent design is an attempt to disguise creationism in scientific way to those who do not know what science and the scientific method really mean. ID is not science, it does not even have a proper scientifc thesis.
Yes, showing problems with evolution (or any other scientific theory) would be a good thing to teach in school. It would be something that is obligatory would the school actually teach students what science is all about.
But teaching ID will just help to actually mislead about what science is. ID is not any more science than all the other creationist babble.
I do not know whether school in Kansas actually ever did teach science, but including ID will definitely make this task impossible.
Being a neuroscientist myself, I'm a always a little ticked off that these ID advocates attribute such mysterious qualities to the concept of intelligence. At it's core, intelligence is the action of copying and blending directed by reinforcement learning and random circumstance.
If you compare this to evolution you have copying through reproduction, blending through sex and symbiosis, natural selection as a form of reinforcement learning, and of course mutation to equate to circumstance. It's probably not a perfect analogy but it's still close. In fact, one way of lookinng at the brain is that it affords us the ability to carry out the proccess of evolution during our own lifetimes, rather than having to wait over generations.
So anyway, to say that life is too complex for evolution to have produced it is in my book very much the same thing as saying life is too complex for intelligence to have produced it. The latter is falsifiable since intelligence has already created artificial forms of life, not to mention is currently toying around with creating new forms of biological life.
If you don't buy my definition of intelligence, I'd be happy to debate it here.
If you have faith in human nature and nurture human value, that's spirituality to me. It doesn't matter what you believe or disbelieve really. Why should it? In a few years, both of us will have a different set of beliefs than we have now anyways.
;-)
;-)
"Religion" and "Spirituality" can be thought of covering two different terms: If you think of a banana. It has a protective skin, which you can't eat. Now, that is the outer appearance of the banana. Without it, you might not want the banana itself..
Religion is like that outer layer. It consists of all things changing: traditions, symbols, scriptures, places, people. These are outer appearances to protect the inside, and to build a framework in which to interact with the inside.
While spirituality is the banana. It is the only thing really edible, and is what is coveted by everybody, wether they know it or not. It is love, it is all things good. It is playfulness, joy and abundant happiness, not really serious at all, not the way we can be anyways. It is all that is never changing, permanent knowledge, innate knowledge in human nature. We are always searching for it, in things, in relationships, in valuables, in status, everywhere but where it really is! If I only get this... and this...
What is really funny, is that many people have thrown away the banana and are holding on to the skin! They even argue about which skin is the best!
But this is not to say the banana-skin is worthless. You need to have a banana-skin to interact with the banana. It is just that when you put more value on the outer layers, which are always changing anyways, you tend to drop into conflict, self-defence and creating separation instead of unity. But the purpose of the skin is just to hold the banana itself!
This inner banana is the same, wether you are rich, poor, stupid, intelligent or whatever. This is why we enjoy unity so much, at the valuable opportunity that we experience it, because we are really all the same banana!
In programming terms I guess you can call Religion, God's API, although it is through humans it gets built so it doesn't always work as expected
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Ha ha haaa!! Yes, you are becoming a laughingstock!
I wonder how many million dollars are lost in potential revenues from pharmaceutical and other biology natural science enterprises who will not steer away from Kansas.
home http://www.peterbe.com/
From The Register: Dover school board booted out in elections All eight Dover, Pennsylvania school board members up for re-election have been booted out after introducing intelligent design to the science classroom. In their place are a number of those who campaigned against the policy.
Now seriously, if you let this kind of idiot fanatics have their way, you'll be in trouble. This is getting serious.
Last year, I was in the US on business for 1.5 months. Some things I like, others not really. What impressed me the most was your absolute belief in freedom of expression. Even for an European like me, that was an astonishing thing.
Unfortunately, that freedom also works for every kind of quacks and fundamentalist morons to be able to populate the media with their bullshit. But now, this is getting serious. They are making their way into your education system, and also other areas, like government.
You must be able to stop that scum on their tracks. Those that can impose their bizarre views of the Universe on the education system may cause a great damage to the fundamental values of your society, freedom being the most threatened.
Be aware, people. In Europe these people are considered laughable, but when they have the power to change your education system they're not funny anymore. Do you want to be ruled by Christian Talibans?
Is Evolution a flawed theory? if it is, there is nothing wrong in pointing that out. Ofcourse that could mean some students would look at evolution rather more critically than they might otherwise.. or perhaps even look at other "explanations", but I don't see how that can be harmful.
In all this debate about ID vs Evolution, I think the assumption is being made that evolution is flawless - and I don't think that is true.The "theories" of evolution have not been proven. It is therefore wrong to teach evolution as FACT. Students should be presented with BOTH sides of the issue so that they can make up their own minds. If evolutionary teachings are so shaky that they can't take criticism, there's something wrong! Maybe evolution is NOT the answer!.
These religious fanatics think that they need to preach to the world and the world needs to listen. Here in Dover, Pa, the board thought everyone would be behind them, that the community at large would support the introduction of ID into the science class. Well, the community at large gave every one of them the boot in yesterday's election. Not a single person on the board retained their seat. I guess all of their religious ferver blinded them to the reality of the situation that not everyone believes the same thing that they do. So Kansas, just wait. You'll get your choice to be heard. Start organizing now, make sure they hear you coming... Dave Nebinger, proud Dover voter!
I'll throw my comment in here, but it could really go anywhere in this massive log of comments.
I know this one will get flamed, so flame away.
Fact of the matter is that teaching ID is the right way to go. Intelligent Design fits the facts, evolution does not. I'm sickened by all the people up in arms and in support of that phony theory called evolution. When I went throught the school system I was constantly having to pull out my realms of scientific evidence in support of the creation account and put mal-informed teachers and instructors in there place.
Reality is that evolution is just a metaphysical research program; a theory at best and certainly beyond the realms of proof. The fossil record supports ID, or should I say creation. There are no (I said NO) intermediate links between life-forms in the fossil record, not because they haven't been found yet, but because they aren't there.
The mathematics of the universe support ID--where there are laws there must be intelligence. The organization in chemistry supports ID.
At the moment I am so appalled at the amount of Slashdot users that support evolution that I have it in me to go on a personal strike (ban) again Slashdot and never visit the site again.
Its funny, but I almost compare the issue to the Linux and Windows conflict. Linux users know that OS is superior despite the yet prevaling industry support of Windows. Linux is to ID what Windows is to evolution. Problem with my comparison is that in the grand scheme of things, our Creator doesn't care what OS we run, but he does care what we believe about him.
"This is a sad day. We're becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that," said board member Janet Waugh. Well, I'm laughing at you Janet Waugh. I thought we learned this leason a long time ago. Don't worry about what everyone else thinks, stand up for what is right. Why should we evaluate an idea based on it merits or failures in logic, lets just attack it ad hominem. I hear this so often, you are stupid if you even consider Intelligent Design. Well, guess what, I actually have read about it and looked into from the people who believe it and now I believe it too. Quit acting like you are in high school and read about stuff. I used to think that computers were dumb because everyone else thought so. Who cares what other people think.
From what I vaguely remember from my Greek history, the development of The Stoic Philosphy could arguably have been arguably the glimmer upon which the rest of the scientific method had been developed upon. It had little to no resemblence to current Scientific methods, but it may have been that one element.
Of course I have been thinking about sending a ton of Barnum and Bailey job applications to the Kansas School Board. As that will be the only job the kids will be able to get out in the real world.
I'll throw my comment in here, but it could really go anywhere in this massive log of comments.
I know this one will get flamed, so flame away.
Fact of the matter is that teaching ID is the right way to go. Intelligent Design fits the facts, evolution does not. I'm sickened by all the people up in arms and in support of that phony theory called evolution. When I went throught the school system I was constantly having to pull out my realms of scientific evidence in support of the creation account and put mal-informed teachers and instructors in there place.
Reality is that evolution is just a metaphysical research program; a theory at best and certainly beyond the realms of proof. The fossil record supports ID, or should I say creation. There are no (I said NO) intermediate links between life-forms in the fossil record, not because they haven't been found yet, but because they aren't there.
The mathematics of the universe support ID--where there are laws there must be intelligence. The organization in chemistry supports ID.
At the moment I am so appalled at the amount of Slashdot users that support evolution that I have it in me to go on a personal strike (ban) again Slashdot and never visit the site again.
