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Louisiana Passes Intelligent Design Law
H0D_G writes "The US state of Louisiana has passed the 'Science Education Act,' a piece of legislation that could allow Intelligent design to be taught in schools. From the article: 'The act is designed to slip ID in "through the back door"'"
Teach the non-controversy.
Teach how evolution (the materialist atheistic type) is as "established as gravity."
Then go into detail about Origin of Life scenarios.
Explain in detail how evolutionary theory explains the Cambrian Explosion.
Describe in detail how evolution made complex biological structures such as the human eye.
Explain how evolutionary theory solves the problem that DNA cannot exist without protein and protein cannot exist without DNA.
And when you're done, after you teach about all the intricate biological structures, we'll be there waiting for the kids, thanking you for doing all our prep work.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Since all of those things can be explained quite clearly, I'm not sure why you'll be waiting for the kids other than perhaps to start undoing our good work of helping them become conscious, confident, self-sufficient, intelligent, knowledgeable, open-minded, free-thinking little people by brainwashing them.
Or fucking them.
I'm never quite sure which one it is that you guys like to do first.
You know, not all of us who live here are 'backwoods hicks'. Louisiana is just the same as the USA. It's as fair to call everyone from Louisiana a 'backwoods hick' for this and saying we have no one to blame but ourselves as it is calling everyone from the USA 'idiot cowboys' because the USA elected Bush and he did all the crap he did.
I'm personally embarrassed that this bullshit has happened, and am very upset about it, but you're just being a douchebag.
Oh, and before I get any crap about 'Then why don't you just move?', ask yourself the same question whenever the USA does anything you don't like.
1930-1940s Germany
Interesting you should cite this example, that is, an atheistic regime whose ideas were drawn heavily from Darwinism.
Proverbs 21:19
I'm going to generalize here, based on several years experience living in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
The people who live in Louisiana are a very very stupid lot. Naturally, you're going to find a few very brilliant outliers, but most of them are superstitious morons. This "Intelligent Design" law is only the most recent bit of evidence.
Next case.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'd mod this troll if I had points, and I'm agnostic...
Saying with conviction that "there is nothing metaphysical out there" is just as big of a leap of faith as saying there IS a god. To me the fact that there is anything that exists at all suggests that there is something metaphysical (at the very least relative to our universe), though obviously it can't be proven to the extent that you probably want due to the nature of metaphysics.
I kind of find it interesting that on Slashdot any raving religious lunatic condemning the ways of the faithless would be modded -5 Troll, but when somebody bashes religion they're given a nudge and a wink.
Your failure is one of scale. You fail to take into account that this is one experiment. Nature doesn't work that way. Nature experiments with THOUSANDS of different "petri dishes" every moment of every day. It doesn't care about reproducibility or the scientific method. Another experiment might have made this switch in 20 generations instead of 44,000. And even if it took 44,000 generations, that's only 44,000 years for platypus's.
Parallel evolution, immense timescales. You don't go from a door-mouse to a platypus in one step. It'll take you 10 million years, the right conditions and a shit-load of serendipity. If you had to do it all over again, you could never guarantee it would happen because you have no idea of the selective pressures applied, when and in what situations they were beneficial.
We have proven that life EVOLVES. We will probably never be able to prove that all life came from a SINGLE cellular parent (probably because it didn't).
You are correct that the scale increases the odds exponentially. I do acknowledge your point, although it reminds me of an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters...
My point was that no matter how many petri dishes you start with, all those dishes still work independently of each other. No matter how many petri dishes are thrown in, it's still a straight line when tracing the platypus back to a single dish. Granted, there will be branches, but since those die off or do not be come platypuses, we shouldn't consider them when working backwards.
I guess my point is an issue of math and lack of evidence. Let's assume that a mouse generation is one year. We have about 65,000,000 years since the anything much larger than a mouse became extinct along with the dinosaurs. That gives 65,000,000 generations for a mouse (or something like it) to evolve into an elephant (and all other mammalian life, but let's concentrate on the elephant). And, 65,000,000 generations is generous since as life gets more complex, the time between generations increases, but we'll stick with that.
Since we have accurate mouse specimens dating back at least 2000 years (being conservative), with little or no change, we can assume that detectable changes take more than 2000 years. That leaves 32,500 generations for a mouse to evolve into an elephant, which is a pretty big change and can not happen gradually. Shouldn't we see the mouse evolving at least somewhat in either the lab or in our sewers? Shouldn't we have at least one species mouse we can point to and say that it evolved directly from that species of mouse over there?
Of course, that's just mouse to elephant. Throw in your own examples; mouse to humpback whale, mouse to human, mouse to mastodon, it doesn't matter.
These are just questions I am genuinely seeking answers to and this seems like a good place to ask them. I am not a biologist, so I'm fairly ignorant when compared to one, but I do have a basic grasp of how evolution works. My question is basically, "Was there enough time?" and if so, "Why don't we see more of it?"
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I don't see why I should respect your beliefs to not be a 'fanatic'. seems an unfair definition. how far should that respect go?
are you a 'fanatic' for not respecting Muslims' rights to 'honour kill' their daughters?
I think the whole concept of respecting opinions or beliefs is where things go wrong. I respect no ideas; they should stand on their own merit or else they deserve to be ridiculed.
respect should be reserved for human beings themselves, not their beliefs.
the basics are separation of church and state, free speech, and not physically attacking anyone. beyond that, if I think believing Jesus is going to take you to paradise is retarded (which I do), then I can and will say so. that does not make me a fanatic.
>I said simply that here on /. it is more common to find atheists more inclined to be aggressive on the defense of their beliefs.
really? I call bullshit.
as an atheist I strongly disagree with religious people but would never wish to harm one.
can you point to popular atheist writings that come anywhere near the level of violence and threats that you can find within seconds of opening the Bible?
I think most Christians disagree with the disgusting behaviour in the Bible, but they never say so. yet you seem very eager to expect the worst from atheists though.
You mean like with global warming?
Now, I'm not saying it isn't happening but the solutions seem to be more political then practical and it is definitely laced as a bill of goods. I mean hell, even the inconvenient truth was fabricated in places and the goof got a nobel prize (understand the spelling, I'm showing my contempt). The film is required in many schools in order to indoctrinate the masses. Hell, Gore can't even practice what he preaches. His mansion in TN uses more energy then the small town it is in/beside. You know, do as I say, not as I do.