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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"'"
...we all know how Christianity feels about slipping things in through the back door.
about time to move to Europe :(
Watch this be shot down in court like the last one in....
ID is such a piece of bullshit.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
in before priest buttsecks
Makes sense...after you've experienced the great flood (Katrina), why shouldn't you believe everything else in the Bible?
.. as it also opens the door for the teachings of our noodly saviour
So, when are they going to give equal time to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Kevin Smith on Prince
As a member of the Church of FSM, I am insulted. If they are allowed to teach ID in the classroom, then the story of the Flying Spaghetti Monster should be allowed as well. Blessed be his noodly greatness!
priests should do it, but not talk about it?
intelligent design (ID) - the proposition that life is too complicated. Go go Ganesh!
Stop believing, start thinking.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
are we so afraid that science will lose the fight?
Sounds similar to our irrational fear of communism.
The truth will win out in the end.
And I don't mind letting kids know that maybe (just maybe) science doesn't have all the answers.
Dawkins doesn't have all the answers, you know.
Wait... i don't live there!
This woman is acting like the law is changing the facts... sounds to me like they are trying to allow teachers to present both sides of the argument... I thought we WANTED our children to learn how to think on their own, not to be spoon fed theories that are widely accepted (and taught) as fact but still not proven.
Will they pass a Flying Spaghetti Monster law, too?
It's at least equally as valid as ID.
Next time when the Hurricane strike, you know god is pissed about something.
they are almost always at the bottom of the list when it comes education in this country or are the butt of jokes about being backwoods hicks.
If they like being laughingstocks, that's no skin off my nose. They have no one to blame but themselves.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
ID is not science. It's not even rational thinking. If we're going to teach ID, why not Astrology and Palm Reading while we're at it? They're every bit as valid as ID.
If I had a kid in the Louisiana school system, I'd start home-schooling (assuming I hadn't already).
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
eh...build a ark.
Disclaimer: So damn funny that stole this from someone else.
All glory to the Hypnotoad!
The Long Now Foundation
Sciense as in... spontaneous generation of life from rocks? Riiight...
Dear Louisiana,
Please do not slip anything through my child's back door. Intelligent design or otherwise.
Yours,
A Parent.
PS: I look forward to a pirate-based global warming curriculum.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
"Science Education Act"... beautiful.
Choose:
A. Freedom: (Teach all versions)
B. Censorship: (Teach Evolution only)
C. Censorship: (Teach ID only)
D. Teach nothing.
First the Church did censorship (B), then the scientist did censorship (C), I think it is about time for Freedom (A).
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
... right where ID belongs.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Changed his name from Piyush because he was ashamed of his Indian heritage and could never become a politician in the bible belt with that name. Same reason for changing his religion and becoming Cristian from Hindu. Whenever he is asked about his India heritage, he refuses to discuss it (see his recent Q7A on CSPANN) almost as if it is a dirty little embarrassing secret. He never talks about his parents and refuses to be seen with them in public places. There is absolutely nothing wrong in changing your faith, but shunning your parents, historical root and then pretending to be a white guy just to fit in .... Well I guess thats why he is a politician
There's no need to be a "Bible-belt" politician - a simple politician will do.
It seems that in Louisiana the Bible thumpers have gained some pretty big influence, if the 94-3 and unanimous votes mean anything. A veto would have no chance to stand, so Jindal took the easy way out and signed the law.
However, he might have lost a lot in the process. By not challenging the majority, he just stands in the middle of the mainstream. If he had vetoed the law, he would have stood as a voice for reason. He might have lost the next election, but he's liable to lose it anyhow, since he seems to be indistinguishable from at least 94 other politicians.
Intelligent design in Louisiana...
...is not even the fact that Intelligent Design is ironic in its title, but that people actually think it is *valid science* -- it's not even science! At MOST, this should be taught in a philosophy class, and nothing more. I don't care how many people are supposedly of the Christian faith, it is not valid science, therefore should not be taught in science class. End of story...
There are mountains to cross for those that are willing.
'The act is designed to slip ID in "through the back door'
You wanna do what what, in my butt?
Whenever I see or read about religious fanatics of whatever creed do their things to try to stop science, I just watch this video from Discovery Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at_f98qOGY0
It reminds me that the world is filled with people who love the world just like it is, and who are curious about how it all works, and who wants to do real science.
The creationists and other science-destroying idiots can't win against that, it's like trying to stop children from being curious.
So relax. The ID agenda is just religions resisting change in a world that is slowly but surely becoming more secular. Real science will win in the end, it always does.
Why is the act called the Science Education act while no science at all is involved?
Here is the first comment from the linked article: "I support this move. I go further to say that we should stop teaching physics and chemistry in school. These so called 'science' are controversial... Imagine trying to explain a force that can not been seen, felt and is suppose to hold sun and earth together (gravity). This is all guess work. And this thing called the 'atom' is just plain silly. Do 'chemist' expect people to believe that every thing is made of something called the atom. And that by simply rearranging 'atoms' we get things with different characteristics. Different colors, melting temperature etc. This is just too much to believe. I have never seen an atom nor have I seen gravity. I suggest that we teach children magic, holy prayer and alchemy as an alternative to this dogma of science. It would teach children critical thinking and not limit their view of the world to dogma. Children should have an open mind."