Its funny, but I almost compare the issue to the Linux and Windows conflict. Linux users know that OS is superior despite the yet prevaling industry support of Windows. Linux is to ID what Windows is to evolution. Problem with my comparison is that in the grand scheme of things, our Creator doesn't care what OS we run, but he does care what we believe about him.
Characterized by an authoritative, arrogant assertion of unproved or unprovable principles.
Sounds like science to me.
You were already the laughing stock, when you started seriously considering intelligent design as science.
Who ever came up with qualifying this as science lacks intelligence in his or her own design spec.
Seriously, believe what you want, but don't try to pass it off as science.
And then back in again in the election after that.
Intelligent Design is BS, but it doesn't deny evolution, it denies evolution by natural selection. Evolution is simply the claim that species change or "evolve" over time. Darwin didn't invent the concept of evolution -- it was a commonly discussed concept for two generations before Origin of Species was published in 1859. For example, Lamarckism was a popular theory of evolution, now discredited, that held that children inherit characteristics acquired during their parents' lifetimes (thus if I work out a lot, my children will be muscular). Darwin's contribution was to popularize the mechanism of natural selection (which very roughly can be summed up as "survival of the fittest") to explain evolution. Intelligent design is a rival, non-scientific mechanism.
from leprechauns to poltergeists to the balance of bodily humours is now a legitimate part of Kansas' science curriculum.
:-)
I wonder if you could get a project investigating leprechauns and gold.. "But Miss... It's SCIENCE!" That would be cool! Hehe.
Warning, comments may not have been passed by the sanity department of my brain.
We spend billions on space exploration with the hopes of finding life that (statistically speaking) will more than likely be far more advanced than us, possibly even so advanced that we can't comprehend it - yet the idea that those forms of life may have had any hand in our genesis (small 'g', no pun intended) is heresy?
Cheers from the Right (tm)
The upside??? The more junk science your kids are taught, the easier MY kids will have getting into college :-)
Kansas - the future home of the best sanitation engineers in the world.
sad day, this should have been fought harder by the scientific community. I fear for the future. This needs to be reversed because it is wrong. We can ill afford to have a generation so egregously misled.
If you are a part of the community at large, ridicule them, don't give them jobs, don't offer them scholarships. Give their degree no wieght, shun them. Let the parents feel the sting of their decsion as their children cannot find jobs and cannot go to college. Anything else is an endorsement of their perversion of science.
This is in a sense damning the children for the sins of the father... desperate times however....
BOFH, My model for being a sysadmin :)
>The predictions were falsifiable.
I've heard that ID fails to generate falsifiable predictions, and is therefore un-scientific. But ID at least predicts "intelligent" designs. Then the question becomes, "how intelligent are the 'designs' we see in nature?" Unfortunately, there are plenty of stupid and wasteful designs out there. For example:
1) Junk DNA
2) Inability to deal with environmental pressures (i.e. vulnerability to extinction)
Any ID curriculum must point out just what sort of incompetent designer would come up with the designs we find in nature.
No one is even debating that EVOLUTION is not a fact. Its a theory or an unproven hypothesis that fits most of the facts we have concerning life. What is so threatening about Intelligent Design? Does Evolution has some kind of protection from debate? I personally don't understand it.
Do I support public schools teaching Creationism? No
Do I support public schools teaching theory as fact? NO
Teach the kids that there are lots of alternate viewpoints. Teach them the theory we believe to be true and then tell them that other people think differently and explain those ideas to them. Let them think for themselves! Its called critical thinking and it seems to be sorely lacking these days!
...in some greater being.
I mean, I'll give you this - anything is possible. I won't know til I die (even if then). However, I have a fundamental issue with anyone who has faith in a religion, based on a book, that came THOUSANDS OF YEARS after how many of other millions and millions of people had their religious beliefs trashed, in the "name of Christianity". What makes Christianity "right" and all the others wrong?
Personally, I think the Bible is a work of fiction, given how it was modified so many times since it's "inception", written by someone who was looking for "power" over people back in the day.
I will say that people having faith (in whatever) does help them get through hard times. For me, my faith is in myself, those whom I love, and those I believe in. All I can say is I'm glad that I was given the freedom to come to these conclusions myself, and not be brainwashed from birth (yes, I was even baptised - my parents were Presbyterian) with "this is how it is". If only everyone else were able to do the same for their kids. I know I'm giving my kids that freedom, and I will instill in them to let THEIR children to have that freedom.
It's too bad that those that are religious practically force THEIR beliefs on their children, making their children believe as they do.
I am a scientist from Kansas, so I figured I'd weigh in on this. The process of evolution should be taught in a science class and offered as our best scientific explanation of how we came to exist - we have mountains of evidence that supports the theory. However, intelligent design should be briefly mentioned as a viable explanation along side of evolution because it is purely undeniable that the odds of our existence coming to be merely by chance are infinitesimally small. Infinitesimally! I appreciate that fact as a scientist. Intelligent design should not be closely studied in science class because it is not scientific. But it should be mentioned in science class since it is a viable suggestion for how we came to exist, which is one of the main points that evolution tries to explain.
If the intent here is to include evolution, selection (natural and otherwise), and related topics in a biology class, there are other species to use for study better suited than Homo Sapiens. Take canines, felines, or bovines -- it's simple to point out the diversity and historical changes in these mammal families.
I'm sure that better biology lessons is not the real intent of this debate, though.
If we left out the Origin of Man from our curriculum, as we do with many other items, would our graduates be much worse equipped to contribute to society?
Our curriculum debates would be much more productive if they revolved around topics like personal credit management, the need to include sewing in these days of cheap manufactured textiles, or if we really have to fund equipment for five full football teams at a single high school.
p.s. I am a fan of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
I'm from Missouri, within spitting distance of Kansas. *spits across state line* And, though I have a religious upbringing and have no problem with the IDEA of an Intellegent Designer, I don't think it should be taught in a science class. Science is the process of finding out how the universe works, and ID doesn't belong there.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Boy I feel really sorry for any young aspiring scientists who may be living in Kansas. Don't you think they ought to be able to bring a class action suit against the individuals who voted for ID because it is endangering their future, reducing the value of their tax-paid education, and non-constitutional?
How about using lawyers for something useful. That backwards state is never going to get its school system back on track until fools realize they better not stick their noses where they are most ignorant.. because they will be bankrupted in short time. On the other hand, if Columbine was caused by shattered geeks I would not wish to bet on the life expectancy of those ID loving criminals.
I sure am glad I didn't grow up in Kansas. It is interesting to look at it from a country like Japan which has plenty of spirituality but is not dumb enough to endanger the economy by teaching ID in school. Some people are laughing their asses off of course, but what is chilling is that mostly it is a good opportunity to further dissect the (brain-damaged?) American psyche, if such a thing exists and is not in fact a mishmash conglomeration of extremists from both sides. It was also noted that in the U.S. profs must do what the school board says, but that in S. Australia over 90 schools are teaching ID even though they are not operating under any such stricture. It's like the U.S. is willingly killing its brain cells one at a time, it is so painful to read news about the U.S. anymore.
Define "The Church"? I assume you don't mean the Catholic Church because most of this bull is coming from Protestants and Baptists. These groups don't really have an over-reaching power like the Vatican. So does "The Church" mean any congregation at all? Does this term representing the 'bad aspect' of christianity only hold sway when the group of people is of a certain size?
Science owes nothing to Christianity. Christianity spent hundreds of its formitive years suppressing science. Christianity owes everything to science! Science was good enough to show up on the scene, show where religion was wrong, and let religion stick arround!
Blar.
Found this somewhere on the internet... (satire alert!)
Recent news about the avian flu virus has raised concerns from main
street to the White House. There is the possibility, even likelihood,
that the virus will mutate into a form that can more easily infect humans.
As the president pointed out, a vaccine cannot be made until this
evolution occurs.
This raises the concern that it may be impossible to create enough
vaccine fast enough to protect all our citizens. But there is hope.
Gallup polls tell us that up to 45 percent of Americans don't believe in
evolution. Since random mutation is the engine of evolution, these same
people must believe that the virus cannot mutate.
Therefore, there is no need to waste vaccine on folks who believe there
is no possible threat to themselves -- thus leaving a sufficient supply
for the rest of us. Perhaps the president, given his doubts about evolution,
may wish to demonstrate his leadership by foregoing vaccination.
This approach has added benefits. Polls also tell us that disbelief in
evolution is more pronounced among the less educated, the poor and
conservatives. If the anti-evolutionists among these groups were to opt
out of vaccination then, through immediate deaths and natural selection,
we would reduce poverty, raise educational attainment and become a more
progressive society.
