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Evolution No Longer Worth Learning, Says Government
Davemania writes "New York Times reports that the Evolution biology subject has disappeared from a list of acceptable fields of study for recipients of a federal education grant for low-income college students. The Education department has described this as a Clerical Mistake but others are skeptical about this. 'Scientists who knew about the omission also said they found the clerical explanation unconvincing, given the furor over challenges by the religious right to the teaching of evolution in public schools. "It's just awfully coincidental," said Steven W. Rissing, an evolutionary biologist at Ohio State University.'" As someone who made use of one of those grants to study Evolutionary Biology, I find this more than a little galling.
Hey Bud! Its just a part of Evolution of schools. Its closed minds like that, that hault the ability to learn more perspectives.
Clerical?
oops, can't teach that any more.
Science has repeatedly disproven the stories found within the religious tomes in the world. Still, that doesn't mean that a god doesn't exist in some form or another; it simply means that he can't be trusted.
Meanwhile, god's existence doesn't\H\H\H\H\H\H\Hshouldn't really matter one way or another when it comes to making policy decisions.
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Actually, the whole concept of the "dark" ages as a backward period has been discredited by modern historians who no longer use the term.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Vocational training as in 8 1/2 weeks of basic training, then off to the wars to take the American Dream to the ends of the world at bayonette point. Who cares if your kid can't read or write as long as they can pull a trigger? It's to the government's advantage under the current way of thinking to keep kids dumb and broke and show them the military as a way out of poverty.
They tried something like this during Vietnam, called Project 100,000. They took 100,000 men that would qualify for service if only they could read and write, and promised them the world, to teach them a trade, promised them they wouldn't end up in a rice paddy, the works. What they gave these suckers was 11 1/2 weeks in what the Army called 'Special Training Company', where the Army put all its fatties, weirdos, and teenaged malcontents to either make them or break them, then off to Vietnam with a rifle in their hand. The ONLY skill taught to the Project 100,000 volunteers was basic infantryman.
Let's face it, the current stringpullers believe that unless you're rich enough to send your kids to college with THEIR kids, your kids are only worth flipping burgers for the ruling class. And the underclass is only good for supplying the ruling class with their toys, dope, sex, whatever. Doesn't matter what political party is acting like they run things, they're all the same when you get down to it. Their watchwords are stay in power and stomp the underclass. You'll never see THEIR kids in Iraq or Afghanistan.
It's the same thing as happened to the Roman Empire, according to Gibbons (who I read way the hell back in the 60's growing up). Find a copy of Gibbons in your local high school library. Hell, find a copy in your local COLLEGE library. Basically, the Empire lasted until the patrician class realised they could vote themselves privileges, using barbarian troops to push the edge of the Empire ever forward while it was party time at home.
Sound familiar?
Countering Evolution Theory is a total short circuit of scientific method. Even assuming that evolution is untrue, there needs to be a new scientific theory that can better explain the diversity of life on earth, and the extreme coincidences that point to common ancestry. The very tightly linked genome information is really hard to just explain away with some alternate scientific theory..
Evolution is a theory that is brutally hard to poke any real holes in.. Most people try to counter with statistical arguments that skip some of the in between steps.
Anyway, the point is that rational people are afraid of whats happening, and arent going to simply look away when they see neo-theocracy coming closer.
Storm
Help!
I'm looking for the button that marks the entire topic -1 Troll, but I can't seem to find it...
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*Off-topic and coherency-free since 2004!*
Actually the scientific method itself has not changed in over a century. Individual theories HAVE changed precisely because of the CONSISTENT application of the scientific method itself has shown that we need changes in individual theories as we have new insights into the fundamental laws of nature and new mathematical and technological tools to refine and the theoretical statement of those laws with. Mostly we are at the point of refining theories and not radically overthrowing them, for example Newtons laws of gravity are still true at the macroscopic level, it's only at extreme speeds or scales that relativistic effects show up. Those relativistic effects don't invalidate Newton's laws but extend them into realms that were not testable in Newton's time period. We may come up with further refinements in physics, but we can also be quite confident that they will not completely turn over the empirically verified theories of Newton and Einstein. Further applications of the SAME scientific method Einstein used will yield refinements and that's all to the good.