I have to wonder how wide-spread such beliefs are in the United States. I fully support religious teachings in an appropriate setting, and even welcome religious classes in a public school setting. This, if done respectfully, can lead to greater understanding and unity. However, to give primacy to a view that discounts all modern science is absurd.
To be fair, I am responding to a comment on the article and it may not be representative. But I have to ask whether individuals that express views like this realize how ingrained modern scientific knowledges are within our society. It may be 'guess work', but guess work has brought us cures to many diseases, prolonged our life expectancy, etc., etc. . There is nothing dogmatic about the fight to cure cancer, or to stop climate change, etc.
So, I guess we'll finally here the truth from the government on why aliens from Area 51 made so many homosexuals?
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
If our youth is educated to think that for every unexplainable phenomenon in the universe, that intelligent design is the cause, then what chance do we have of actually expanding our knowledge of the universe through science? All that this would seem to accomplish is an overwhelming inclination to just throw in the towel for "spooky" phenomenon.
The way I see it, our scientific future is going to be divided amongst folks who want to get to the bottom of things, and those who think I.D. is the cause hence "Nothing more to see here, let's move along people". The world is setup that way already, this would only seem to make it worse.
FWIW, I grew up a Christian and blindly believed the world is as it is because God made it that way. I've since come to the realization, like many others, that although this may be true to a certain degree (if you believe), leave it out of the schools. Let schools teach "the world" and churches to teach "The other stuff". Just my $.02
You know what.. I'm glad. Let them pass their laws that teach creationism in science class. I have a daughter and I want her to shine above her peers. I will teach her science and will make goddamn (haha) sure that she understands evolution. Let Louisiana turn out semester after semester of students who don't understand the scientific method. Let those kids be bypassed for good paying science and technical fields. It's a shame that the Louisiana kids will suffer, but you know what, better for my daughter.
We cannot trust students to believe the correct things if we allow them to be exposed to ideas that we disapprove of.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
First of all, this is a dupe.
Secondly, while nervous, the ACLU says this bill is not unconstitutional.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Wonder if I'll be reading about this in 20 years from the prospective that this is what allowed religious fanatics to create generations of religiously indoctrinated Christianized children that jail and execute intellectuals.
What they really want is creationism. Like in Teh Book. If they can't have that, they settle for the next best retardation, as long as it is not that evil Darwinian heresy. It is not really about them particularly hating evolution, its about them still being pissed off because they were proven wrong. They would do the same with Copernicus, if they could.
It's not like I said anything that wasn't known for centuries, either.
I am a creationist and I believe in the literal translation of the 7 day creation. But this is absurd. Creationism is part of a doctrine of *FAITH*. There is no way to prove it. It was never observed and it cannot be tested. It therefore has no basis in science at all. If Louisiana wants to teach creationism, they should have an elective world religion class and it should be covered as a minor footnote as part of Christianity (Maybe Judaism?). I am appalled when either side of this debate tries to pass their personal beliefs off as science. Look, if it can't be observed, tested and reproduced then the answer to the question "We just don't know".
I hear this excuse for ID all the time. "We need to teach both, for the children to have a well rounded education".
I'll meet them half way. Go ahead teach your ID in schools, For The Children. And because we care so much that the children receive both sides of the story, you start teaching evolution in Sunday School. After all, it's for the sake of the children.
Science education in this country is getting ridiculous. We go and try to teach scientific "facts" to kids before we actually teach critical thinking and scientific method. It's the NATURE of science that there are - or should be - no "sacred cows" - including evolution or ID or whatever. There is NO room for dogma in scientific thought, and we are seeing way too many people discount notions of the supernatural simply because it's supernatural. Science should be open to everything - including the unmeasurable and unexplainable.
This is indeed a sad day for science and for the United States.
Where are the news channel science corespondents? Doesn't anyone in office have an idea of science vs pseudo-science religious fanaticism.
We are getting closer and closer to the societies we claim as terrorist societies every day. These societies have based their governments on what "god" has told them to do. We are just one step closer now.
The submitter could have at least linked to the text of the bill that was actually passed instead of linking to a piece of alarmist journalism. I really don't think there is anything for us to be worried about here. The act allows teachers to "use supplementary textbooks and other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner." Teachers cannot teach ID or creationism. In fact, the law "shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion." Additionally, Joe Cook, director of the ACLU for Louisiana has said that the act is constitutional as written. This bill is probably totally unnecessary, but simply promotes objective thinking about all scientific topics. Now that is scientific right?
When decisions made are based not on reason but on faith what actions follow are certainly unreasonable.
Once again the poor public school science curriculum is exposed. If the adults pushing this garbage had been taught what science is, they would not be so easily duped by the snake-oil salesmen posing as modern day prophets.
I am appalled at the acrimonious nature of so many posts when a subject like this comes up. Is Darwinism so sacrosanct that it can never be questioned?