Kansas...
Where people belive the world was created by a plate of spaghetti.
What a laugh.
Apparently, it's illegal to teach the theory that God ejaculated into the primordial ooze.
"it would be poor design to have the photo cells pointing away from the light with their nerve processes departing on the side nearest the light"
The 'Photo Cells' through out the retina require some of the most oxygen rich blood in the body. Inverting the cells would place their blood supply between the source of the light and the cell. Richard Dawkins the scientist which made the 'poorly designed eye' theory popular had little understanding of the Histology of the eye. Why why why use unscientific arguments to defend science ? Trash ID , but please where are you copying and pasting the old outdated, baseless arguments from ???
It appears from many of these comments; folks have not looked at the Intelligent Design argument. Many statements seem to conclude a stereotypical assumption that ID boils down to "God made it all and that's all that needs to be said". Scientists that have argued in favor of ID have successfully and logically layed out a solid presentation, minus any mention of God. Hypocritically people who naively believe Darwin and Lamark's explanation of the Origin of Man are unwilling to even consider that their (Darwin and Lamark) arguments are in fact flawed by their own science. Scientific standards are in place to help provide undisputable facts. At the end of the day, neither Darwin's Evolution theory or ID meet these standards save for one exception. ID has built into it a fact that our own scientific process cannot explain everything by it's own nature. The only rebuttal to this is, "Well, it's just a matter of time before someone discovers an explanation". This turns out to be the same "out" for opponents of ID as those who are accused of being in favor of ID having "God made it all, and that is that." ID isn't more "let's bring God back". It's a scientifically critical look at Darwin's Evolution theory. Holding it to actual scientific standards. When this happens, one quickly sees how full of holes it really is. Medical research would never make the same conclusion with the same results Darwin and his methods did. On the off chance that one would actually like to bring God into this argument (for argument's sake), that would come down to this statement: Our science cannot explain our God, but our God can explain our science.
" ... As part of the decision, the Board of Education also went so far as to redefine science itself, saying that it is 'no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena'. ... "
obligatory fiction warning
As a result of the decision, University and College admissions boards around the US announced in separate press releases that all graduates of Kansas High Schools will have to take remedial science classes to be considered eligible for admission.
I posted this on my blog the other day, but I'd like more people to see it in case they want to add it to their talking points:
More here.
What books are they going to use as reference when teaching ID? Däniken? Oh please, let it be Däniken! But I guess that wont fly, since his "teachings" are not compatible with the religious status-quo.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
They can seceed now.
This thing can be easily solved, simply by allowing schools to state that many people in our society believe that God created everything, when starting classes on evolution, and leave it alone. The school is then not endorsing religion, just making a true statement reguarding the current situation. No argument, no ACLU, just get on with it.
Ad Astra Per Asper
...why the gods hate Kansas...
6.2
"If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" --Voltaire
Hey kids, regardless of how huffy and indignant you get, evolution might still be wrong. No one has yet proved that human kind is descended from the primordial (premorgial, prime meredial, whatever) soup or even from monkeys. Now evolution has certainly been through the wringer a few more times than ID, so I definitely don't think ID deserves equal time in the classroom. But it seems a little close-minded to just dismiss the possibility of God because his existence can't be proven using our current understanding of the laws of nature. Now as for this whole notion of 'independent thought': Perhaps as late as the 1920's and 1930's, maybe even the 1950's, supporting evolution could be considered independent thought. But within today's scientific community it is the accepted dogma, and those throwing around the term 'group think' should perhaps engage in a little self-examination. Heck I'm fearful of even writing this after seeing the religious fervor with which supporters of ID are attacked.
In a few years this will not be an academic question.
What will be the value or credibility that the rest of us, who have NOT decided to retreat into the 15th century, will accord a diploma issued in Kansas? Suppose you were hiring for a biotech firm or weighing a list of applicants to a university: wouldn't you feel like you had a pile of "roughly comparable candidates" and a small number of "those loosers from Kansas" for whom some sensitively posed addtional questions were needed to evaluate whether they actually worked from the same definition of commonly understood scientific approaches as the other students? The damage will be subtle but tragically real.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
With part of its nature being that of a good fertilser containing the seeds of life along with their psychic control it was shaped into the universe as we know it.
Please don't ask what black holes are under this theory:-)
between science and magic (or religion, if you want another term for it) is that in science, its ok to say "I don't know" and still rest well at night.
;(
in religion, people seem to HAVE to have answers. the thought of some question not having (at least a trite childish answer) frightens them. this causes all kinds of Bad Behavior.
I'd much rather say "I don't know, yet" than synthesize crap that clearly only impresses children and adults with brain/reasoning disorders.
we need to start teaching the concept of "I don't know". its NOT an insult to say and think that! its honest and its refreshing to see someone state what their limits are in terms of their current understanding of things.
but please, marching morons, do NOT just make shiat up because you can find no other answer.
for a while, we had 50 states. as far as I'm concerned, there are only 49 now.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Q Under that same definition astrology is a scientific theory under your definition, correct?
A Under my definition, a scientific theory is a proposed explanation which focuses or points to physical, observable data and logical inferences. There are many things throughout the history of science which we now think to be incorrect which nonetheless would fit that -- which would fit that definition. Yes, astrology is in fact one, and so is the ether theory of the propagation of light, and many other -- many other theories as well. >
As has been pointed out repeatedly, Intelligent Design is not science. It is philosophy. Creationism (or more specifically, young-earth creationism) is also not science, but does work within the realm of science. Science works within the sphere of methodological naturalism; that is, it excludes everything outside the natural world from inquiry. This is not the same as saying that nothing exists outside the natural world, simply that the realm of scientific inquiry is limited. The moment you take the scientific data and try to understand it metaphysically, you have left science and entered philosophy. This is what Intelligent Design does. As such, one philosophy opposed to ID is metaphysical naturalism, which states that there is nothing outside the natural world. Some scientists take this position, but when they do so they are not scientists, they are philosophers. Neither position is incompatible with evolution. Young-Earth Creationism (YEC) is in the same realm as science, in that it based on evidence in the natural world. It works in the same realm as science, but it is not science. It is very selective about the evidence used and holds evidence to different testing standards depending on whether it supports the predetermined position. YEC is completely subject to scientific inquiry and criticism, and fails miserably. ID is subject to scientific inquiry only in that it draws conclusions from scientific observations, and these observations are subject to scientific inquiry. If the Kansas schoolboard wants alternate theories taught, then the teaching of the philosophy of ID would require the teaching of naturalistic philosophy. That would be balance. IAACT (Christian theologian)
He who reflects on another man`s want of breeding, shows he wants it as much himself --Julius Caesar, per Plutarch
If ID is true, then it's adherents must accept the possibility said "designer" could be an Extraterrestrial - meaning humankind is itself, a Science Experiment!
--==>>BobT>
Well, what can I say. This actually isn't a bad place to live -- wide open spaces, low cost of living, easy access to the East and West Coasts (if you live near the KC airport), and left to their own devices (i.e. when not under the influence of utterly whacked-out self-proclaimed Christians who have a remarkably selective reading of scripture), Kansans tend to be quite nice and tolerant. So you'all are welcome to move out here, though if you have kids, I can certainly imagine why you might want to stay away.
"All successful systems accumulate parasites" -- Hal Hixon
Of course we don't know everything "beyond any doubt." Those who study true science don't claim to know everything. We do, however, feel that some actual evidence would be helpful. ID is *not* a theory. It is a belief system. A theory can be experimentally proven or disproven. Unless you have some way of producing a "designer" (and I challenge you to make any argument about ID that doesn't involve some form of deity), and that "designer" is directly observable in the commission of its works of creation, then there is no actual theory. Just because something is complex doesn't mean it has to be fabricated. Just because biology is complicated doesn't mean that it cannot be a natural process. There is, in fact overwhelming evidence suggesting that evolution is a viable theory, and it continues to be validated by current research. It's not complete. It can't be. But it's a hell of a lot more so than the "black box" of ID, in which something supernatural intervenes with intent. Explore all you want. But don't call it science if it isn't. Argue all you want. But if you want to do so with people who understand their position better than you do, then at least take the time to learn a little logic.
The universe is made of atoms and empty space. All else is speculation. --Democritus of Abdera, 435 BC
Doesn't change the fact that their religious beliefs are fucking nuts.
That they are, and as with any mentally ill person, the "niceness" is often feigned and certainly not stable.
