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Texas Science Director Forced To Resign Over ID Statements
jeffporcaro writes "Texas' Director of Science Curriculum was 'forced to step down' for favoring evolution over intelligent design (ID). She apparently circulated an e-mail that was critical of ID — although state regulations require her not to have any opinion 'on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral.' 'The agency documents say that officials recommended firing Ms. Comer for repeated acts of misconduct and insubordination. The officials said forwarding the e-mail message conflicted with her job responsibilities and violated a directive that she not communicate with anyone outside the agency regarding a pending science curriculum review.'"
does one perform a scientific review of religion? either believe or not, there is no science. that's why they call it faith.
Since ID is not science, it is not an issue she should have remained neutral on, because it has nothing to do with the board.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
How can you remain neutral on such a topic? You either believe one way or the other.
It's nice how they call it "design" implying that there is actually some science behind the whole thing.
I drink to make other people interesting!
Most rational people would not want creationists at a government agency endorsing their position. So it makes sense to squelch any formal debate, even if it means offering up a sacrificial lamb, so to speak.
Just callin' it like I see it.
How is that possible? Next we'll be hearing that someone has been fired for favouring gravitational theory over the possibility that apples fall to the ground merely because they love the ground, want to be near it, cherish it, and make friends with it...
What a stupid bunch of primitives...l
...just as important as the Theory of Intelligent Falling.
I think this is another huge signpost that even in our modern era, ultra-powerful empires fall prey to their own delusional spin and slowly disintegrate into a drooling heap of superstition. This is the dying of the US as a superpower..
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
She was fired for having an opinion. Amazing. Correct me if I am wrong, but does it not require an opinion on a matter to better a system, to move forward so that we do not stagnate?
I mean, someone at some point had to assert an opinion to put (un)intelligent design at the top of the chain. Was that person fired?
This whole country is going right down the shitter because of policies like this. I also believe that draconian enforcement of this ilk is what causes people to be even louder and more obnoxious about their perspectives. This is a one-upmanship power struggle.
What was Leia's comment to Tarkin?
It's called "The Texas Education Agency."
Timmy! I told you to stop petting that dinosaur!
Not according to TFA.
Now one might certainly deduce that she wasn't enamoured with ID, but she did not "apparently" criticise ID. She announced a talk by someone who probably does, though. Which is not the same thing as stating it was her opinion.How anyone can argue with a straight face that ID is anything but "Creationism in a new suit" is beyond me. Every single ID proponent was, and I'm sure still is, a Creationist. Their literature has been shown to be creationist tracts with a search-and-replace applied.
A major difference in scenarios is that if a science director was parading ID around (a most unscientific theory) people would expect them to be fired based on the fact they are in a job they are not qualified for. Firing someone for doing their job and supporting what is theory by science over what is purely faith based is why people are up in arms about this.
If you wanted to rail on slashdot posters about this story you could have nit picked and pointed out she was fired for not following policy and that said firing is not really about her favoring evolution over ID, at least at the outermost level.
I remember watching a TV documentary years ago about how prisons have to make reasonable accommodations for the religious beliefs of prisoners. Some warden was talking about the bizarre religions and religious practices that the prisoners try to get away with, like the guy who said he belonged to the "Church of Filet Mignon" and needed to eat filet mignon every night for dinner. That was a contrived religion crafted for nonreligious purposes.
Intelligent Design is a contrived scientific theory crafted for nonscientific purposes. It's the scientific equivalent of the Church of Filet Mignon.
Can somebody please explain what the heck is going on? I do NOT mean to offend any Americans, far from it (and if I offend someone, I offer my sincere apologies), but something lite this could only happen in the US, or some other country where religious fundamentalism is prevalent . It would be nice if the human species could mature enough to finally cast away superstition and belief and embrace empirical proof and verifiable knowledge. We are not little children. We are grown-ups who have functional and rational brains. And we are naturally tolerant. At least most of us. "Intelligent Design" is a belief, or a rejection of the legitimacy of logical thought, not a science, and not verifiable in any way. In my opinion it should therefore NOT be sponsored by any government body or public institution or policy.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
There's a scientific method - you can apply it to religion - if it doesn't work you get to call religion 'bunk'
ID may be a hypothesis - it's allowed to be that - but the people who put it up need to come up with some experiments to prove their hypothesis if they want respect of other scientists and if they want their hypothesis to be taught as 'science' - otherwise it's just an idea that hasn't been proven
The problem of course is that approaching religion like this upsets a lot of religious people - largely I think because this sort of approach has tended to upset apple carts over the centuries - doesn't mean you should stop doing it though
Intolerance?