Note again I'm not really a rocket scientist or physicist would some hard core scientist please jump in here and confirm what I've said? Thanks.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
I'm for funding PBS, NEA, NASA, and whatnot, as their budget lines are miniscule compared to our big fuck-off DoD budget. When you are on a diet, you don't stop drinking diet pop, you stop eating a whole cake at a sitting. But I essentially agree: get rid of the debt. Now.
And let's throw out corporate welfare, too. No more bailing out failed corporations (yeah, I mean you, Chrysler, and you too, airlines) to the tune of billions a year.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Not the ones in this day and age. They all dump WIS in favor of CHA so they can get more money and followers. That's why they can't cast spells like they used to thousands of years ago =\
Hail oh powerful and wise Slashdot mono-culture.
Mono-culture? Is that International Whine Language for "anyone who doesn't agree with me?" Guess what? Freedom of speech does not guarantee you the right to be respected for what you say. Or even believed. And insulting your target audience is not likely to get them to agree with you.
Saying that everybody who posts on slashdot thinks the same is just a thinly veiled insult. It's basically implying that (unlike the 'free thinking' poster) no one here can think for themselves. It is implying that only easily-led sheeple would hold that particular opinion, that no one could have arrived at that opinion through logic or introspection, only through surrendering to the hive mind.
It's a very hypocritical stand to take. It's trying to get everyone to agree with you by saying that if they don't, they are somehow not individuals, but mere pawns. Face it, you aren't upset that "slashbots" are pawns. You are upset that they're not your pawns. You don't want free thinking individuals, because you aren't one yourself. You project your own inadequecies onto others. You've bought a certain line of thought hook, line and sinker, and when anyone questions that line of thought, it can only be because they aren't a "free thinker" like you.
How droll. It's like the counter culture kids who rebel by all dressing alike.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You know why you never hear about the "secular left"? Because by and large, we mind our own business. You don't have leftists putting up shrines to whomever they worship on state property. Down here in Atlanta, I don't get leftists trying to convert me to secularism a couple of times a year. I don't get idiot 16-year old leftist kids coming to my door telling me about their resurrected prophet (16! what the hell does a 16 year old know about ANYTHING, much less the underlying truth of the universe???) Secular leftists don't cripple the major throughfare near my house every weekend morning driving their giant SUVs to their place of worship. Secular leftists don't send me mail claiming that they know the path I should follow to redemption.
All in all, secular leftists are nice, happy people. We only get our panties in a bunch when the Religious Right decides to butt into everyone's lives.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Summary: People who do not study evolution are not suitable for "high caliber" education.
I agree and disagree. I agree that the study of evolution is important. So are many other aspects of science.
On the flip side. . . Rejecting students because of a single issue / single theory / single area reflects exactly what is wrong with our education system and our nation as a whole.
Complete disgregard of a student on a single criterion is short sighted. There are great scientists who have had little background with evolution. That is no indicator that they are flawed or have some broken logic that segregates them from the rest of society and higher education. To reject a student based on this one criteria indicates your logic is flawed and you are as limited in understanding education as you claim others may be regarding science.
How can we foster an educated public that innovates and invents if we slap them with a mandate that they must study and accept everything that we accept now? Innovation is discovery and challenging what we think we know now. If we had not challenged hard science at one point the world would still be flat.
Again the flip side. . . How can we innovate and challenge something if we turn our back on it and refuse to discuss it? This is the same logic that prompted religous institutions to execute people because of their notions on whether the Earth was the center of the universe or not.
We must study evolution as much as we need to study Psychology and Sociology BUT we need to stop being so polarized about it. Denying someone education because they lack a background in a single area is the complete opposite of the other side and both are equally wrong.
Government spending generally helps out a lot more than it hurts. States which higher taxes and higher spending do better in a whole host of things than states which don't. There's not a lot of wiggle room for libertarian theories when you've got a whole bunch of actual states to look at. The real world has a very surprising and well-known liberal bias.