But, once you get past that, they're wonderful people. And I'm completely serious. Aside from the whacko religious rantings, society would be very much enhanced if we all acted slightly more like your average morman.
No, we wouldn't be better off. At all.
I am related to mormons (a parent, a sibling, various and sundry extended family), and I can tell you that they are "great people" only superficially, and only so long as they believe they can attract you to their way of thinking "by example."
I can tell you from personal experience that, if they don't get what they want from you, be it financial support of otherwise unsustainable lifestyles (they are told to have as many kids as possible, while still in college, then to hit up family first, friends second, and the church last when the money inevitably falls short, all the while still paying 10% of their gross income to the church), or "respect and acknowledgement" of the "superiority" of their beliefs, they turn into some of the most vindictive, nasty people you'll ever know.
To the point of taking it upon themselves to do everything in their power to break up marriages they don't approve of, as has happened to me personally, my parent leading the charge. (They failed, and now I thankfully have no contact whatsoever with them).
You really should check out exmormon.org, particularly the bullitin board where people are posting their personal experiences in recovering from the depredations of that partiuclar religious cult. As with most groups recovering from abuse, there is a lot of anger there, but read past that to what people there are going through, and what their Mormon family and friends are doing to them for their "crime" of doubting or rejecting the Mormon faith, and you begin to get an inkling of the ugliness that underlies the benign Mormon PR ficade. My experience, which my wife and I believed to be unbelievably extreme, is in fact almost laughably common among Mormons who begin to doubt the provably (and proven) false claims of their religion, and those of us non-Mormons unfortunate enough to have had close ties to the more devout (a number of people recovering from the abusiveness of Mormonism have themselves never been Mormons, but that has proven to be little protection when their spouse converts and then divorces them on instruction from their Bishop, in order to marry a "good, upstanding" Mormon, as happened in at least one case).
Back on topic, for "contributing" so much to genetics with their genealogoy fetish, the Mormon leadership sure is eager to reject genetic proof that the premise of the Book of Mormon (that native Americans are descendents of an Isrealite named Lehi) if false, and to excommunicate or disfellowship those who have done the science. Mormonism is anything but a bastion of science or intellectualism (in fact, their current leadership has stated openly that--and I'm paraphrasing--"intellectuals are an enemy of the church")
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
How can it be any easier than it is now? Politicians control the curriculum. Politicians control the textbook choices. Politicians control what teachers are and are not allowed to say (do not offend the majority orthodoxy). Politicians control what students are and are not allowed to say (remember all of the post-Columbine harassment of disillusioned kids? yesterday's story about student blogs being censored?).
Of course, I've ranted about this before.
I think our dear considerate friends in Kansas have missed a few points - so long as they are busy re-writing the curriculum, and all that:
1) Humans are important, humans live on earth => earth is more important than anything else => in particular, more important than the sun => sun revolves around the earth. Isn't that what an Intelligent Creator would do? This is the theory of Intelligent Spin.
2) The Intelligent Falling Theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_Falling
3) Intelligent Mathematics. Math is complicated. Therefore it must have been Intelligently designed. In particular, irrational numbers can't exist. An intelligent creator wouldn't invent them. After all, can you hold pi apples in your hand? No? Didn't think so. Therefore they don't exist
4) Intelligent Quantum Mechanics - all them particle things - see, they're not doing quantum mechanics. No electron shall decay to a stable orbit unless God's finger pushes it there.
5) Intelligent Chaos. Chaos is complicated. Hence it must have been Intelligently Designed.
6) Walking and chewing gum at the same time is complicated (for a proponent of ID). Clearly then, walking/chewing gum were Intelligently Designed activities.
7) Intelligent Thermodynamics - heat doesn't just "flow". It is "pushed" along by Angels of the Lord.
8) Intelligent Osmosis - particles are pushed through a cell membrane by the finger of the Lord.
*sigh* This is too depressing. I don't want to give those *string of contemptuous expletives deleted* any more new ideas.
"The predictions were falsifiable. Intelligent Design has none of that."
Look again.
There have been plenty of easily falsifiable (or confirmable) predictions by people that claimed to get their knowledge from God.
Many (probably most) of these predictions have been proven false.
Many of these predictions have been proven true.
Many of these predictions have yet to be proven one way or another.
Now, we can't just look at the total mass of religious predictions and see if there are more true predictions than false ones, since it would be silly to regard all of the sources as equal. (Giving everyone that that claims to be a "scientist" and every theory equal credibility would be equally foolish.)
However, if we consider each source of predictions separately, we may be able to determine if there is any source that is reliable. This is similar to testing different theories to see which make accurate predictions.
Eager flamers should read carefully and notice that I specifically excluded non-verifiable predictions.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Good.
Cheers, Nick
I've had enough of the mindless drivel and group think from the Slashdot crowd. It is apparent from the vast majority of posts that no effort has been made to understand this issue. Name calling and hyperbole carry little weight in intelligent discourse.
Please cancel my subscription.
Oh wait, I don't pay anything for this. Never mind.........
And as far as the teching of Evolution goes, what is wrong with presenting scientific ideas which demonstrate weaknesses in current theory?
It is falsifiable, come up with a model that shows how life can happen on its own
Evolution doesn't have anything to say about the origin of life, and has never pretended to. That is a separate question. It describes how life changes over time, not how it started.
"For practice, God invented the idiot.
Then he invented the school board."
M Twain
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
We all know the expression..."opinions are like ********, we all have one and they all stink." What we don't all have is the chutzpah to act on our opinions. How many of us are willing to go the extra mile and homeschool our kids? How many spend time every night teaching perspective and objectivity to our children by discussing current events and topics other than those presented on ESPN or ET? "Be the change you want to see in the world" -Gandhi. Kwitcherbellyachin and act! Start that generation of "educated" voters in your own home! Quit relying on others to do your job as a parent! Take responsibility for the world and quit saying how "somebody should do something." Discussion /= action. Destruction /= improvement. Take a page from Nike and "just do it." Make the change in your own life, and build something that will compete with these inane "public" policies. /rant.
(mod me, shape me, anyway you want me - long as you read me - it's alright)
He who would be a man, must be a nonconformist. -- Emerson
Let's all improve education! Sign the Intelligent Falling Petition!
If you really believe that the teaching of science in general and evolution in particular is a danger to your children, then I have a simple request: stop giving your children penicillin. For that matter, stop taking them to the doctor all together. Where do you think all these wonderful advances in healthcare have come from? Yes, the same secular humanist scientists with their heretical belief in evolution. And while your kids -- if they survive your tender loving care -- may grow up to be spiritually sound, the odds of them ever becoming a doctor under your tutelage is very, very low. And so goes America.
...the Board of Education also went so far as to redefine science itself, saying that it is 'no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.'"
PI == 3 anyone?
The bumpkins prevail.
Scientific standards are in place to help provide undisputable facts.
Not true, scientific standards defines the process through which theories can be tested, modified, and/or disproved when necessary.
And please, tell us these HOLES evolutions have. I've been hearing them a lot online and yet to seen an article on them. Full of holes... WHAT HOLES!?
Our science cannot explain our God, but our God can explain our science.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
is that it works. Let Kansas teach their kids there is no such thing as Science, that God and the toothfairy created the land 6000 years ago, and that believing in anything else will get you sent to Hell... When it comes time for my kid, and their kids, to start applying for university or professional positions, who is going to get the job, the kid who has been taught about _all_ religious beliefs, who has a solid understanding of biology & and the scientific method, who has been to other lands and participated in their cultures, or, the kid from Kansas who's answer to every question is "the Bible says..." ? I think it's great Kansas, and any other God fearing state, is trying to force their people to follow their dated religion, because it will not work, the smart people will move to other states, smart businesses wont move into their state, and we can keep as many fundy Christians as possible in one or two states, whose total electoral votes equal about that of Bakersfield or Fresno. Let them become unfit, and watch them die out.
We aren't in Oz anymore Toto...
I mean, somebody just needs to give the Jews the other half of the bible and then we'll all be on the same page...
kidding! kidding!
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
It's interesting that you went from an Atheist to a religious believer. I don't want to put words/thoughts in your mouth so please correct me if I don't understand your point.
How you came to the conclusion that the 'verse was made by a creator:
1. The Universe is so complex/beautiful something must have created it.
2. That creator is/was your god of choice.
3. That god is even more complex and beautiful than the universe it created.
4. Would not god have to have been made by an even more complex and beautiful creator. A gods god if you will.
Clearly a fallacy of circular logic.
