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Bill Allows Teachers to Contradict Evolution
Helical writes "In an attempt to defy the newly approved state science standards, Florida Senator Rhonda Storms has proposed a bill that would allow teachers to contradict the teaching of evolution. Her bill states that 'Every public school teacher in the state's K-12 school system shall have the affirmative right and freedom to objectively present scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views regarding biological and chemical evolution in connection with teaching any prescribed curriculum regarding chemical or biological origins.' The bill's main focus is on protecting teachers who want to adopt alternative teaching plans from sanction, and to allow teachers the freedom to teach whatever they wish, even if it is in opposition to current standards."
Incorrect.
Apes, monkeys, and humans all evolved from a common primate ancestor. Due to differing environments and differing pressures and selection criteria for said differing environments, the populations of primate ancestor-species evolved in separate directions.
The 'missing' fossil evidence question is a red herring: every time a transitional fossil is found, the creationists say "OK, what came between that one and the next one?"--moving the goalposts, in other words. Archaeology is not geneology: you will not get a continual record of every generation back to when time began.
In addition, fossils are not the only evidence. There are patterns of genetic structures, there are cases of comparative anatomy, there are multiple other lines of evidence to choose from.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Woah woah woah, don't throw those nutjobs into Utah, The Discovery institute (major proponent of ID) is out of Seattle, Washington. Most scientists here in Utah are just for the dino fossils, cancer research, or cold fusion :D
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
If you want to teach your kids that "God did it" is an acceptable answer to anything you don't personally understand, then fine, do that in your home or church or wherever... BUT don't pollute my children into believing that crap also. I'd like my kids to have a fair chance in the world economy, where in most 1st and 2nd world nations, they can manage to keep science to true scientific endeavors.
What I can't understand is how this is even a debate for public schools. I went to a Catholic school through junior high and there wasn't even a discussion about this. We were taught about evolution in science class, *and* in religion class we were taught that the creation stories were not meant to be taken literally.
It doesn't -- ID isn't disprovable, precisely because it isn't scientific. ID says "God did it". That's not of much use in a science class, because there's nothing scientific you can learn from that statement.
No, evolution says nothing about dinosaurs and humans being unable to live at the same time. We're from two completely different evolutionary trees -- reptiles and mammals. Geologists and paleontologists would be pretty shocked if such a thing were to be found, but evolution wouldn't be affected in any significant way.
There are, indeed, numerous things that COULD be found or occur that would disprove evolution, yet none of those things ever has. The fact that such things are able to be spelled out ahead of time, and then tested, is precisely what makes evolution science, and ID not science.
Evolution has nothing to say about the reasons we are here or how things began. It is not a religion, and requires no faith. You can be a staunch creationist opposed to evolution and you will get the exact same experimental results with DNA manipulation, genome sequencing, carbon dating, and fruit fly reproduction, as a fervent believer in evolution. Predictable, repeatable results independent of the experimenter are the hallmark of real science -- evolution has many, and ID has none.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Unfortunately, those religious zealots are also the ones that squawk the loudest. I attend a medium sized Christian University (just under 4,000 undergraduate students), and most of the professors, especially (yes, especially) the Bible and Theology professors, have no issues with Evolution and Creation. Believing that God created humanity does not automatically mean that we believe evolution is not an instrument, or is happening.
Sadly, the voices of religious people (reaching out into many faiths, beyond even Christianity) that agree with the scientific community that evolution happens, and has become an established theory, are lost in the din of assenters, including atheists, agnostics, etc. Then when the only people of religious persuasion that are heard are those who dissent, the rest of us get lumped in with them because we share a single common denominator. It's just as bad as calling Germans Nazis, Muslims terrorists, Americans fat, and the French sissy.
In their defense, according to the theory of relativity, you can just as easily say that the Earth is just sitting here while the rest of the universe spins around it.
No, you cannot.
Velocity is relative, but acceleration is NOT relative. An orbiting body is in constant acceleration, so A orbiting B is not the same as B orbiting A.
(nitpickers will point out that they actually orbit their shared center-of-mass, but you know what I mean.)