Any person not believing in the basic scientific principles which are the underpinnings of evolution is simply NOT QUALIFIED to hold any position which is in charge of establishing the curriculum to teach said principles.
In your example, the person in question most certainly should be fired as they are not qualified to hold the position -- just as you would fire a salesman for disparaging the product he's been hired to sell. If you believe science is a bunch of hooey, you shouldn't be in charge of how children are taught science. That's just common sense.
In the REAL situation, however,someone is being fired who is perfectly fired -- even suited -- to the job in question.
In short, your comparison is stupid.
Don't take it bad, but it seems that the USA has peaked as a "nice" country. Nowadays obscurantism looks like it 's gaining. In this case it's in the name of "freedom of speech", but it looks like that freedom is less and less respected too. Now, I've never been to there and that's all from an very external point of view. I'd really like someone shows me I'm wrong, as USA are still the most powerful on earth (the rounded species).
Subject: NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE
To the citizens of the United States of America,
In the light of your failure to distinguish between the scientific method and imaginary invisible friends in the sky, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.
Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime minister (The rt. hon. Gordon Brown, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.
To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:
1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminium". Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.
Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels.
Look up "vocabulary". Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up "interspersed".
2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know on your behalf.
3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard.
4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys.
5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.
6. You should stop playing American "football". There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good game.
The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football.
Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens side by 2011.
7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 98.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. "Merde" is French for "sh*t".
8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. December 1st will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive Day".
9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.
10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Sure, the Church of Filet Mignon is bogus - nobody's going to argue with that, I'd imagine.
That said, say I believe there are 3 gods, and to honor those gods I must sing melodic song in their praise every morning at sunrise. Not too far-fetched, I hope.. however, I can't identify with any of the major religions out there. So if I were to end up in such a prison, they'd go over the list of 'recognized' religions, say mine's not on it, and tell me to stfu when I do my singing.
Remember the 'Jedi' religion answer on census inquiries in the UK, Australia and other countries? There was fairly massive response from that, with Jedi ranking -above- Buddhism and Hindu in New Zealand in a census poll. As it was a census poll only, that didn't automatically make it a 'recognized' religion - but be darned if any of the reports from the time mention how one might actually do such a thing. I can't even find where one might apply for 'recognized' religion, what the minimum requirements are, or anything of the sort.
But even without having a 'recognized' religion - who is to say my religion is less valid than e.g. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, etc.?
I myself was educated by an order of Catholic Brothers"(a bit like monks) in Scotland. There were an impressive list of eccentrics, as one would expect, and some eccentric beliefs to match (anyone for a procession of angels?). These were people who had sacrificed a lot for their beliefs, you know vows of poverty and chastity and obedience.
However when it came to Science they were bang on. The closest they ever came to ID was Brother Francis (The Biology Teacher) when if pressed on evolution would say that he would like to think that perhaps there was room for a little Divine nudge, but that this was not in the curriculum, and not in the Science of Biology and would never be included in the classroom. In fact I remember in the morning religious knowledge period the Biblical creationist theorem being taken apart, and really discarded.
It is of course a great irony that Charles Darwin himself was a theology student, but he arrived at the theory of evolution via Scientific method. Religion and Science are not incompatible, they just dont deal with the same areas.
To sum up, the creationists are an embarrassment to both religion and Science and should get some education.
To: Glenn Branch
From: Glenn Branch
Subject: Barbara Forrest in Austin 11/2
Cc:
Bcc: [redacted]
Dear Austin-area friends of NCSE,
I thought that you might like to know that Barbara Forrest will be speaking on "Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse" in Austin on November 2, 2007. Her talk, sponsored by the Center for Inquiry Austin, begins at 7:00 p.m. in the Monarch Event Center, Suite 3100, 6406 North IH-35 in Austin. The cost is $6; free to friends of the Center.