However if your beautiful/good/awesome God didn't have to be created by something why does my beautiful/good/awesome 'verse have to be?
TODO create witty sig.
This whole "religion vs. science" debacle is a terrible shame. The dichotomy only exists for people who want it to exist -- not just the Christians engaging in wrongful coercion, but also those who hold tightly to evolution as a (fallacious) weapon against Christianity.
In truth, there is no conflict. Modern Western science owes its existence to Christian epistemology. The Platonism prevalent throughout the middle ages explicitly denied the possibility of a "scientific method." It was devout believers like Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler who shook off the pervasive Greek influence and took to heart the notion that a rational God would make a world that can be rationally understood. Today we take that notion for granted, but it's arguably the most important development in all of science.
And yet here we are, and the two are in conflict. On one side, those who want the scientific method taught, and on the other side, those who want the teaching to be diluted with philosophies not at all subject to the scientific method, whose end brings about no advancement of scientific understanding, all for their own agenda of pleasing Christians who have misunderstood the message...
I understand your point about the church vs. the faith, and it's a good one - but the church is made up of the followers and the followers define the faith. They may not be representative of the whole of the faith but for whatever reason the faith has inspired this injustice.
Religion has nothing to contribute to the science of biology. Its inclusion into a program of biology education is therefore detrimental to that program.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Okay, well that's a little sarcastic. But there IS an upside to all this, at least.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This is the most insightful comment I've read all day. If I had mod points, I'd put you over the top. We need to get the state out of the business of educating the population. Modern public schools have more in common with prisons than educational institutions. They aren't centers of education, but rather re-education camps.
---
So according to most of the above posts saying ID ought not be taught science is not the search for the truth. It is the search for natural (or material) explanations. Even if they are less likely or even perhaps demonstrably wrong.
Maybe Vince Foster was the victim of an errant lead meteorite, and the gun and suicide note had nothing to do with it as it might show design, so the CSI team using just "science" can't show any design or plan, only come up with "natural" explanations?
This is where I differ. I believe "Is X the product of design or natural causes" is both a reasonable and scientific question, and there is no reason it ought not be asked in Kansas biology classes, no more than if they were covering human physiology they should ask if the blackened lung tissue was caused by infectious disease, some internal breakdown, or smoking.
Should they also bring back eugenics, which Darwin also gave a big push? Remember the full title of his work. But if evolution is correct, then eugenics follow, though I think most people here wouldn't admit they are neo-nazis (or that the Nazis were only wrong in detail, not overview - we breed and engineer animals, and now want to clone, and if we are just beasts with large cerebrums where does ethics come in or at least how can you argue against using our knowlege of breeding).
Well, here I am at the end of all the replies to your informative post NANC, and not one reply to yours wanted to explain the errors inherit with radio C14 dating (and other methods similiar to it).
All of evolution is based upon those time relational models, linking one species to another to show that progression. Yet, those dating methods they use for those models is flawed (being really really kind with the use of that word).
Rest assured NANC, I could smell the fear in every one of those replies too. Like a good hunter, you flushed them out of their comfortable environment and confused them with your bright light...
are you going to sit here and tell me that the natural law of evolution is patently false because humans have developed the technology to interfere in the process directly, without waiting for it to occur naturally over time?
Well, yes. Countless species possess traits created by controlled breeding (eg, the agricultural revolution) or genetic manipulation in the laboratory; hence it is false to assert that the traits of all species are the result of natural selection, for many species have indeed been intelligently designed in the past ten thousand years.
So, while it is clearly possible for traits to evolve through natural selection, on our planet they have often been created by intelligent designers. And therefore an accurate account of the origin of species must give credit to both natural selection and intelligent design.
(As for your other points: (a) I am not a Christian; (b) I don't hate Catholics; (c) a scientific theory is a conjectural law of nature; (d) technological progress is not driven by natural selection; (e) Hume proved that no natural law can ever be "demonstrated as fact.")
maybe?
That really depends. Part of the problem is that the word "evolution" is used to describe several distinct ideas (Much like "intellectual property" is used to confuse copyright, patent, and other laws). If you're talking about [natural] selection, there really aren't any holes. If you're talking about the orign of man and life from non-life, there are many. Can you design a reproduceable experiment that creates life (not just amino acids) from non-life? If so, please post your findings, so that I can evaluate and reproduce your results.
---
There are lots of checks and balances in the education system. Politicians don't make all of the decisions you have listed in a vacuum. Frankly, in a lot of jurisdictions its not politicians that make those decisions at all.
Regardless of certain high-profile controversies. Most of what is taught in public education is far from controversial. How do you vote if you can't read? How do you pay taxes if you can't do math? How do you get a job and contribute to the economy if you can't do either of those things.
And student blogs are being censored at private schools as well as public ones. How does doing away with public schools help that issue?
If you're talking about the orign of man and life from non-life, there are many [holes in evolution].
The origin of life from non-life is not evolution, it is abiogenesis. Evolution != abiogenesis nor is it a sub/superset thereof. Just to head you off at the pass, evolution also has nothing to do with the big bang.
Oh, you just disproved thousands of years of religion and faith by your awesome post on Slashdot!! Suck a cock shitstain.
Slashdot sucks
'This is a sad day. We're becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that,' said board member Janet Waugh.
...hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha...
Well, I'm sorry, Janet. I know you tried your best but it's just that...
People of Kansas, remember in the next election that you're the ones to blame for putting these people in charge (either by action or inaction).
The filesystem is the package manager
>You were taught from birth that evolution is the truth, right?
No, I was taught that in science class. Back when science wasn't being ripped apart by fools, desperate to protect their sad little egos. "We're special! God created US."
Incidentally, I was taught it as a SCIENTIFIC truth, which is to say "The best we have until a better one comes along," as opposed to religious truth, "Infallible and incontrovertible for all time until a better religion comes along to replace ours." Try Zen buddhism or wicca, or both together.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
I know this, and you know this, however, the term "evolution" is frequently used (incorrectly by laypersons), as I explained in my orignal post, as an umbrella term covering several distinct ideas including abiogenesis. Although this is an incorrect usage of terminology, it is really what the whole ID vs. "evolution" debate is about. This is what I was trying to point out.
---
It's up to them to prove it, not me to disprove it. If we were born with a religion then it'd be the other way around.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
meters, feet, what's a little unit or two between friends? :-)
The revolution will NOT be televised.
All in all, I think this is a good discussion. As it disappears into the archives of Slashdot, I'd like to humbly suggest the following location as a place to discuss these and other topical ideas:
http://convince-me.blogspot.com/
Hey everyone, the bible shouldn't be taken literally!!
Having been brought up and influenced by the Christian church for the first 17 1/2 years of my life I am now a devote Atheist. 2 years at a Catholic school for my final schooling did it for me. My parents still got to church.. more for a social occassion though as they are farmers and live in a small aging community.
Just like any religious text that has been passed down through the ages the messages behind the text rather the literal meaning of the texts what should be taken from them. Only being exposed to a Christian bible initially I still got this impression (stories of a basket of fish and bread feeding 2000, a guy being swallowed by a whale, 18000 specises of animal on an Ark, a burning bush?? BS) though this was reinfored when I saw a ballet of the Ramayana. This is a Hindu religious book which mentions a story of prince getting help from a white monkey, Hanaman to get his wife back... I think, spelling excused. The Gist was, you treat people like shit, it's going to come back on you, now behave!
Now if people who took the bible literally were exposed to such a story maybe they'd take the bible a little less literally... though Christianity has had certain constructs added to it over the years to make it difficult to come to terms with this, e.g. don't worship false idols/gods, being the only religion etc.
Quoting Mr T
"I pitty the fool"+who has been taught Christianity...
though most other modern religions are just as bad...
Seeing as religion is extending into the domain of science, science should react. Scientists and other conduits of science, should be of the opinion that _one_ _old_ _story_ is just that, but while you're in here check out some of these other books, there are some great Authors out there! I love books !
Given the above debate, what do you think of this chain of reasoning?
Now before you respond that "If God set it up so perfectly that he knew it would produce life, then that same condition could have statistically happened all by itself" then I would respond that that's just speculation based on an incomplete knowledge of the universe and the origin of life. Until we see life spontaneously create itself and become more complex, any assertion as to how likely that may or may not be is entirely speculation and certainly not any more fact-based than believing in God.
