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First Russian Anti-Evolution Suit Enters Court Room
sdriver writes "If you thought it was only the US giving Darwin a hard time, Russia has its own problems starting with evolution. A student has 'sued the St. Petersburg city education committee, claiming the 10th-grade biology textbook used at the Cervantes Gymnasium was offensive to believers and that teachers should offer an alternative to Darwin's famous theory.' The suit, the first of its kind in Russia, is being dismissed out of hand by the principal and teachers. The teacher of the science class had apparently even taken the step of stating at the start of the school year that there were other theories on the origin of life."
If you don't like Darwinism, you're welcome to try Lysenkoism. It's got a long, if not exactly proud, history in Soviet Russia. It's been pretty thoroughly proven false, but unlike Creationism, it's at least a falsifiable theory.
"The biology textbook generally refers to religion and the existence of God in a negative way. It infringes on believers' rights,"
I don't know anything about Russian law, but do religious groups have the right not to be dissed? Would that go for all religious groups, and non-religious groups too? Considering how insulting it is to have someone claim theirs is the only right way and everyone else is going to hell, I would think this a precedent that 'believers' wouldn't want to set.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
In Soviet Russia...
They didn't have this problem.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
A giant meatball slipped off that plate and thus our earth was born.
*DrugCheese rants*
Sweet! It looks like Russians have caught the frivolous lawsuit virus. I guess we must have won the Cold War after all.
Evolution does not claim that man evolved from apes, but that man and apes share a common ancestor, as do all creatures. Just man and the ape's ancestors were a little more recent that, say, the common ancestor between man and jellyfish.
Disclaimer: I'm a Christian and believe in ID myself. However, I feel that "Darwinism" should be taught in schools. Who am I to say how God created man. I feel that evolution is more of a miracle than Him simply saying "Let it Be" anyway! Just my $0.02
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
If your faith is so weak that you need the courts to help you believe, then maybe you need to look in the mirror for the problem?
Yup, gotta get rid of those tempting "ideas" out there in the big bad world. Might lead a person to think.
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Cervantes Gymnasium. Am I the only one that thought "that must be where the Soul Calibur people go to train."
I sincerely apologize for any pain the above pun may have caused.
Monstar L
Darwin's theory says nothing about how life got started. Darwin only talked about how life evolved once it got started.
I guess the teacher needs to go back to school to present the correct information.
Nitpick time. The last line of the synopsis is not what the teacher said. From the article:
"When starting the course on the matter, the biology teacher said that there are other versions of humanity's origin," she said.
That's different than saying how all life began, as the submitter suggested.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Come back Commies! All is forgiven!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Correction: the other proposals for the development of life on earth are conjectures, not theories (scientific or otherwise). Further, Darwin proposed natural selection as a mechanism for evolution. That hypotheses has well withstood credible scrutiny and attempts to disprove it, and so is considered a theory (mind you, the modern understanding of the theory is quite more involved than Darwin would have imagined). Darwin never created a theory for the origin of life.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Soviet Union was never a "brutally secular state" - it was always a very religious state. State religion was weird there - it promised "Communism" in the "near future", not the afterlife, but it still was very similar. Now the table has turned, and the CPSU (or in Russian) is replaced by Russian Orthodox Church and there are definite advances to bring religious studies (only Orthodox, nothing for other Christians or Muslims) to schools in Russia. Disclaimer: I've spent most of my life in the USSR.
In Russia, the theory evolves you!
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Why stop at biology. I suggest an alternative to physics. Magic. Specifically the evocation school. Man a 4d6 fireball would do wonders for the worlds energy problems.
Here, start with this simple formula - "In Soviet Russia, [direct object] [transitive verb]s YOU!"
Insert words relevant to evolution or intelligent design. Bam! Instant humor. Be the envy of your friends and coworkers.
"I think any time you expose vulnerabilities it's a good thing." -Attorney General Janet Reno
Deleted
Oh... you mean, it's only the god-given right of you creationists to present your "theory" as a fact? :-)
Which is completely irrelevant since no theory is every proven (how many times does this need to be said?) See the Wiki on what a theory is. Pay particular attention to the first four sentences under the Science heading.
Pick a theory. Any theory. Newton's Theory of Gravity? Not proven. Einstein's Theory of Relativity? Not proven. The Big Bang Theory? Not proven. See the point?
Saying that Evolution is not proven shows a very basic lack of understanding of the scientific process. But hey, don't let me, or anyone else, stop you from continually making a fool of yourself everytime you say a theory isn't proven.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Want to bet on the chances that when the onion is peeled back, Focus On The Family or some other famous US-based evangelical organization is behind the suit? "Send us your dollars so we can do God's work in Russia and force their schools to teach Creationism rather than the Devil's work, Evolution!"
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
(from Jesus Camp)
MOM: (reading from "Exploring Creationism with Physical Science") One popular thing to do in American Politics is to note that the summers in the United States over the past few years have been very warm. As a result, global warming must be real. What's wrong with this reasoning?
KID: It's only gone up 0.6 degrees.
MOM: Yeah, it's not really a big problem, is it?
KID: No. I don't think that... it's going to hurt us.
MOM: It's a huge political issue, global warming is, and that's why it's really important for you to understand...
KID: Is evolution too?
MOM: Um, not really. On a much...
KID: Creationism?
MOM: Um, it's becoming one now. What if you had to go to school where the teacher said, "Creationism is stupid, and you're stupid if you believe in it?"
KID: I think they should...
MOM: Well, or what if you had to go to a school where the teacher said "Evolution is stupid, and you're stupid if you believe it?"
KID: I wouldn't mind that.