In her talk, Forrest will provide a detailed report on her expert testimony in the Kitzmiller v. Dover School Board trial as well as an overview of the history of the "intelligent design" movement. Forrest is a Professor of Philosophy in the Department of History and Political Science at Southeastern Louisiana University; she is also a member of NCSE's board of directors.
For further details, visit: http://www.centerforinquiry.net/austin/events/barbara_forrest_inside_creationisms_trojan_horse_lecture/
Sincerely,
Glenn Branch
Deputy Director
National Center for Science Education, Inc.
420 40th Street, Suite 2
Oakland, CA 94609-2509
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
As a student in Texas, I'm appalled at this. The Director of Science curriculum shouldn't have to stay neutral on a subject when one side is science and the other is pseudoscience (if that). The Texas education system has been going in the shitter for years now, with the state lowering the bar every time students can't jump it rather than teaching the students to go higher. I guess now we can just forgo teaching evolutionary theory and replace the textbook chapters on it with the book of Genesis!
The trouble is that ID is not a "perfectly good theory" - at best it is a hypothesis. A theory is a hypothesis with evidence to back it up. Michael Behe's debunked arguments notwithstanding, all the evidence from the history of life is consistent with an evolutionary past, and ID makes no predictions at all. Whatever evidence you find is consistent with the "Well, God wanted to do it that way, and you can't say otherwise" principle.
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
This is both funny and scary at the same time. If it happened anywhere except in the most powerful nation in the world it would only be funny.
I don't see how anyone who thinks it's a good idea to treat christianity as "science" and make policy based on it could complain about states that make policy from other religions, such as sharia law.
This might help explain it. The short version is that the chair of the State Board of Education is an ardent creationist, and put a gag order into effect requiring all employees to treat "controversial issues" neutrally (ie. no pointing out that ID is nothing more than pseudoscience.) The next revision of the state science standards is coming up, and I'm sure he was overjoyed to have an excuse to fire her and install a creationist-friendly replacement.
For sale: one sig space, gently used. Inquire for details.
Consider this. NOW she gets to sue for Wrongful Termination, *and* a COURT gets to rule on whether ID is anything to be seriously considered by *any* educational organization.
IF the court rules that ID is NOT worthy of consideration in any Science Curriculum, then it's NOT something she would have to remain neutral on, as the Board shouldn't have ever been considering it.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
No it must not, the agency has a moral obligation to support what is true ie science. Science (hard science at least) is not opinion, it's proven fact. When you land a spacecraft on the Moon you prove that there are rocks in space, you don't just opine on their existence. Neutrality does not imply that one is expected to give equal status to unfalsifiable claims. ID and creationism should never reach the brains of students through taxpayer's money.
If governments start using the school bureaucratic apparatus to teach what I believe are byproducts of malfunctioning brains then this will mean that our societies will have entered a new dark age. The last dark age existed for more than 1500 years, so if you allow this to happen again then you will share responsibility for causing your children and future descendants to suffer in a mad society.
When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion.
No contest. No contest. Religion.
Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it.
Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man....
an invisible man, living in the sky, who watches everything you do, every minute of every day.
And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do.
And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, and suffering, and burning, and torture, and pain, and burning, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!.........
But He loves you.
He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, but somehow, He just can't handle money!
Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit! ID my ass
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
If it was a muslim country doing this the people'd be all, like, "Glass parking lot, it's the only way".
No sig today...
That's a bit of an exaggeration. The common people have always been both willfully ignorant and quite stupid.
It is no arrogance to mention it. They require religion to manipulate them, and they become enraged at anything different. Their betters understand this.
The ruling classes don't hold to that superstitious nonsense, and realists like Karl Rove understand how to use it.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Of course, "neutrality" is a code word "supporting ID/creationism without admitting it," since Don McLeroy, Chairman of the Texas State Board of Education, has made openly pro-ID statements. Yet merely informing people that a major player in the debate is giving a talk constitutes taking sides. So much for "teaching the controversy" (which is really code for teaching ID/creationism).
