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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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!
ID is a supernatural explanation of phenomena.
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.
Of course I don't like Jesus--he still owes me 10 bucks!
English is easier said than done.
- 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'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
I look forward to an enlightened, civilized discussion about this controversial subject.
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...
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
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.
' 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?
Personally I am offended that they teach Newtonian mechanics in the schools. Aristotle was much older and Greek, and therefore a more authoritative figure. And even the scientists themselves will reluctantly admit that Einstein disproved part of Newton's theory! I'm not saying that we only have to teach Aristotelean physics, but it is only fair to be open-minded and teach the controversy.
English is easier said than done.
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!
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.
No, not good for them. The ID debate is merely an extension on religion vs. science, with intelligent design proponents attempting to mould established scientific theory to legitimise their own religious agenda. High school can be an arena for the discussion of scientific principles as an aid to individual learning, however unproven and opinionated versions have no place as a part of the curriculum.
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
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
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...
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.
New bumper sticker:
"If you can read this, you are not from Kansas"
It's at times like these that I thank God that I'm an atheist.
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
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
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 don't believe we provide universal education because everyone has a right to an eduction. I believe we provide universal education because it is in everyone's best interest, both economically and civically. Where do you get educated workers for your business if poor people have nowhere to go to get educated? How much easier would it be to influence people's votes if those people have no education?
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.
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!"
The funny thing about the controversy is that the people opposed to thinking independently are the ones who insist that a collection of ideas be taught as established fact, no longer subject to critical analysis.
Looks like you need a bit more stuffing in your straw man there, sunshine.
ID isn't critical analysis at all. It offers no testable hypotheses, no avenues for further study, allows for no modification of its own precepts in the light of new evidence, etc. Basically, ID in its entirety is nothing more than a very verbose "Nu-uh!" to evolutionary theory.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
Do yourself a favor and get yourself a good Hebrew concordance. The word in question is "yom" (יום), which is most definately the word for day. It is also used occasionally as "a period of time defined by an associated term," exactly like our own word "day" -- if I say "the day of our suffering is upon us" or refer to the times after Christ as "the year of our Lord," I'm not referring to literal days or years.
I'm not sure what you mean by "original translation of the Bible." We've got the thing in it's original language, and the copy of an "original translation" is only meaningful if (a) we didn't have reliable copies of the source language (and the means to translate it) and (b) if we didn't have multiple reliable sources in parallel with unprecedented degrees of mutual confirmation. Neither is true.
The issue that the person who 'explained' this to you was trying to get at, or should have been trying to get at, is that the Bible is a piece of Hebrew literature -- much of it poetry. We have a pretty good understanding of Hebrew poetry, literature, and histories, and there are whole hermeneutic sciences devoted to the correct interpretation thereof. Most scholars worth their salt will concede that much of what appears in the Bible is figurative or at least hyperbolic. However, just because the word "יום" is translated 'Day' does not mean some gross oversight has been committed. In general, Bible translators go to great lengths to leave everything intact -- including unclear passages. That's why there are so many footnotes and parens providing alternate translations in any Bible.
"Day" is the correct translation. Whether or not we are to take it as a literal 24-hour day or as a metaphorical term is another issue, and a pretty petty theological one at that. I'm not aware of a single confession of faith on earth that requires one to affirm that the Earth was created in 168 hours, with 24 hours for lunch in there at the end.
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
Amen, brother!
Let's start with
Yeah, right.
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."
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."
All 8 of the Dover school board's intelligent designers just had their asses handed to them by the voters today.
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."
Is Evolution testable? Is it falsifiable?
Yes. And in 150 years, it has been changed somewhat by data that comes in -- but surprisingly not as much as you'd think, given our poor state of biological knowledge in the 19th century. We barely understood the concept of the cell when the theory was first published, yet now even our ability to sequence the entire genome of a species and design our own custom lifeforms has not provided any information that contradicts evolution.
Evolution predicts many things, such as what fossil forms will exist at certain layers and in certain areas, it predicts that certain organisms must exist and what their specific characteristics are, even though nobody has ever seen one (and later, such organisms have been found exactly where they were predicted to be!). It also states that many combinations of things will NOT EVER be found, and if any organism with that combination was ever found the theory would have to be completely discarded.
Evolution predicted that there would be some fundamental but durable biological mechanism for inhereting traits, but also some way in which those passed-on traits would be unpredictably changed from time to time. 75 years later, we discovered DNA and found all about the variety of things that can cause mutations.
There is nothing in ID that is predictive, and nothing that can disprove it. It just says "and this place where we aren't sure what happened, it was an intelligent supernatural force". It uses scientific-sounding phrases like "irreducable complexity", but it all boils down to the God of the Gaps.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Evolution from lower life forms indicates an increase of genetic material from the lower form to a higher.
Which is not true. Amphibians have more DNA in all than we do, and rice (of all things) has more genes than we do. Surely you would agree that we are higher lifeforms.