MOM: You wouldn't mind it. If you look at Creationism, it's the only possible answer to all the questions. It's the only possible answer.
KID: That's exactly what dad said!
MOM: Mmm hmmm, it's the only possible answer to all the questions.
KID: Oh, yeah...
MOM: Oh, yeah.
MOM: Did you get to the part on here where it says that science doesn't prove anything? And it's really interesting when you look at it that way.
KID: It is?
MOM: It is.
KID: (reading further) I think, personally, that Galileo made the right choice by giving up science for Christ.
(later)
MOM: We know when things started changing, you know, prayer got taken out of school, and um... the schools started falling apart. And now the rest of us are going, wait a minute, where is my country? Our firm belief is, there are two types of people: those who love Jesus and those who don't.
For those who require the greater challenge, who have open minds, and the strength to question and see beyond the well-worn path:
Track A: The four basic elements, Roman numerals, epicycles, alchemy, leeches, phlogiston, aether, UFOs, WMDs, Great Poets, Atlantis, etc.
For the blinder loving set,
Track B: Calculus, Diff Eqs, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Western Civ, etc
By not putting all the eggs in one basket, there's a better chance of success.
No.
Evolutionists do not believe it started randomly.
They have seen evidence of natural selection.
They have fossil records that coordinate with geologic and other records showing a lack of human fossils fairly recently in history. Predictions made based on plate theory and other models of historical geology have been tested successfully.
The fossil record shows various waves of complex creatures but once you get back far enough, the creatures become simpler and more primitive.
Natural selection provides a reasonable explanation for how creatures can change from a mouse type creature to an elephant type creature in only about 10,000 years. We have observed new species to come into existence in our life time. We have strong evidence from dna that humans had severe pinch points in the very recent past and that we only existed as a species for a couple million years at most.
However-- evolution theory says NOTHING about the start.
Basically it only says that creatures who reproduce more have more children and so their children eventually become the population.
Given random mutations which have no affect in reproductive fitness, the random mutations will be carried.
Given random mutations that lower reproductive fitness, they will disappear (at a speed relative to how harmful they are).
Given beneficial mutations that increase reproductive fitness, those creatures with those mutations will rapidly come to dominate a population.
Looking at the record the best you can say is "it's likely that creatures were very simple before the earliest hard records.
However- it directly confronts religious text since it pretty much says man did not exist and "near men" did exist in pre-religious times. Just like a religion that says the earth is the center of the universe is provably WRONG, any religion that seriously says man only existed for under the last 10,000 years is provably wrong.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
They had no less than what they have now unless you're talking about overpriced "luxury" items which only those that used to already be rich back in the USSR days can afford. Things haven't gotten better for nearly any of the people I personally know that have chosen to remain in Russia. But one thing the USSR certainly didn't have but Russia has now, is a populace whose belief in Communism has been substituted by a belief in the teachings of the Russian Orthodox church.
I like basketball!!1!
The makers of Airplanes and Zeppelins are usually on a tighter schedule than evolution is.
And I demand that gravity is presented as a theory and not fact.
Why don't you campaign against that? All those teachers teaching that things fall down as fact
You're mixing and matching. The Theory of Evolution is not, and will never be, proven. But evolution itself, is proven. We have the fossil record to show how various creatures have evolved over time. It is only the mechanism(s) that cause or influence this process that is not proven. The act itself is a fact.
Same thing with gravity. We know gravity is real. We can measure it, we can experience. However, the Theory of Gravity and the Theory of Relativity are not proven and will never be. All these theroies do, as the Wiki indicated, is lay out a testable, verifiable process which best explains how these facts come about.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The study of evolution is deals with how the changes in life occur. Scientists dealing with the origins of life are in the field of biogenesis, a field related to evolution but it is *not* evolution.
This "adaption" you mention is what is sometimes referred to as micro-evolution. This is a controversial theory, often used by advocates of Creationism (and to a lesser extent, intelligent-design) to allow them to accept minor changes (such as differing breeds of dogs, etc) while still allowing them to deny that "macro-evolution" or speciation, can occurr. There is no distinction between the two however - both are evolution, slow change over time.
Your understanding of the word "theory" is mistaken in your above usage. When a scientist says "theory", he usually means a scientific theory. When most of us were growing up, we learned about a certain hierarchy of certainty going from guess->theory->fact, but this theory does not sit inside that tree. When a scientist talks about the Theory of Gravity, for example, he is not expressing reservations about its validity. The Theory of Evolution is not a statement that evolution occurs, it is our current best understanding of *how* evolution occurs. We already know that evolution occurs, as we can observe it in labs. In that sense, evolution is a fact. The theory is an explanation of how that process happens that fits with all our present knowledge about the subject.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
Of course not. Darwinian evolution was a non-issue during much of the Soviet Era, thanks to Lysenko and his influence with the highest levels of government.
Mass starvation ensued. Ignore Mr. Darwin at your own peril, folks.
Obligatory karma whoring Wikipedia link.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
It makes you a fool and it makes you a liar.
In fairness to the fool, he is not necessarily a liar. He may just be dumb. He may quite plausibly not be smart enough to understand the difference between the fact of evolution, and the theory of evolution. I'd find that quite plausible based on my experience of the large percentage of not so bright people in this world.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Capitalism is sort of a religion, everybody treads the mill hoping that one day someone will notice what a hard worker they are and promote them. Predictably, you are rewarded with more work, and your motivator is instead compensated for a wonderful job. Don't talk shit about capitalism though or the wealthy will tear into you about the day or two they had to actually do something and broke a sweat. You'll never hear the end of it.
Where can I buy one of these Anti-Evolution Suits?
Will it protect my DNA from evolving and prevent my offspring from, say, developing a 3rd eye?