There are questions that Darwinism cannot answer. Intelligent Design is about a search for the answers to those questions. Intelligent design theory does not say that the universe is too complex to be explained by evolution. Many things are very complex. A pile of sand is complex, for instance. And a pile of sand might evolve if more sand were dumped on the pile every day. What separates one type of complexity (such as a pile of sand) from another type of complexity (such as a living organism) is that one type seems to require some kind of intelligence. In that respect, the universe and a good book seem to have more in common than a sand pile has to either of them.
Proverbs 21:19
American schools: brought to you by the same great people who created the USPS and Guatanamo Bay.
Give parents vouchers, and let them decide how to educate their children. If we let the government decide what to teach, than we're no better than the system used in the USSR. We cheered when they dumped socialism, yet we've allowed that same system (government control of gritty details) to control our kid's education. Gritty details include evolution or intelligent design. How did we get into such a mess that governments are deciding this stuff?
Free unix account: freeshell.org
Perhaps, they feel with the change in composition in the Supreme Court with Bush's last couple of appointments that this has a better chance of standing up that previous attempts.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
So instead of focusing on rebuilding your hurricaine-damaged homes, you decide to damage your education system and make it an even greater laughing stock than the Kansas Board of Education. I would normally applaud this because it opens the door for teachings about His Noodley Appendage, but of course, do you really think those right-wing nut jobs are going to let the FSM be taught along-side ID?
If you want to know more about the modern form of ID, read up on the main proponents and creators of this "theory": the Discovery Institute. You'll find that they aren't really a scientific body so much as a political group founded by Reagan-administration bureacrats that are propping up phony scientists.
You'll also find about their manifesto, known as the Wedge. Their agenda is really just to force the Christian God upon all of us. Also, read up on the Dover trial, where one of their main "scientists" had to admit under oath that for ID to be considered science, the definition of science would have to be changed to allow astrology to be considered science as well. Wikipedia's good for all of this.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
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.
That's the real problem. We need to teach critical thinking so that people can recognize the morons when they see them.
No sig today...
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html
So, should we also protect teachers who simply ACKNOWLEDGE the fact that not everyone believes the Earth is round?
A teacher's job is not to tell the children what some people believe, his job is to teach what is known to be the most accurate theory in existence.
As for teaching alternative views, I have nothing against that, as long as they are presented exactly as that: alternative. If a teacher presents the "ID" theory in class, it should be shown why ID is not a reasonable alternative to evolution. Children should be aware that ID exists, because they will find it mentioned outside of class, but they should be aware that a well-informed and intelligent person would have absolutely no doubt that evolution is the correct alternative.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No need. All the Flat Earthers have moved on to ID. With no more FE believers, the earth has taken on a distinct curve so any hurricane waters will simply run off.
How do you teach a lie that has absolutely no physical evidence? That's not teaching, that's preaching and it has no business in the public schools.
Trust me, this one will be shot down quickly and in the most embarrassing fashion for its supporters.
Everybody knows that there's no religion other than Discordianism! Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia!!!
And suddenly found one with white eyes instead of black. Anyways, for your information, one more example, just to proof a point:
"Biologists find unexpected rapid evolution in Caribbean lizards"
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-07/wuis-bfu071303.php
So I would back the statement that evolution is a fact in the sense that we see it happening, and a theory in the sense that we don't completely understand it yet.
But just because we haven't found the gravitons that are supposed to mediate gravitational forces doesn't mean gravity is a 'theory'. I hereby dare you to stand under a jack fruit tree.
Personally, I don't mind if my kids were taught ID, or astrology, roman myths or Vietnamese Buddhism for that matter, but there's a place for those things, at least in Finland religious studies (and for the non religious, âoephilosophy of lifeâ-classes, yes literally translated). The basis of scientific thinking is, that yes, alternative theories are to be studied, but an acceptable theory must be provable and disprovable. The existence of God(s) are neither, nor is ID. Unprovable theories are for theologists and philosophists, and their respective classes at school The mark of a good scientist is the ability to scrutinize everything, from their own attitudes, to their own theories and to theories of others, and a certain willingness to be converted into a follower [sic] of another theory, a trait lacking in most religious people (which is good, as in many western religions, that's part of the point).
From the bill:
"[...] promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied, including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning."
I really can't see what is so wrong with "objective discussion of scientific theories".
ID is not a scientific theory and thus has no place in such a discussion. Also if the discussion was really "objective" then the sheer merit of the theory of evolution should shine through.
If a teacher teaches ID side by side with evolution, then parents can still sue or press charges.
Dorothy: "I don't think we're in Kansas any more, Toto!"
More seriously, Intelligent Design is a belief, not a theory, and doesn't belong in school. It scares the bejesus out of some folks, though.
It needs to be pointed out that even the Catholic Church accepts the theory of evolution, and also that ID does not conflict with evolution. Science and religion answer different questions.
There's a /. sig that reads (and my quote is probably not exact) "poop is a wone word argument against intelligent design". But actually as an engineering solution poop is elegant. Cows eat grass, which turns to poop, which fertilizes the grass. It is akin to making a car whose exhaust helps produce gasoline. The laws of thermodynamics make such a car impossible, of course, but God managed to do it with the cow.
Cows are tasty, too. The US's national religion worships a golden one.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Here
Best Slashdot Co
Ever. So never question it.
How do you propose science does that, exactly? Do you know what science is or how it works? Were you "educated" in Louisiana?