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.
10,000 years is a rather short timespan during which to perform your experiment. Breeding of dogs hasn't been around even that long, so the fact that dogs are genetically similar to their predecessors acounts for nothing.
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.
The rate of decay of elements falls out of nuclear science. Nuclear science is not something ID folks want to take on --- nuclear scientists can bury you in equations in a way evolutionists cannot. The other two bits are assumptions, but good ones. Barring unforseen vectors, radioactive carbon simply does not add itself to the system. Certainly not in ways that cannot be checked for in contamination tests. Tthe assumption aboout knowing the initial ratio of parent to decay product is a good one too. The chemistry of life, as compared to its genetics, is something that is remarkably constant throughout the biosphere.
For myself, I have many other pieces of evidence that provide me with a 'preponderance of the evidence' indicating the fallability of evolution.
Better than these sad examples?
I would hope, that creationism, pastafarianism, and others should welcome and stand on their own merit.
And their merits are poor.
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.
The entertaining thing is that if there is a God, he's going to be far happier with the scientists for advancing the state of humanity than with religious-but-otherwise-unproductive. Yes, this a belief, like yours, but since it is a belief, there is no way for you to prove me wrong.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
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
He was referring to Dover, PA, not Kansas. A link to an article explaining the views of the winning candidates is http://www.yorkdispatch.com/local/ci_3196053.
The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development
We haven't even found intelligent life on other planets...
Sometimes I wonder if there's any intelligent life on this planet, the GP post being a case in point.
-- Soruk
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/
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.
I never understand why Creationists keep insisting that they know how God did things.
How do you know that evolution by natural selection was not God's intended way of creating life? If God designed us as 'overevolved pond scum' who are you do disagree?
I don't believe that God was involved, but if He was, it seems incredibly arrogant to insist that you have special knowledge as to how he did it.
Also, If your children know this, why put them into science classes where there is supposed to be debate and discussion of alternatives?
We're here to do the right thing and to help those around us.
And this relates to the debate how? Anyone with a reasonable understanding of evolution knows that altruistic behaviour does not conflict with natural selection in any way.
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.
Independent thought? You mean like them knowing that they are Created? How independent is that?
So take care when spouting off about things you don't understand.
Indeed.
Well, let's see:
Nazis - ein folk, ein reich, ein fuhrer (one people, one..empire?, one leader)
Republicans - one religion, one viewpoint, one country
Microsoft - well, shit, I don't remember this one, but it WAS an official microsoft saying. Something like 'one people, one company, one solution'
and, of course, Christianity:
one god, one book, one way [of life]
So how are these different? The Nazis utilized religion just as much as any other faith-based movement. The republicans wouldn't be in power if they hadn't turned politics into a religious issue. Microsoft, well, how can they NOT be a religion? They actually BELIEVE that stuff about innovation, and that requires finely-honed doublethink. Only a religion can produce that kind of skill.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
Religion is a necessary evil.
Religion is societal control.
If you're weak minded enough to fall into the lines of following religion, then it is a good thing because it gives you a structured environment because you're incapable of making decisions yourself.
This is what Islamic Radical pray on, people of not the brightest minds and are highly influentiable due to the violence they've already seen can be coaxed into becoming human bombs.
Like it or not but the vast majority of humans are essentially cattle, non self-deterministic people of the masses that require structure and being told without question what to believe. People can and are on a daily basis trained by those who are smarter / more corrupting then they are, look at Hitler in the past, he basically goose stepped the army till they couldn't think anymore and it was just "natural" to them. Even though it is a completely insane way of marching, it was effective in control.
People like to conform, while I agree with the poster in that people shouldn't be allowed to force their kids into this brainwashing, I also must disagree as I see some of the values the church teaches being benficial.
For back reference, I went through 12 years of my life in private Roman Catholic Schools. Am I religious? No. I was distant from my parents and only my mother was religious and I questioned every bit of it from day one. The generosity that our churches taught us as kids and some of the basic morals we're good to see re-inforced, look at the "10 commandments", they're all things that society as a whole does not agree with in general.
Celtic druidism, given the little we know about them (mainly through Roman histories and tiny amounts of archaelogical evidence) weren't nice folks at all - human sacrifice was the least of it.
As for me, I am able to accept that people are born homosexual
I can't accept that!
I can consider it, as an hypothesis, but I will NOT simply accept it outright, without any kind of proof. No thanks.
If we're gonna be talking about the scientific method, someone saying "I've been like this as long as I remember" is not proof of a congenital trait. Do you remember all of the significant developmental anecdotes of your first two, three years of life? You don't have to stone people for having sex with people of the same gender, but you don't have to buy all of their claims about how they came about being that way either. Middle ground, dude.
Maybe they were born that way, maybe they were exposed to hormones at an early age that affected their devellopment, we don't know.
You can't take the sky from me...