Also, Hillary is going to get bitchslapped in the future, because the Democratic party is moving left while she is not. She's part of the old Democratic leadership which believed that the best way to get elected was to be Republican lite. Look at how we're fucking Lieberman. He's the first. The rest had better become real liberals, or just join the Republicans.
The war on drugs is going to be harder to deal with, but the left elements of the Democratic party, of which I am one, are HIGHLY against the war on drugs. I personally believe that even heroin should be legal. Pot should be sold in the grocery stores right next to the bottles of vodka.
Gun control isn't even an issue in the Democratic left. Take a look around. There's no major gun control cases anywhere on the national scene. Nobody's even introducing a bill to control guns. I can tell you that in the groups I hang around with, we have a VERY serious issue with prohibitions of any kind. We cannot rationally justify it. We're liberals through and through.
Finally, take a look at the results. Bill Clinton gave us budget surpluses, and all the Republicans going back 25 years have pushed us into 10 trillion dollars worth of debt. Frankly, I am encouraged that you're holding your nose and voting Democratic, but I'm dismayed that you split the blame equally between the two big parties. I hope that will change once you see what the more liberal Democratic party does in future years. We understand and can communicate our moral values in a way that Democrats haven't done in 50 years.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Repeat after me, "would you like fries with that?"
Being able to say that in a foreign language may prove to be helpful in two or three generations...
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The answer is mindfuck.
Pupils should not believe what they are told in school and 60% of leading scientific teachings are bogus as we will be told in 20 years - in fact the teachings which are considered bogus today were bogus 20 years ago as well. So thinking different is important in evolutionary theory. And maybe the alternative teachings are more entertaining and pupils learn something important for life: resistance against indoctrination.
Social darwinism is crap and was crap but society also follows evolutionary principles.
Let's consider them:
1) mutation
2) recombination
3) selection
4) isolation
Very good principles, also for US society. The current mindfuck approach follows "4) isolation" but real fucking mindfuck is based on 2) recombination. Scientific purity approaches follow 3) selection which is the most problematic one because pluralism is essential for evolutionary progress. But, ehemm it makes it easier to separate wheat from chaff. Just aks them about their opinion. Ehmm, and 4) mutation is just a new braindead idea in the field of evolution... (sorry alien theory is already existing). Should not happen too often.
For example, did you learn in school that William Harvey discovered how blood circulates through the lungs and heart? Actually, it was ibn Nafis, in the 13th century. His writings first reached Europe in 1547. Suddenly, by 1553 Servetus was giving an accurate account of how it works. Harvey came later with some direct observations on animals.
The lesson is that a vibrant intellectual and scientific culture can be destroyed and its benefits lost.
Not after the next election there won't be. Illegal immigration is the number two annoyed topic that people will be voting on come november(the first is the stupid interventionist war). Globalists seeking to second world the US will be voted out, and those illegals will be *going home* as their employment dries up.
Wishful thinking. There is a reason your sort called themselves the "Know nothing" party seven or so iterations back.
Face it. Every attempt to eradicate or exile a given group within a population of humans has failed since the dawn of history*. And thank God because diversity is the greatest strength a population can have. It is one of the main reasons the United States has prospered. It gave us victory over our enemies (The Axis poorly utilized their resources when they refused to let women work and relegated swaths of their population to extermination or forced labour. We on the other hand allowed people of all stripes to work freely and were victorious).
The furor over immigration is just as useless as the other smokescreens thrown by our government to distract us from the fact they are not doing what they are supposed to be doing about the things they can actually work on. It's a canard that gets us all riled up, allows inflammatory discussions involving racism and such to take up time that should be spent discussing what we can do to make our nation better and win / end the war we seem to be fighting. Gay Marriage, Abortion, Obscenity, and Mexican immigrants are all wedge issues that they know will divide us, and which for the most part the government has no business dealing with (and really cannot).
When it comes to the specific issue of immigrants from mexico (because let's face it, for all their talk the Minutemen sure don't seem to care about patrolling the Canadian border which is the only border crossing Al Qaeda has been known to use), there have been migrant workers for centuries and the presence of "undocumented" workers is a simple reality. There's no sense in trying to send 7-25 million (depending on who you believe) people back who are currently working and contributing to our economy. The fact they are outside the system is simply further proof our system does not reflect reality in terms of our economic needs.