I'd love to hear your ideas on how to scientifically test something you can't measure. Even better, tell me how science should pursue the unexplainable since, by definition, it's unexplainable (according to you).
Once upon a time people couldn't explain why or how illnesses were passed on, but science came up with the germ theory of disease. Would you prefer that we just continued to think of it as unexplainable or attribute it to demons and hating Jesus?
Alas, I am becoming a god.
I really hate my state sometimes. The foods great but a lot of the people really suck.
Politicians do not have a higher calling to enforce the norms of either "science" or "religion." They are where they are because people elected them. If this is what the people of LA (not teh intertubes) want, and it doesn't violate someone else's rights, and they're not taking ToE out of the discussion, then this entire thread and article is just more railing against viewpoints that you deem inferior.
If you believe in rational discussion and the scientific method, then presenting ID as a theory doesn't matter. Virtually anyone with a higher than lukewarm IQ is going realize that it isn't science. And anyone with a lower than lukewarm IQ, well, who cares if your gas station attendent believes in Creationism or ID.
What's the alternative? If you don't believe in rational discussion and the scientific method, then you have to start censoring what science is taught in schools. "No, you cannot, under penalty of law, discuss Creationism... or Intelligent Design... or Global Warming Denial... or anything that conflicts with Scientific Consensus! And we get to decide what is consensus!" And we all know that consenus is always right!
And if 100 schools in Louisiana teach Intelligent Design along side Evolution, well, freedom sucks, doesn't it.
Since this seems to be a forum for rehashing the ID debate and since it appears to be very polarized over religion... Here's a Christian who agrees that the ID camp has not been able to produce a valid example of irreducible complexity.
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.
I've never read about intelligent design, but I don't see why people couldn't say the big bang was done purposefully with the notion that life would be created on X% of planets throughout the universe.
Furthermore some of the inherent laws of the universe that limit us seem to make sense as to why they exist. Such as the restriction on the speed we travel. It pretty much limits us traveling great distances to find other life until we are "ready" to do so, at which point we are likely to not be so hostile to what we find (I would hope).
Whoops, painting with too broad a brush here! You're assigning the blame of a small group of individuals in the Roman Catholic sect to Christians as a whole.
Baptists, Church of God, many Episcopalians, and other "Christian" fundamentalists in those sects believe that homosexuality and any sexual activity other than vaginal sex is sinful.
What's in common is the individuals in those Christian sects that are fundamentalists.
You need to get your facts straight.
I know it's cool to hate Christianity right now, but at least get your facts right.
Only on websites that are frequented by pseudo-intellectuals who have two bit opinions and accuse others of not getting their facts straight when they themselves have no clue.
You know, God can be a little time-challenged sometimes, a side effect of being omniscient (order of things gets mixed up). This law explains Hurricane Katrina; God's punishment for this law, as well as Huey Long.
(For the sarcastically challenged, this was meant as a joke.)
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?
"Dawkins doesn't have all the answers, you know."
Blasphemy!
n/t
FTFA: She adds that the bill's language, which names evolution along with global warming, the origins of life and human cloning as worthy of "open and objective discussion"
now we can start debating global warming as the bullshit science that it is.
I've been a long time reader here but never posted until now. My tolerance for intolerance has reached a critical mass with this stuff. I've grown pretty weary of supposedly "open-minded" and "tolerant" individuals from both camps spewing their venom on others.
I am a scientist. I have been a passionate student of the hard sciences (physics, chemistry, astronomy, etc) all my life. I am an engineer by profession, trade and training. I absolutely devour all the science television programming, scientific literature, etc. I can get. I am also very much a "fundamentalist" Christian, what most of you guys would call an "idiot" or a "nut job" or a "wacko".
My personal view of all of these types of debates is that science and faith are not mutually exclusive. Both are dedicated to the pursuit of truth. One studies the wonders of the Creation and the other the wonders of the Creator. My belief in science is not so small as to not be open to all possibilities not disproven. My faith in my Creator is not so shaky as to not withstand critical thinking.
People of faith are often attacked as "ignorant" or "uneducated" or "bumpkins" or "fundamentalists" and "zealots" but I would like to put forward the observation that many of those applying those labels are most often just as zealous in defense of their favorite theories, philosophies, etc. I think we have just as many Churches of Darwinian Evolution and Secular Cosmology as we do Roman Catholic, Baptist, Episcopal, Whatever Churches. I am not a Christian because I have been "indoctrinated" or "brain-washed". I have read. I have studied. I have questioned. I remain still a scientist AND a Christian.
I wish that as educated, self-proclaimed men and women of intelligence we could realize that open-minded discourse and critical thinking are vital to healthy science and healthy faith and, indeed, a healthy society. I wish we could just stop applying labels and displaying our collective ignorance by bashing others with blanket statements and insults. I no more believe that all people of faith are "ignorant idiots" than I believe that all scientists are "deluded Godless heathens". The universe is a magnificently beautiful, ordered, expansive and complex place. Just because we don't yet, in our limited understanding, see how it all fits together doesn't mean that it doesn't. I think we could get to that fuller understanding a lot quicker if we spent less time in low-brow bickering and hate-mongering (on both sides) and more time in the pursuit of a holistic understanding of that beautiful universe.