Of course, ID/creationists are terrified of Barbara Forrest, because she has meticulously documented how "intelligent design" is merely a rebranding of "creationism." She has become even more dangerous to them since the Dover trial, since discovery gave her access to early drafts of the key "intelligent design" textbook "Of Pandas and People," which revealed how it started life as a creationist textbook, and became an "intelligent design" book by a simple search & replace. Hilariously, at one point, they botched the replace, and "creationists" became "cdesign proponentists."
If everyone would do that, it be easier to find the pro-ID comments, they'd be limited to the ones starting with USA.
:-(
Man this kind of bullshit is the reason I'm going to ditch my Scientific American subscription. The fact that they even have to waste editorial space for this kind of nonsense is pathetic: it's the 21st century for f***s sake!! The last straw for Scientific American by the way was an article about choosing sexual abstention over birth control. bwwwggh
It often strikes me that the U.S. religious zealots have more in common with the Iranian ayatollahs than with any group in the western world.
Is "New Scientist" any better by the way?
There is no essential difference between micro and macro evolution. They both use the same basic mechanism.
"Micro-evolution" refers to changes within a single population.
Macro-evolution is the just the micro-evolution of two isolated populations to the point that, if the two populations were to merge back together and try to interbreed, they would be unable to produce fertile, viable offspring. The two populations have diverged too much, and will continue to diverge from then on.
What happened is she walked off the job to attend a presentation not directly related to her job duties.
Of course it wasn't for opposing ID, just like Wal-Mart has never fired anyone who's tried to organize a union. When a company wants to fire someone but their reason is illegal, unpopular, or actionable, they can be very creative in finding other reasons to terminate you.
"All grues are pink" isn't a negative. "There are no pink grues" is a negative, and subsequently you can't disprove it, because you can't search every location in the entire universe. You CAN construct negatives that can be proven, such as "there are no elephants in this shoebox," because you can look in the shoebox.
Depends if the sexual abstention was dealt with in a religious manner or not. If you're looking at it logically, then no sexual penetration = no babies, of course, which means purely statistically abstention will cause lower (i.e 0 ) unwanted pregnancies versus contraception. However, what we all know is by degrading condom use we are promoting the rise of std infection rates etc. Of course when religion is involved, then we get into muddy water :P
i know not what weapons the next world war will be fought with, but world war IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
I don't see why this is so damn hard for people to get straight. ID is a topic for sunday school, and 6,000 year old literal biblical creationism is just plain silly.
Now there is a great deal of contempt for religion here on slashdot. I fathom this is for two reasons-first, the frequently embarrasing and damaging conduct of people who boisterously proclaim their faith, and second, a complete and utter ignorance of how religion and faith in God has been entirely necessary for our current civilization to arise. The former is obvious and explaining the latter to the religion-ignorant people on this website is beyond my scope. I just want to point out that maybe you shouldn't be so f*cking proud of how smart you are for thinking all religion is rubbish.
Let me start off with some bait for pretty much everyone in this thread- though it might get less tasty if you read on.
I believe God created the earth and everything on it.
There! I must be a knuckle dragging creationist, right?
But wait! Here's the rest:
I believe science is our best bet for deciphering how He did it.
We live in a cause-and-effect world, God or no God. He's not in the habit of miracle'ng our asses out of tight situations, or populating entire continents with new species over night. He lets good people get cancer, bad people go free, and little boys get raped by priests.
Why? Because, given a belief in God, the only way existence makes sense is if there are defined, unyielding physical rules and free will.
So the only way God could have created anything in such a world is if He set up the initial state and the 'rules' from the beginning to reach a certain endgame- the last 6,000 or so years of recorded history, if you will.
That, however, is a philosophical stance for which I can offer no evidence. Taking that particular stance neither detracts from nor adds to our understanding of the unyielding, physical laws that govern our daily lives.
The purpose of science is to discover and utilize the laws of nature. Saying "God did it" is all fine and dandy, but I want to know how God did it, given the cause-and-effect, physical rule based world we live in.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Very nice people. But their understanding of non-religious things is wrong and strange.
At some point they were talking about a new testament biblical passage that dated from around 1900 years ago. The writings referred to the society of the day, which was fairly advanced. And then one of the guys said, "And when I went to school, they taught me that was the caveman days! Ha ha! Jerks!" He then shook his head and rolled his eyes. Everyone at the table save me nodded and laughed about how ridiculous secular teaching is.