"Entirely speculation" would be, for example, an ignorant shouting match in an internet forum. As soon as one starts doing research to back up one's claims, the discussion moves out of the "entirely speculation" department and becomes a bit scientific. You're ignoring the process of scientific investigation at your peril, friend. It is inherently "fact-based", in that it seeks to accumulate and refine the "facts" themselves, in pursuit of an accurate explanation for them.
How long has the universe existed? How large is it? How many atoms are in the universe? We don't even have the answers to these questions and we have never seen life spontaneously create itself to a degree necessary to believe we have any idea how statistically common it is or isn't.
The universe has been around for approximately 13.7 billion years' time, according to recent estimates based on the age of white-dwarf-class stars. That estimate has been progressively refined based on many other gathered facts and simulations, such as the layout of the galaxies, the typical formation time of stars and planets, the proportions of various elements around the universe, and yes, even that "evil" mainstay, the fossil record.
There are also similar estimates for the size of the universe. I don't have the most recent figure available, but I know the estimate is based on data from several sources, such as redshift in light from the farthest visible entities, and disturbances in the generally uniform arrangement of matter as mapped from the night sky.
How many atoms are in the universe? Come on, man. Google it. If I sound dismissive, it's because I've seen these questions pop up over and over from people who refuse to do even the most cursory investigation, even if it's just to read the current written works on the subject. But maybe these phenomena go hand in hand: For people who wish to argue on sentimental grounds, objective facts are often the enemy.
You say:
A. "we have never seen life spontaneously create itself,"
B. therefore, we do not "have any idea how statistically common it is"
Use your powers of reasoning, pal. Statement A doesn't lead to statement B. It leads to statement C:
C. therefore, it must be pretty rare, or maybe even impossible.
(For further ironic perspective, consult the Temple of the Invisible Pink Unicorn)
By contrast, we have seen small-scale evolution happen (via natural and unnatural selection) first-hand, in documented experiments that you can reproduce with potted plants in a greenhouse in your own back yard. What's more, the evidence for large-scale evolution is woven throughout the history of man (domestication and spread of crops, for example), as well as pre-human history.
As a Christian I do believe God has an active interest in us but I'm not so arrogant as to believe that that means He can't be actively interested in life elsewhere in the universe.
(Potshot: Yeah, because believing oneself to be one of the conduits of God's will is so much less arrogant than believing oneself to be the conduit of God's will.)
So if you've embraced the idea of intelligent life i
I believe and god and that he made us. I also feel that every religion is both right and wrong. So personally I believe in the scientific view of creation not the bible version. To me the bible is a collection of stories that are to be a moral compass. The main point of this is that everyone has there own believes and the beliefs of others should not be shoved down their throats. In a private school this would be fine, I went to a catholic grammar school and was taught evolutionary theory and the bible version separately. In conclusion, public schools should teach only evolutionary theory and either the parents or the church should teach bible theory. This way everyone wins and can make their own opinion based on both sides of the argument. This maintains the separation of church and state, especially in a country that has so many religions in it.
The idiots at the Board of Education in Kansas that voted for these standards were elected by even more dim-witted idiots. They are in these positions based on their popularity and not by academic qualification. To even raise this issue is reflective of the need for some serious remedial education in the scientific method on the part of those Board members who are intent on putting intelligent design in the science classroom. Science has nothing to say about the supernatural or God or an intelligent designer one way or another. I would bet that absolutely none of them have ever read Darwin's Origin of the Species or Descent of Man. And those that did probably haven't figured out that a lot has happened since the 1800's.
There is nothing precluding natural selection from being compatible with 'Intelligent Design'. All Intelligent Design requires that at the ultimate end of the chain of events is set in motion by a higher power. Random mutations become planned mutations. Random meteor strike changing environment drastically is no longer a random misfortune. Etc. At least in theory it doesn't necessarily preclude anything scientific.
Essentially, Intelligent Design is more in the realm of a philosophy/theology that can never be disproven/proven due to its very nature of being incredibly abstracted from anything remotely quantifiable. Ok, so I guess theoretically it could be proven if the higher power chose to intervene rather obviously, so it is only impossible to disprove. Regardless, it is almost certainly going to forever remain in the realm outside of the pursuit of science.
From a scientific perspective, I would say they can mention all they want about philosophy so long as the terms are abstract for different religions and do not teach people to disbelieve the actual scientific theory in favor of 'God spoke, and bang, it happened'. For a scientist to be upset about discussions on a level where scientific evidence doesn't play a role is not a defensible, objective position. Whether you believe in God, randomness, The FSM, or anything else, that is a personal belief choice and not a scientific thought.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
2. Begin describing the world mathematically
3. Scrap the superfluous element
4. Argue with those who wish to retain it on sentimental grounds
Welcome to step 4, everyone!
To (I paraphrase the original poster) "cast doubt on theories and on science in general," to question the scientific consensus, is the very essence of scientific inquiry---something worth doing that, in the words of GK Chesterton, is worth doing badly. But he would have it banned from the classroom so that it would not corrupt the transmission of today's orthodoxies.
You could probably argue that "things critical of evolution" is all intelligent design is.
While the hypothesis is "there is an intelligent designer" the associated body of "evidence" is simply "there are flaws in evolution". Teaching the bulk of a theory without stating the implicit conclusion still comes down to teaching the theory in my book.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
He's talking about the many cases where no amount of selection pressure will get from organism A to organism B (or from squat to Organism A), just as two or more small hops won't get you across a chasm.
There are two effects at work here.
Natural selection needs something distinct to select between and since mutation inevitably degrades the organism, natural selection becomes an agent of homeostasis, not change. No, don't bother raising sickle-cell anaemia, once the mossies are gone, it will be selected against as well.
The other effect is... well, Stephen Hawking stated outright that literally anything could pop out of a black hole occasionally, leading to drawings of physicists and pianos escaping the Roche Limit of a nearby singularity. Yet if a fully functional space cruiser (say for example one of David Weber's mighty machines [complete novel on line]) were to pop out of a black hole, nobody (well, except a few excitable people in places with soft walls) is going to claim that it was an accident. Aliens will have dunnit (using black holes as a transport system somehow), or a wormhole sucked it from somewhere else. Yet the simplest cell is far more complex than even the latest pod-laying Apollo-equipped Invictus superdreadnought [see At All Costs for details], and we're prepared to accept that as an accident. The odds of accidentally forming a living, replicating cell of any kind, given all of the time and resources in the universe, are essentially zero -- well beyond mathematical values routinely labelled "impossible".
Intelligent Design concerns itself not with origins per se, but with those aspects of existing life-forms which are, for Naturalism, unbridgeable gaps, far too wide for any conceivable combination of mutation and selection to have bridged, absent the gentle caress of a holy noodle or whatever.
You only have to look at the pathetic "scaffolding" theories fabricated out of whole cloth as alternatives to ID to understand that this is a genuine problem (well, set of problems) for Naturalistic Evolution.
I know that. However, it doesn't work the other way around - not all things critical of evolution are related to intelligent design.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
"graven image?" ;-)
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
It seems that with evolution facts are often shoe-horned into the theory rather than significantly adjusting the theory or admitting it's wrong. When there's no reasonable explanation for a fact, rather than admitting that evolution has some serious flaws, the fact is just left out "hanging" as a curiosity so that, sometime in the future, someone can take another crack at explaining how that fact somehow works into the theory. Or sometimes grandiose conclusions are made on the basis of a single friggin' tooth.
If you set aside the "evidence" in support of evolution which is not even agreed to by the scientists that investigate it, the "overwhelming" body of evidence in support of evolution is much reduced.
The universe has been around for approximately 13.7 billion years' time, according to recent estimates based on the age of white-dwarf-class stars. That estimate has been progressively refined based on many other gathered facts and simulations, such as the layout of the galaxies, the typical formation time of stars and planets, the proportions of various elements around the universe, and yes, even that "evil" mainstay, the fossil record.
Yep. The fact is we don't know for sure. The numbers keep changing and, we hope, become more accurate. But as you said, "recent estimates" are 13.7 billion years. It'll be interesting to see what the estimates are 20 years from now. But even though we are not entirely sure of these facts and even though we've never seen life spontaneously generate so we have no way of knowing how statistically common it is, Godless evolutionists try to make a statistical argument that it must happen sooner or later.
Do you see the inherent silliness of making a statistical argument when we don't even have the statistics on which to make the argument? I know 90% of all statistics are made up, but this is ridiculous! :)
A. "we have never seen life spontaneously create itself,"
B. therefore, we do not "have any idea how statistically common it is"
Use your powers of reasoning, pal. Statement A doesn't lead to statement B. It leads to statement C: C. therefore, it must be pretty rare, or maybe even impossible.