Just my $.02. Flame away.
I love the way those who appear to be strongly backing ID are getting flagged as Trolls and Off topic. Is that how evolution became fact in schools, just ignore every other possiblity? (for the record, I am not saying either is true or one is better than the other, just interesting how irrational people get when their opinion gets attacked)
Here is my helpful strategy for K-12 teachers in this state:
http://dotphys.net/files/science_act.html
Truly a sad day for America.
Please tag with 'zealotry'
As a lawyer, i am tired of hearing from the ACLU about separation of church & state. there is no such thing. the supreme court re-defined the 1st amendment which they are not supposed to do or any other judge. the 1st amendment means that the government not be partial. ready to learn some history you won't be taught in public schools?
The supreme court took one passage from Jefferson's Danbury Baptist speech and inserted it into the 1st amendment. whats funny is that Jefferson was not talking about taking religion out of public life. All of what i am about to tell you isn't fake, it's in black and white in your public library and in the library of Congress.
In Everson v. Board of Education (1947), the United States Supreme Court was asked to interpret the First Amendment's prohibition on laws "respecting an establishment of religion." In the words of Jefferson, the justices famously declared, the First Amendment "was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and State" "[that] must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach."
Since then, the "wall of separation" has changed meaning...the notion that the First Amendment separated religion and the civil state, thereby mandating a strictly secular polity.
Time to learn some history. the Danbury Baptist letter was a response to John Adams and other Federalist foes who saw him as an outright atheist and once he was elected people vilified him and started worrying that they would be burned at the stake for carrying their Bible or preaching. People saw him as an enemy to religion. In his letter, Jefferson said. "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."
Although this letter is thought to a statement of a constitutional relationship between church and state it was in fact a political statement written to reassure pious Baptist constituents that Jefferson was indeed a friend of religion and to strike back at the Federalist Congregationalist establishment in Danbury, Connecticut for shamelessly vilifying him as an infidel and atheist in the recent campaign. Throughout his public career, including two terms as President, he endorsed the use of federal funds to build churches and to support Christian missionaries working among the Indians. The absurd conclusion that the ACLU, judicial courts and the media would have us reach is that Jefferson routinely pursued policies that violated his own wall of separation??? Jefferson's wall, as a matter of federalism, was erected between the national and state governments on matters pertaining to religion and not, more generally, between the church and all civil government.In other words, Jefferson placed the federal government on one side of his wall and state governments and churches on the other.
Jefferson's refusal, as President, to set aside days in the public calendar for religious observances contrasted with his actions in Virginia where, in the late 1770s, he framed a bill for appointing days of public fasting and Thanksgiving and, as governor in 1779, designated a day for public and solemn thanksgiving and prayer to Almighty God.
The First Amendment, with all its guarantees, was entirely a check or restraint on civil government, specifically Congress. The free press guarantee, for example, was not written to protect the civil state from the press; rather, it was designed to protect a free and independent press from control by the federal government.
Why this concerns me is because the wall is all too often used to separate religion from public life, thereby
gays and straights aren't competing for market share.
I'll say. I haven't been asked out by either side in months.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Obviously they do have that right. And we have the right to take them to court and have this ridiculous law thrown out, which is what will happen, proving the system works. Now take your sorry ass simplistic libertarian 'the free market fairy will come down and fix it all' philosophy and shove it up your ass.
Public education is a public good. We all benefit from having public education. I won't have assholes like you taking it away. You can try, but you will fail. If you want to live in libertopia, you'll have to go build it yourself rather than stealing my country.
Sorry couldn't resist writing that ...
I have to say that while I fully believe in Evolution Theory I always thought that ID SHOULD BE TAUGHT. Why, because it is a contentious and current topic. Secondly, because it is the counter-point to Evolution. It's hard to make a proper case for Evolution without discussing in depth the alternative(s).
Moreover, isn't a fully rounded view what we are striving for? To be clear, we want to be able to say that we have discussed all the major points of view and that we have a sensible rationale for our beliefs or disbeliefs.
BIG NOTE: People who believe in ID aren't likely to be swayed by science. Their point of view is intrinsically non-rational (not rooted in logic); it is theological, psychological, or emotional. However, our kids should not be unprepared to duel with the ID proponents on their own ground. If they are, they may one day be swayed by them for less than rational reasons. AND, if we can't talk their language how are we going to sway them ;)
Lastly, I have a problem with not considering the other guy's point of view just because he/she is on the other side of the politial/theological/ fence. There is something wrong with that.
So, I have no problem with ID education. It all depends on how it's taught. If it's taught as theory or theology- then good. If the teacher stops every 10 minutes for a Hail Mary or "Go Jesus!"- then BAD!
(disclaimer: I'm a tech monkey not a priest or biologist)
/LabMonkey09
was the first time I'd heard of religious types trying to sneak something in the back door, at least where school children were concerned.
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
Why don't the IDers slip in a different spin:
./big-bang ...
~/god# make
~/god#
** universe created
** planet Earth instantiated
** animal life evolving
** humans emerging
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
"My aversion to homosexuality has nothing to do with Christianity. My aversion is rooted in evolution; the "yuck" factor maintains reproduction. Evolution depends entirely on reproduction!"
alright, your stance and all that...