The whole system of registering immigrants and control based on quotas originated from provably racist legislation which has since been tweaked but retains its roots. Originally anyone who could come here was allowed to come here and could apply for citizenship after proving they'd lived here a couple of years. If you want control I say you may as well go to the simpler model that anyone who has a job in this country can come here and stay and apply for citizenship after a time; if we're going to keep quotas we're going to need to make them large enough to match the true rate of immigration into this country and speed up the process to match the digital age we live in and again the needs of society.
We need immigrants. They are our only hope of paying off the national debt and social security, and they are the only way we will currently retain the level of population we have. They inject new blood, new ideas, and enrich our cultural experience. The fact that the best people from every country and every field can choose to become Americans, and the fact they often do, makes us all that much stronger. Confucius said that if you treat your population properly people will flock to your country with their children on their backs. That's part of what he described as the ideal state and that is essentially what the United States, for all its faults, became. That's the America we should be protecting.
But again, getting people like me to argue with people like you about immigration is a distraction that keeps you and I from spending time focusing on the things we might agree on, like the fact we are involved in potentially endless conflicts
Evolution can't explain where matter comes from, or how it just happened to become oriented in just the right way to allow life
I honestly wish there were a way to mod you up. More people need to realize that those people who "oppose evolution" do so because, at a fundamental level, they just don't understand it. You statments say more than you realize, and they say you don't know what you're talking about.
As a hint, evolution concerns itself with neither of those things... other theories and fields of science do, but not evolution per say.
You might as well say evolution is wrong because it can't explain magnetism.
Strong assertion, let's apply a little deductive logic:
:):):):)
toxic -> deadly -> will no longer exist left untreated
toxic to free thought -> free thought will no longer exist
Let p be defined as existence of religion
q be defined as existence of free thought
The assertion is that:
p -> ~q
or
The existence of religion implies the non-existence of free thought (eventual)
We know that from modus tollens
~(~q) -> ~p
simplifying
q -> ~p
Or
Where there is an existence of free thought there is a non-existence (suppression, ban) of religion.
Let r be defined as the location where the non-existence of religion is/was enforced (China, North Korea, Soviet Union, California). Clearly,
~p -> r
So we have,
q -> ~p
~p -> r
By implication
q -> r
Or
The existence of free thought implies that one lives in a country where the non-existence of religion is enforced. We now have mathematical proof of what has always been suspected:
You free thinkers are a bunch of commies
In some parts of the country church going folks represent 40% of the vote. They vote around 75-90% republican depending on the church and which part of the country. They believe Bush was appointed by god or feel he has values and morals similiar to theirs which make them identify with Bush more. They make up a large percentage but never a majority. However they add 20% points in the south in favor of the republican so those who vote liberal or stay at home get drowned out by this minority.
ANd like I said in a previous post its happening in Canada too. Right now only a few churches really love Harper but as the Canadian branch of the 700club and focus on teh family get their act together on Christian radio and TV you will see more of a shift of Canadians voting conservative thinking they are getting pro family candidates.
http://saveie6.com/
My point was that freedom of speech is as much a freedom guaranteed by the constitution as a woman's right to controll her own body and what grows in it.
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
The best way to put frame creationist theories are that its conclusions are true BY DEFINITION, that is, it possesses a circularity that has no real explanatory power.
The Constitution may put it in writing, but the freedom of speech, religion, travel, press, assembly, petition, and, yes, PRIVACY are not given to us by the government.
I said, "guaranteed" by the constitution.. not granted or given. Please read more carefully before you rant. Of course a right cannot be given. Otherwise it is just a privilige.
And ultimately, you either believe that a woman's right to PRIVACY exceeds an unborn child's right to LIFE, or you do not.
Privacy??? You think that forcing a woman to give birth against her will, risking her own life and health, is a matter of PRIVACY? Please.
If medical evidence suggests the child is, in fact, not a human,
Too subjective. There can be no such medical evidence.
then they have no rights. If the evidence suggests it is human, then the original question remains. THAT is where the fight lies; not in whether or not the Constitution allows it. The Constitution allows nothing; it only AFFIRMS the inalienable truth of being a human.