Yes, of course 'C' is correct. But even with 'C', we don't have enough information to determine whether or not it is statistically realistic for life to have spontaneously generated given the size and age of the universe. Yes, we know it's pretty damn rare and maybe even impossible. But how rare and whether or not it is impossible goes to the very heart of why ID is such a popular theory. Obviously if we admit it's "impossible", we are left with no other option but to consider some ID-like or Creationism-like explanation.
As soon as we are able to witness organic matter spontaneously form a functioning cell, then we can scientifically analyze the conditions that let that happen and start making some educated guesses as to how statistically probable it is and also analyze whether those conditions were feasible when life appeared on the planet. Until then, it's faith in science, nothing more. And science isn't supposed to be about faith.
By contrast, we have seen small-scale evolution happen (via natural and unnatural selection [ncseweb.org]) first-hand, in documented [earthscape.org] experiments [talkorigins.org] that you can reproduce with potted plants in a greenhouse in your own back yard. What's more, the evidence for large-scale evolution is woven throughout the history of man (domestication and spread of crops, for example), as well as pre-human history.
Microevolution is not the same as macroevolution. Minor adaptations which come from losing genetic code is not the same as theoretica
Which demonstrates a lack of understanding of the subject
I understand Voodoo Science quite well. Voodoo Science has at least on attribute that you have exhibited already: failure to respond properly to your critics. I specifically asked for an experiment that would test for irreducible complexity or define what constitutes elements of intelligent design.
I have yet to see an experimental design in your post that will either test for irreducible complexity much less a definition of what constitutes intelligent design elements.
Wiggle and wave all you like about stats and you will have still failed the challenge. Produce an experiment that tests for irreducible complexity and/or a definition what constitutes intelligent design elements, or admit that it would be impossible to produce one.
It has been nearly 10 years and no one has done it yet. Criticing me for your lack of action in the highest spirit of alien abduction, Yeti and Bigfoot sightings, and the Amityville Horror fiasco.
I deliberately repeated my challenge several times just so that there is no mistake in what I am asking for.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Point taken, but in this case, it's pretty likely that's the intent. I suppose it's jsut a matter of semantics.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Sim Antics?
I am scientifically inaccurate.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/10/religion.robertso n.reut/index.html
o n.reut/index.html
Robertson warns Pennsylvania voters of God's wrath.
Eight 'intelligent design' school board members lost election
The eight members of the school board are depicted on a billboard on Election Day in Dover, Pennsylvania.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Conservative Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson told citizens of a Pennsylvania town that they had rejected God by voting their school board out of office for supporting "intelligent design" and warned them Thursday not to be surprised if disaster struck.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/10/religion.roberts
While technology was indeed made possible by the advent of hereditary traits of intelligence, its ongoing development is not driven by corresponding changes in those traits. We now make iPods not because an iPod-maker trait has recently arisen in certain members of the species but rather in consequence of various social developments: the training of ever more engineers, an economic system that encourages useful new technologies, an expanding body of technical prowess and scientific knowledge, a cultural fascination with music, and so on.
But I do not think my argument is based on that logic. If you asked a layman to explain what is meant by natural selection, he would begin with "over millions of years things gradually changed according to certain laws" and not "Dr Frankenstein decided today that his monster would have seven legs and three eyes."
So, while you are free to choose for yourself what you mean by natural selection, you are also obliged to point out that it differs from that naive interpretation, and that the origin of species can in principle be explained by and in fact often is explained by the whims of powerful intelligent designers.
Kansas University isn't 100% alone on this. I'm currently a student in Political Science at Kansas State University (Manhattan, KS). I brought up the school board's decision in a recitation class and found a surprising number of people, Christian and not, who were opposed the changes. The line I used to tweak the discussion was the new first line of the Kansas standards' evolution benchmark: "Biological evolution postulates an unguided natural process that has no discernable direction or goal" (74). Even in a liberal artsy classroom like that one, most people had heard of natural selection or survival of the fittest before and could understand the problem with that line being the first criteria in the evolution standards.
That said, a third of the people in there seemed to support the change.
Yes, I'm looking to attend grad school ELSEWHERE, thank you very much.
Another Aussie comment - if eyes are so perfect, why blindness and short/long sightedness, glaucoma, etc.? Also, if we are so perfect, why heart disease, cancer and so on? Why death? Would not a descent designer have eliminated the imperfections?
The checks and balances are mostly tacet stalemates between politicians (among whom I include local school board members and PTA officials). It still forces the curriculum to be reduced to a lowest-common-denominator majority orthodoxy, which (from the point of view of developing independent-thinking citizens) sucks.
The math and english I need in order to vote and do my taxes was covered by the time I finished the 5th grade. The selection and presentation of most of the "reading" I was made to do after that was severely colored by the teachers' (and their unions') social/political/epistemological agendas (e.g., reading "Grendel" in the 4th grade without having ever been exposed to "Beowulf", reading feminist propoganda without a counterpoint in a 10th grade macro-economics class, etc.)
The difference between a public and a private school censoring student blogs is one of free association - there are many things that private organizations are allowed to do (including ideological discrimination) which are not (or at least, should not be) permitted to the state.
To be clear - I am not questioning the need for widespread education (which is the actual need you raise withg respect to taxes, the job market, voting, etc). I am simply questioning whether the existing system of public education is appropriate, particularly given:
My cousin, who believes that the earth is flat and that everybody would know that, except for the durn go'mint's lying, wants to move his kids to kansas where some good christians know how to raise kids right.
>>You appear to be forgetting duplications, rearrangements and deletions, but I'll leave that for a moment and merely point out that what you describe is not 'A collection of random processes', is it? It's 'A FILTERED collection of random processes'. There's a difference.
:p
Don't associate me with people that claim evolution is fully random. I have repeatedly said it is a random process with selection pressures. There's nothing controversial about that. It remains that there is a baseline rate of mutation in nature, which can be quantified.
>> I'm not. You are claiming that you can see the hallmarks of design; stop trying to shift the burden of proof. I'm not sure what your vegas comment is meant to mean, apart from an effort to distract.
I AM NOT CLAIMING ANYTHING, NOR CLAIMING ID IS TRUE. For fsck's sake. I'm stating how it can be a scientific theory instead of mystical hand waving or appeals to ignorance. And scientific in that it can be falsified, not that it is true. And for being perhaps the first person to invent this I get modded down as overrated/troll. Stop being so dogmatic, people, and follow along.
>>Then what is it? Seriously, what, exactly IS your argument?
Here you go.
Join me in a thought experiment. There is somewhere between 2 million and 100 million species on the planet, most of which are insects, with perhaps 300,000 interesting species that we care about and wish to observe. Let's assume the British model of security has been adopted and we have cameras blanketing the world and crack teams of scientists standing by to repeatedly sample the DNA of every creature and embryo on the planet.
Then all that needs to be done is:
1) Quantify random mutations rates BEFORE SELECTION PRESSURES
2) Observe the rates of random mutations in each population BEFORE SELECTION PRESSURES
2) See if a bias is influencing the random mutations BEFORE SELECTION PRESSURES
Then when new species emerge in nature (an event that occurs in our population of interesting species with an expected value of between one every 3 years to 30 per year, based on what speciation rates you assume) one can say with varying degrees of confidence if it was the result of a designer or not. It's simply a stats problem.
Boiled down, the entire debate between evolution and ID is exactly this: Evolution believes there is no bias in the "random number generator", ID believes there is bias in the randomness. When stated this way, ID can be confirmed or denied simply by testing for bias.
>>Actually, it's 'Why does everything look exactly as if it evolved if it was designed? Why the special pleading?'
Which demonstrates your fundamental lack of knowledge on the subject. You are still confusing ID with Creationism. Everything, according to ID, looks like it was evolved because ID says that God/Aliens/Whoever was influencing the evolution process. Not that God plopped down raccoons and battleships fully formed from outer space.
Given the above experiment, it will be able to state whether ID is true or false, which means that the above ID theory is 'scientific'. Note the math working with an utter lack of knowledge of anything having to do with the nature of the creator. Math is wonderful in that it can demonstrate bias in a pair of dice or a slot machine without needing any knowledge of the nature of the person who rigged the game.
I wouldn't say that the 10 commandments are really that universal. Certainly some, like the prohibition of murder are fairly universal, but some are flatly absurd to those who reject Christianity (or Judaism). For examples, see Religious Tolerance for details.