But how do you reconcile that with:
"A lot of Christians make too much noise about a minor sin [...] while ignoring major sins like [...] adultery"
Surely the adultering person would be much more adapt at furthering evolution? Whether it be the a guy impregnating multiple womens or a woman getting pregnant from different men (and thus a larger gene pool).
Something tells me the foundation for your aversion is on.. well not shaky ground, perhaps, but have you heard of the tower of Pisa?
But it's not in a biology-related field, so I'll first focus my comments on your points.
For what it's worth, I (almost) completely agree with your post. Certainty may not be the antithesis of science, but it is to the scientist as humility is to many religionists: Something we seek, but of which we should never claim to achieve absolutely.
The hardest thing for me to beat out of new grad students' heads is the idea that the model is reality. Even if we hold to positivist notions (and not all "scientists" do), different models approximate reality in different contexts. You adequately described a few of those in physics. In softer "sciences", it can be much messier.
That said, regarding the TFA: Because a model's usefulness varies by context, which model is taught and when it is taught should be dictated by the context of the learning. If you're in Sunday school, being indoctrinated (not used in a pejorative connotation - the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance is indoctrination as well) into some moral code, there may be some justification for ID... though I can't think of any.
In a science class, the models that are most useful in the context of science - at the students' current level - should be taught. We may even teach models that are less useful to real scientists because they are more useful to the students: We teach about electron orbits in grade school, even though we don't accept them as a completely accurate description of those subatomic particles' behavior/existence.
Lest my comments be construed to imply some sort of support for this law in LA, let me be clear: ID is not a useful model in the context of science. In a religious or philosophical discussion, it may serve some purpose, but not in science. And, as has been stated many times in this thread, it's not even because ID is wrong; it's because it's not falsifiable. Most students learn aspects of Lamarckian evolution because we can test it and show through evidence that it is less useful than Darwin's ideas. ID doesn't even get that far, which is why it is so dangerous.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Unless they are dropping in at a relative velocity of ~100mph, they turn water into steam.
There is quite a lot of difference between the two.
I'm from italy, which i can say is the most catholic nation ever. Here we MUST attend to one hour of "catholic lessons" every week during high schools, unless your parents (since you are not 18teen..) write a signed letter to the principal allowing you to do something else on that hour. However,luckily for me, as an intelligent human being evolutionally-created even after hours of forced bible readings i developed without any problem my scientific point of view.
I hope, well i believe, louisiana kids can do the same.
Children go to school to learn things that are of the temporal world, not the spiritual world. That's been the basic agreement of public schools. They learn what science knows. I'm very deeply faithful, but I do not want my son learning about someone else's religious beliefs being rammed down his throat. I came to believe what I believe through my own relationship with God and that's for me to explore, and no one else. In matters of this world, though, evolution is accepted science, and, until we have a better, scientifically provable model that makes better predictions than evolution theory does, then its time to shut the f-- up. Same goes for GW too. I'm a skeptic, but until I write a better program than Hansen's crapp y FORTRAN, what I've got is not -science-.
The main thing though, is to teach children the basics of science. Like, if you ask a question about how the world works, how do you organize your thoughts into a program so that you can come up with an experiment to answer it, and in doing so, how can you understand the limits of your own answer? If you do that, first and foremost, and from an early age, you'll have an entire generation of people that are thinking properly.
This is my sig.
If they are just making a requirement to give equal time to the major alternatives, thats ok.. If they are trying to push it so you only get one view point, then no, its not ok.
Disclaimer: Personally i think ID is just plain silly, but they should have just as much right to express their loony opinion as anyone else in a tax supported education system.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
He was born on the same day as Abraham Lincoln - Feb 12th 2009. Newsweek compares the two men, giving a slightly great edge to Abraham in terms of historical importance. Hopefully the 2009 celebrations will clear up some of the fundie BS about Charles.
The real reason you cannot teach intelligent design in school is because there is no difference in the following answers to the question, "how did life come to be?"
1) God did it.
2) We don't know.
So, teaching intelligent design doesn't get you anywhere. If you'd like to live in a place where the government and religious leaders decide school curriculum together, I hear that Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia are lovely this time of year.
It's very important that we present both sides of these issues, otherwise how will the children know that people of Jewish descent were merely relocated during the period 1939 to 1945 in Germany? Bit of a straw man, you say? Sorry, I'm an Engineer. And I make this particular extreme comparison in defense of my future young colleagues in the great state of Louisiana. My job is to tell the truth because when I don't tell the truth, people die! Sometimes lots of people in certain engineering disasters actually. And I'm afraid you can't give equal time to a lie because the act of giving equal time to that lie gives it a legitimacy that it does not deserve. Teach whatever you want in home school or private school, but teaching this garbage to future Civil Engineer's who I am going to be relying on to build useful infrastructure and follow specifications is a serious problem for me. These are smart kids, if they really have some doubts about evolution I trust them to go take a look at the competing nonsense being propagated.