The truth is that it is wrong to force a woman to give birth... even if by some subjective view a fetus is human. That fetus is under the private care of the mother. It is similar to how we treat born children under parental care... but much more extreme. Parents are generally allowed to restrict the rights of children... but children are citizens so we still protect their basic right to life and some other things. Inside a woman's body, however, all bets are off. In the case of pregnancy, all control is given to the mother. A fetus is no citizen or even resident of the US. We make no death certificate if/when it dies (either miscarriage or abortion). We generally don't hold funerals, etc. Think of a person's body as a sort of "international waters" within which US law doesn't really apply.. even if a fetus is human.
There are 4 stages of a human in the eyes of the law:
1) Unborn and under the private care of the mother. Fetus lives or dies by the mother. Mother calls all the shots.
2) Born, under parental care, but now a citizen. Parents have a lot of authority over teh child, but the child now has the basic protections of the law.
3) At 18 years old, human is an adult and parents have no real authority. All contitutional rights are protected to their fullest (ideally).... except:
4) At 21, drink!
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Face it. Every attempt to eradicate or exile a given group within a population of humans has failed since the dawn of history*.
Face it. Charlemagne eradicated the Avars with some help from the Bulgarians. ...the Avar people the language the civilization. ...all gone.
Chandragupta II also did his share of ethnic cleansing. Also known as "Vikramaditya, he "unburdened the sacred earth of the Barbarians like the Shakas, Mlecchas, Kambojas, Yavanas, Tusharas, Parasikas, Hunas, etc. by annihilating these sinners completely."
I wouldn't advocate such public policy here, but never underestimate what your fellow humans are capable of doing to your other fellow humans.
Actually, we're having a rather heated immigration debate in the UK too, at the moment. Actually, there's a stronger argument against it in the UK because this island is incredibly overpopulated already, whereas the US isn't. However, my main problem is the language barrier. I'm of the strong belief that it's a good thing for everyone in a country to speak one language; ideally, i'd have everyone in the world speaking one language. Immigrants coming in and speaking Spanish in the US sounds like a bad idea. The language barrier is, IMHO, the biggest barrier to human interaction and telling most Americans to learn Spanish is a really stupid way to solve the problem rather than vice versa.
I've spent the better part of my life in places with a heavy influx of hispanic immigrants, legal and otherwise. And I have never ever found a hispanic person who did not agree, as every other immigrant to the US agrees, that learning English and getting a good education is the key to success in the US. The immigrants themselves may not speak English and might have difficulty learning it, but they make damn sure their kids learn it because they don't want them to have to be labourers like they are.
No one is making Americans learn Spanish. There's no way they could; it seems that even with High Schools often requireing one or two foreign languages practically no one manages to learn and hold onto anything other than English. The official language of the United States is English and always will be. All of our laws and signs are written in English and it remains the primary medium of instruction in our schools. Yet politicians want to get people riled up over the issue and try to pass laws declaring this and make speeches as though we might have to speak another language than English. It's the same as the French politicians who try to scare their constituents into thinking that they might be made to speak Arabic as a new primary language just because there are so many (French-speaking, mind!) immigrants from places like Algeria.
And like another favorite topic of these same politicians, prayer in schools,* politicians are using this canard to try to outlaw speaking any other language. You see currently we have programs in public schools ostensibly designed to teach children English so that they can understand the rest of what is being taught. It's somewhat less than optimal and effective because they are taught everything else in English while attending classes on how to understand English, but it is what we have. There are people who want to do away with these programs, supposedly on the basis that only English should ever be spoken and tax dollars spent on teaching the subject are wasted, but the whole idea makes no logical sense unless your goal is to close what little door is open for the children of migrant workers to learn our language and become skilled workers.
It is annoying to me that people whose entire basis for law is supposed to be religion and morality are such damned liars and clearly hate their fellow man. And they claim Jesus is their leader and favorite philosopher. Clearly they were sleeping in class.. or else it was conducted in Aramaic. :P
*(where they claim praying is currently not allowed in school -- a lie because it is curently illegal to prevent people from praying -- in order to pass laws that force everyone to pray to their God in their way)