If my enemy's enemy is my friend, what happens if my enemy is his own worst enemy?
I understand your point better, I still disagree with your contention that ID can be studied scientifically (due to the difficulty in defining irreducible complexity or intelligent design elements), but I respect your position better due to your civility. I don't expect we can resolve this disagreement over /., but perhaps someday we can discuss it over a beverage of your choice.
Thanks for your recent reply.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Ugh, I officially give up slashdot trolling, it's just not as good as it used to be.
Slashdot sucks
Right?
Because it's an awful big universe to look through, especially when ID proponents can just say "But the Designer lives outside our universe!"
And who defines ID? Is it just something we can't yet explain?
So, if you are being serious, please describe the test that could be made to show that there is no intelligent designer in the universe, or even in some portion of the universe.
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
Is "logos" used anywhere else in reference to Jesus Christ?
By the time of the writing of John's gospel, the word logos had a deep meaning in Greek philosophy as an ordering force in the universe. The word is accurately translated as reason or logic, and when referring to words emphasises the ideas those words represent, rather than the spoken words themselves. The spoken word had another name in Greek, rhema.
In Judaism at the time, God's word was seen as a means of God's action in the universe. In the Old Testament, God usually accomplishes things by speaking, and there are a number of passages that refer to God's Word as an entity doing stuff in its own right.
The author of the passage probably had both of these streams of tradition in mind when writing the passage. I do not recall another passage in the Bible where Jesus is referred to by that word, although it has been very popular in theology since then.
Would there have been a clearer way to easily distinguish between the meanings "the Word was God" and "the Word was a god"? Is the article normally used when referring to a member of a group?
Greek had no indefinite article (a or an), but instead used other grammar to represent the same idea. I can't remember what the grammar was, but I do remeber it as one of the trickier parts of Greek.
Is "theos" ever used without an article to refer to the general class of gods, rather than one specific god?
Yes. However, in this particular instance, while I can't remember the grammar that supports the "Word was God" translation, I would want very strong evidence that the author had "Word was a god" in mind before accepting it. John was a monotheist. John had not ever heard of a trinity, as the concept was only invented to explain this and other biblical passages in the third century, well after he was dead. For him, I am sure, you either had one God like the rest of Judaism, or many, like the Greeks. He was a Jew, not a Greek, and like the rest of the Christian church, believed in one God. I find it very unlikely he would have said "the Word was a god, of the same class as God, but a different one."
IMHO, all that is secondary to having an educated citizenry. 95% of stuff taught in school is non-controversial. Just about any math, all writing skills, almost all science, most of the history, and most of our literature are non-controversial. The fact that there is a small segment of what we teach that creates some controversy is no reason to abandon a system that, even if not the best in the world, has created the underpinnings for a surprisingly robust civic and economic life in the U.S. Point to a country that doesn't provide universal public education and I'll show you a country that lags the U.S. on every measure of standard of living -- economic opportunity, social equality, civic participation, personal freedoms, etc.
Anyway, it is not illegal to have a comparative religions class in a public school. The reason things like school prayer and creationism are not allowed in school is that they espouse specific religions. Even a non-denominational prayer espouses any religion which involves praying (not all religions do); creationism espouses any religion which elevates the idea of an omnipotent creator over darwinian natural selection as the origin of species (again, not all religions do).
To respond to a specific example of yours, it is perfectly legal and acceptable for a public school teacher to respond to "what is Easter", with "its the day Christians celebrate the resurrection of their savior". It is not acceptable to respond with "its the day we celebrate the resurrection of our savior". I am a non-Christian and, trust me, there is a huge difference between those two statements.
Nice to discuss with someone who thinks about their answers!
... but then (I'm making this up as I go) what about all the bad mutations that are occurring. If the bad ones far outweigh the good ones, and some of those bad ones produce cells that still function, will that ratio tend the system toward disorder??
I think its healthy to question all beliefs, including my own.
As mentioned before, I can totally understand natural selection.
The problem I have with evolution is seeing any examples where genetic information has increased.
I probably formed that belief after reading 'Darwins black box', and seeing how complex even a biological cell is. Membrances, and energy production sections, and waste disposal units, replication units. Its like a minature factory.
So tell me if I'm wrong, because I'm happy to be corrected. But does evolution require a random mutation when the cell is copying to produce a beneficial effect.
if the answer is yes then let me extend my thinking.
So lets say we have a functioning cell, lets say trillions of them.
So a cell divides, but incorectly. So first we have to determine what are the chances of the mutation being beneficial or non beneficial. I would only be guessing what that ratio would be.. lets say its 1 out of 1e6.
So then it depends on what the benefit is.
I'm thinking its only 1 cell out of a trillion, what are the chances of its 'DNA' becoming dominant.
46137
The Catholic Church does not and will never endorse a lie such as evolutionism and will always teach the truth of intelligent design. Those who claim otherwise are simply lying not only about evolutionism, but also about being Catholic.
(and yes, that of course includes notorious public heretics such as Antipope Benedict XVI and Satan's anti-Church that he leads)
Luke-Jr
So how about the unnatural movements of the sun at Fatima? Plenty of people observed that, even though their intent was to discredit the prophesy.
Luke-Jr
The way I see it the best way to combat ignorance is with more information, not less. ID should not be banned, it should be taught, just not as science, and not exclusively. It is a world view crafted by a specific religious sect. Most do so in an effort to undermine those who they see as interfering and undermining with their control of the parent/child relationship. I have some understanding for their situation but no compassion for their actions because they by their actions are trying to exact the same on myself and in my view even worst, as their actions corrupt and undermine the logic of the scientific method.
I see a simple and logical fix for this situation.Comparative religion should be required from late elementary through undergrads as a subset of comparative philosophy. It should be taught in the same general manner as math, language skills, history and science, progressively more detailed and complex. These classes should be inclusive of all major philosophical ideologys, religions, and world views as well as a sampling of those less practiced. In fact much more attention should be required for teaching the great quest of philosophical discourse as expressed by Socrates' as "The unexamined life is not worth living". In the same tone, a comparative format for government, civics and political science should get a bit more time than say PE.
Successful civilizations are those best enabled to make use of the information of their time to discern the unknown before their competitors. Civilizations fail for various reasons but one base cause is to be bested by another better enabled competitor. I'll go for more information over less anytime as long as it pertains to the question at hand. What nature of creature are we? Why do we exist? Do we have a purpose? Where did we come from? Where are we going? What could such a purpose be? Of all we do not know, could some of it consist of other types of existence we are incapable of perceiving or understanding? All these are valid questions, some fall under the domain of scientific inquiry. For some we do not have the tools in our current scientific knowledge base to investigate properly. Some may be interpreted as valid questions for both philosophy and science.
However this does not means that philosophy should be taught as science or visa versa. Science is a toolkit for exploration of the universe. If some accept it as a philosophy they are distorting it's purpose, undermining its value as a tool and limiting their own knowledge base. Philosophy is an exploration of our existence and relationship to the universe. That science was born of philosophical inquires into logic and nature is not the issue. It has evolved into a logical method for the formation and testing of hypothetical, the testing part is required or it is not science.
A simple anthromorphic argument for our existence can be made from the same "evidence" as ID presents. Things are how they are, because thats how they have to be to exist they way they do. The THEORY of Evolution is not based on an anthromorphic argument, it is an investigation based on multitudes of individually trivial bits of information being assembled into logical sequences and patterns. It itself is evolving as our information increases.
As one with agnostic leanings I do not presume to know the mind of a God whose existence I am not sure of. But for all I know God one day noted, hey that some pretty nice looking pond scum there, wonder what I could evolve it into? For all I know we have a God given destiny to save the universe from itself. Time may tell, then again time may be not an issue at all. Heck, I for one am not sure if I love more the great mystery of the unknown or the revelations of the tidbits.
Matthew
I do not contest that these are real benefits of universal education, and I do not contest that where this ideal has been approached (the Vatican is the only nation I'm aware of with 100% literacy) it has usually been by way of a government school system.
My objection is not event to government schools per se, provided that they are afforded adequate organizational, methodological, intellectual and ideological freedom.
The practical reality, however, is that the current American system has become crippled with restrictions upon how pedagogy is done which are stunting the benefitial effects that the system could potentially produce and has historically produced, leading to our comparative decline in most academic metrics when compared with much of the developed world. For example:
What in the heck is that supposed to mean?
--MarkusQ