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
I remember this topic coming up in uni Logic/Philosophy where there are a number of reasons why this isn't valued in pre-college schools:
- Culture Mindset
Our culture values having kids obey elders. Telling kids they can question elders or authority at 8 year old runs contrary to that. What parents want their kids to questions about their chores instead of doing them? In our culture, kids frankly aren't independent where although it isn't true that kids can't think for themselves, we never ask them too for serious topics till they are "mature enough". Can 8 year old kids really make independent, complex decision about a complex world when they haven't experienced much of it?
- Harder to teach, hard to test
Although I have no expertise in teaching, I suspect its difficult to teach 8 year old kids "critical thinking" without resorting to the very techniques complained about (ie. drill text/example/facts into their head). I also suspect its harder to design test to see if they were paying attention. Its one thing to ask a hand full of 20 year olds to read dozens of philosophers across the ages and design essay tests to see if they understand logic and philosophy behind the writing. I can't imagine the setup necessary for 20+ 8 year old kids to begin teaching let alone testing.
- No Tangible "Payoff"
Its kind of a side effect of the previous problem. Its easier to justify money gym equipment or a math book than it is to justify logic/philosophy books. You can give balls and clothes to the school and check back later to see if they are wearing or using the equipment. You buy books and software and can test kids to see if they can solve a math problem (they may not understand it, that it another thread for another day). Its harder to measure how much critical thinking 8 year kids do let alone if they have improved after buying them books.
If you really believe that "critical thinking" is important than it needs to be taught as "fundamental", like reading and numbers, which I'm not sure there is a school anywhere on the planet tries that. My view has always been that pre-college is too soon to teach many complex topics. Saying "kids should be taught to think critically" is like saying "kids should be taught multi-variable differential calculus". Yeah it would be nice if kids "knew" those wouldn't it...
One word .. Dover.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District
If you get a chance I highly recommend the Nova episode on it.
'The act is designed to slip ID in "through the back door"'"
I thought that sort of thing was illegal in the Bible belt.
I'm so sick of Christians (ie: Baptists) giving the rest of us a bad name. Anyone willing to interpret the Bible especially the old testement literally is a moron. It was never meant to be interpreted that way. In fact, many of the stories relate back to pagan stories, so why not teach those in schools - since they were the original stories?
but little Johnny is disrupting the class. He keeps arguing against current scientific thought. He knows his math and spelling. he seems to be real bright, but he keeps brining up arguments against global warming, evolution and a few other theories we need to indoctrinate the class with. If he can't tow the line and regurgitate what we teach him, we will have to expel him from classes. It is only politically correct for him to do this. Please help us in training him to think right, I mean left, I mean correctly.
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
It'd be much easier.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
I'm aware complexity by itself does not mean design. I just want the science establishment to lay the groundwork for ID.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
i hear screams of "ID isn't science, these theories must be test and proven to be science". evolution is as tested and proven as ID is. we don't have evidence, look around you, we don't see animals or plants in the middle of a species transformation, (evolving from one species to another). there is ADAPTATION, but not evolution. we don't have *proof* that everything alive today evolved form simple organisms into the vast, complex organisms we have today. so, when it comes down to it, evolution is as scientific fact as ID. they are both a belief in something that we can never prove, because we weren't there. faith has been called "believing in the unseen", so if you use that definition, you would consider both evolution and ID as "faith" based theories, so why would it be ok to teach one in the classroom and not the other?
So that you have a chance to hear more than one side of the issue:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjNjYTNjMTVkNmVhMmYxN2JkMWZhMzYzMGNjNzY4ZDE=
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
This will bring the Slashtards out in record numbers. Maybe if the bible said God was an alien that would be retarded enough for atheists to go with. Atheists are without a doubt the least intelligent people on Earth.
If this was done right it could be used to teach tolerance to the approx 270 large religious groups out there. It could be tied in with history or social studies. I think it is much harder to hate or fear a religion that you've learned about and even better met someone face to face who practices it. Often it's exciting to see how close your religion is to another persons. For example "Wow you had a giant flood too?"
I wonder though if this is going to cause a flood of charter and private schools based on "hard" science to open and the parochial school kids to return to public schools.
Don't anthropomorphize computers. They *hate* that.
That's ok, we don't need any illiterate cajun scientists anyhow.
They must be trying to redifne the word "science", since it is completely impossible for ID to be thought of as anything remotely science given the current definition of science.
Here are a number of definitions of science:
[from dictionary.com]
- systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
- knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study.
[from wikipedia]
Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is the effort to discover, understand, or to understand better, how the physical world works, with observable physical evidence as the basis of that understanding. It is done through observation of existing phenomena, and/or through experimentation that tries to simulate phenomena under controlled conditions. Knowledge in science is gained through research.
The best that I could do for ID being in science is placing it in psychology, as a study on the relationship between IQ and belief in ID.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
I both graduated (quite a while back) in and live in LA. I fail to see how this article is anything but fiction, as there is nothing intelligently designed in our education system.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
Faith is believing without evidence. Science requires evidence before deciding whether to believe or not believe in a hypothesis.
There is scientific evidence for evolution. Evolution is a theory in the sense that it makes testable predictions, and when we test those predictions, the evidence matches the predictions. We cannot see the Big Bang or the continents move thousands of miles, but there is lots of evidence for believing the Big Bang theory and plate tectonic theory.