This is something I see so often with Christians: they have a lack of knowledge, spend very little time thinking about a topic, and yet have absolute conviction that they're right. Sure, that's a common human flaw, but it seems most pronounced in the Christians I know. Even if you're a young-earth creationist certainly you should know that "cavemen" are not generally claimed to have been around 1900 years ago, but much earlier. I don't think anyone ever taught that the Romans were cavemen. Even if you think the earliest people were from 6000 years ago, you should be able to understand that society changed a lot from the time of Adam to the time of Jesus.
And even if someone did tell him there were cavemen in 100 AD -- I don't know -- wasn't there a whole world beyond the Mediterranean on which the Bible says nothing? Even if there was a developed society in that area, isn't it conceivable that there were people living a sort of "caveman" life elsewhere at that time? It just bugs me how little thinking goes into the average Christian's position, and how it's usually driven by a desire to support their belief than by a desire for understanding.
Of course this is just one small group of people with wacky misunderstandings of the world and secular education. Most Christians aren't this confused. But most people who lack critical thinking abilities are drawn to fundamental Christianity for some reason.
Anyways.
The problem is that ID closes down scientific inquiry, it doesn't expand upon it. It is a proposition unto itself with no scientific proof and even no way to research it. The Theory of Evolution came about by looking at the natural world and noticing something peculiar, then trying to reason why this occurred. ID simply says "We don't understand how this occurred, so a supernatural force must have done it." If ID were really trying to be a scientific theory, it would try to explain what the designer is, why it did what it did, when this occurred, and how the designer implemented his designs.
1 - What designed us? What scientific methods would you use to research this? The only theories I know of are religious and come from books written thousands of years ago with no evidence to support them. This exposes ID as a religious theory and not science.
2 - Why did the designer make us? Well, without any evidence that there is a designer or knowledge of it existing, how do we learn anything about its motivations? This exposes ID as a religious theory and not science.
3 - When did this occur? They don't attempt to explain the fossil record or use the scientific methods of radioactive dating (or come up with their own) to show when this happened. They don't explain why there are fossils in the record that are so much different than our own. Did the designer make some mistakes and kill off those creatures? The only thing proponents of intelligent design say here are religious quotes from the Bible. This exposes ID as a religious theory and not science.
4 - How did the designer implement his designs? ID proponents don't even attempt to explain the scientific origin of the designer's designs. The designer couldn't have just "designed" them, they had to actually be created some how. Oh wait, we can't say that word because that exposes intelligent design as being the same thing as creationism. Any scientific inquiry into ID would try to explain the forces at play that made the first molecules come together into the first human being though. Did the designer use magnetic forces to draw atoms together? Did it it use a laser? Here again we have nothing from ID proponents on the issue except for quoting from the Bible. This exposes ID as a religious theory and not science.
THESE are the four areas of research that ID "scientists" should be focusing on. If they could come up with a single published scientific paper showing actual research into any of these four questions, maybe ID could start to be seen as a scientific theory. Meanwhile there has been vast amounts of research over the last 150 years into evolution and natural selection. THAT is what scientists do. They come up with questions and research them, they don't just posit logical theories and rest on their laurels.
I love newton as much as the next guy... use him every day... but he was wrong, plain and simple.
Only if everything we know is wrong.
Newton's laws are correct. They are also not universal.
They are completely correct, except at extremes-- extreme velocity, extreme mass, extreme distances. This is no different that standard chemistry, which is correct at non-extremes (say, 0 kelvin, or plasma temperatures, or extreme pressures, or.... ). This doesn't make our chemical models of crystalline quartz any less correct.
They are tools that model our universe sufficiently to be useful. That is all we have-- tools to model our universe. Either the tools are useful ("correct"), or they are not.
To say they are not "correct" is to say that we have no knowledge whatsoever. Almost every single physical law we know today is bounded by constraints. There is no single formula, no single concept, no single universal model that works from one end of the spectrum of extremes to the other. At the moment, you can't use our understanding of the forces that hold an atom together to explain galaxies. That's why physicists are so interested in a single Grand Unified Theory. We desire the simplicity of a single description of the universe, rather than this hodge-podge of formula and concepts that work within their own realms, but fall apart outside their bounds.
Hell, we don't even have one single clue about the state of the universe in the first few femtoseconds of existence, so extremes of time also matter.
That certainly doesn't make our current models, including Newton's laws, less correct.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I am so goddamn sick of seeing tripe like this being moderated up when it was recognized correctly in the GP as the shit it is. I have a couple points to debunk your arrogant asshole elitisim:
1) You seem to be making the assumption that everyone in urban areas are intelligent. Really? You are going to tell me with a straight face that your average blue collar worker in NY is any smarter than a farmer in Iowa? Bullshit. Maybe if you only look at urban professionals you might be on to something, but in my experience the most ignorant and idiotic people I've ever met have been born and rised in inner cities. YMMV.
2) You make the assumption that there is something innate to being from New York or San Francisco that makes you smarter. But a huge percentage of those urbanites who are intelligent and well-educated are emigrants who were raised and educated by the "uneducated white trash, eating, drinking, sleeping, and living the Bible, the small print on Wal-Mart labels, and little else." The intelligent, educated people move to the big cities because, well, they're big cities. That's where the most opportunity lies.
But no, you're right, everyone that lives a different lifestyle or has different beliefs than you does so because they're stupid and uneducated. I can totally see where you're coming from. You're very deep and insightful.
Fuck you.
Someone who flunked out of high school can either be a janitor in New York city, or a high-school science teacher in East Bumfuck, Arkansas.
To put a personal touch on it, I grew up in WV, but I moved to Baltimore to go to college (and stayed in the Baltimore/DC area ever since).
Evolution is based on a concept of common ancestry, and that speciation occurs in the branches, where organisms can no longer interbreed. This means that you can build a tree of life that is untangled between major branches, with minor tangling of the twigs within a branch. (theres quite a bit more to evolution, but these are the parts I'm using).. So a reptile can mutate to get hair, passing the trait to its progeny. Eventually those progeny have a vast array of variation in their hair. The hair becomes more advanced (hollow hairs in the case of the Pronghorn). Now this bit of evolution is a pretty advanced piece of work.
Now to disprove Evolution we need to show that this trait shows up in another major branch of life IE find a tangle. So if we can find a plant with these kinds of hairs, or a bird that has the same kind of hair, were golden. Now since we classify all things with hair as mammals we might never find a bird with hair. So we could look for something more useful from birds in mammals.
Birds have a four cycle lung which is more efficient than the mammalian 2 cycle lung, because it vents nearly all the waste gases in each breath. If we found a mammal with a four cycle lung, that could also be evidence that something is wrong with our theory of evolution.
So then there is the platypus, a mammal that lays eggs, is that evidence? Since we're pretty sure that reptiles were the forbearer's of mammals, then mammals can still have the egg laying apparatus from the reptilian side. So the branches haven't been crossed.
So to disprove evolution you need to find highly evolved traits which don't appear to exist in a common ancestor, but are copied nearly exactly. (so birds and bats flying doesn't count, because the wings aren't even close to being similar)
Storm
p.s. for you ID advocates, happy hunting. Find where the designer is cutting and pasting at the top levels, and you have a way better case...
--in between trying to outlaw homosexuality and persecute Mexican immigrants, of course.
Freedom and justice for all, so long as all are white and Christian.
Easily done:
Step 1) Hypothesis: Someone, somewhere, somewhen, created everything.
Step 2) Create an experiment to prove said hypothesis. Uhh, can't.
Verdict: It's unprovable crap.
DONE.
> 2) You make the assumption that there is something innate to being from
> New York or San Francisco that makes you smarter. But a huge
Being packed together in a crowded metropolis full of people who ARE NOT
LIKE YOU makes it much more likely that you will NOT BE ABLE TO AVOID
things that would push you out of your comfort zone. You're pretty much
gauranteed and forced to be more worldly. You are forcibly exposed to
diversity that someone from the midwestern bible belt doesn't have to.
In a town of 30K or 50K it's much easier to avoid people not like yourself.
It's like trying to be amish in a city of 1 million versus lancaster county.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.