ID says we should find ample evidence of "design" in living organisms that could not have occurred through mutation and selection. So far, there is no evidence that gives us any reason to believe it. ID is not proven at all, as opposed to the massive amount of evidence that backs up the theory of evolution.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
First, I highly recommend you read "Finding Darwin's God" by Dr. Ken Miller for an interesting treatise on the interplay between the realms of science and faith.
But more than that I recommend that rather than shoehorning the idea of spiritual faith into an idea of science you accept that for most people faith has little to do with making a metaphorical reference to natural phenomenon. It may turn out that you're precisely correct - that the idea of 'God' is best equated to the idea of the 'Universe as a whole'.
It may be - and probably is - that spiritual faith has little to do with 'using scientific tools' at all. It doesn't have to do with equations or with rigorous processes. Indeed, if you compare the modern conception of science to Buddhism's Noble Eight-fold Path, it fits pretty well into step five; begging the question of what the others are, or are for?
Traditionally the answer to that has been a very personal one. But I encourage you to recognize that while you can say that science is a way of examining God, this is not true for all people - that spirituality has little to do with the explanation of the material experience. Until there is that general acceptance there will be a great deal to fight about.
[Ego]out
I am not a lawyer but I thought it was the Supreme Court's role to interpret laws. Unless you have a time machine or can raise the dead, we can't ask the founding fathers what they meant when they wrote this stuff on parchment over 200 years ago.
In Everson v. Board of Education, SCOTUS deduced that Jefferson mean that there should a separation of church and state. Some would argue that Jefferson actually meant that the government should not prefer one religion to another. However in practical terms, if government cannot prefer one religion to another, it either must separate itself or recognize them all equally. So the Church of Flying Spaghetti Monster gets equal funding and consideration from the state as the Christians or the state gives no money or consideration to either.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
One argument against supposing an intelligent desinger is that the desing is not all that intelligent
For eksample the human eye has the optic nerves on the inside of the eye redusing space for light sensitive cells and making a blind spot where the nerves come togheter and leaves the eye. Some species of octopus has this the right way, but as humans according to the bible are created after the sea-creatures it is strange the designer did not keep this better solution.
The human spine seems like it has been designed for moving on four limbs and given some minor tweaks to fit bipedal movement. Maybe the designer was too short on time to redesign this properly?
We have multiple nerves that are wired in a way that allow a strike to the wrong (or right dependig if you are the striker or the strikee) place to disable a person completly. Maybe fighting was not in the original design goals.
These weaknesses must mean the desinger was not omniscient, or maybe lazy. Or maybe there was some other reason, makin life more challening? I dont know.
These weaknesses can be explained by evolution.
Because any change to happen in evolution there must be a path in "gene-space" from one form to the new where every step in the way is a improvement on the previus step. Creationists tries to use this property of evolution teory to disprove it by trying to find exsamples of features where there can be no such path.
So a specie can be "trapped" in an local optimum in the "gene-space" until a change inn its enviorment causes it to no longer be an local optimum, a big (beneficial) mutation causes it to make a big leap in "gene-space" out of the local optimum or it goes extinct.
The big mutation event is the least likley one, but considerig the timerframe and the number of species and individuals it probably has happened may times.
Everytime this issue gets brought up, the same hatred comes out. Why do Atheists feel the need to continually make fun and blast the views of the religious? Conversely, why do the religious blast the views of the atheist?
Why do you who believe that all of a sudden a big bang occurred and all the atoms that we know of suddenly appeared and formed the planets and the stars think that that theory is any more credible than a God all of a sudden creating everything?
What was there before the big bang? If you have read the theory of everything by stephen hawking, he even proposes that 'something' else had to be present in order for the universe to be created. How did the big bang occur and how did everything react so perfectly at just the right temperature in order to expand the universe?
For the evolutionists, how come only one species evolved, out of the billions on earth, that have the mental capacity as humans? No other species have the abilities we do. How did humans luck out? Why isn't there another type of creature similar to the homosapien? You would think that other combination of molecules would evolve to the same point. For the creationists, why isn't there a companion species to the humans?
Nobody knows how the universe was created, nobody knows what was there BEFORE the universe was created, nobody knows where the atom came from, nobody knows where humans came from.
Everybody needs to stop blasting each other when neither side knows what is going on. Big bang (and hence evolution) is just as mythic as creationism.
Intelligent design for stupid people.
People that are unable to rationalize the complexity of our world and crave for simple explanations instead.
-- Truth suffers from too much analysis.
As a God-fearing, Bible-believing, born-again Christian, please allow me to weigh in.
Don't judge us all by the wackos who buy into religion without doing any independent thinking or studying of the beliefs of Christianity; these are the lemmings in the group, not the "sheep in the flock". These are people who grew up watching the Flintstones cartoons and believe that was scientific fact. These are people that take the allegory and context out of sacred texts and twist them to support the cause-of-the-day. These are people who espouse beliefs and perform acts contrary to the teachings of Jesus and the Word of God. These are the people who think they have a lock on the afterlife and would prefer that you act like you believe as they do rather than believe the way that they do because deep down, they know they could not defend, justify or even explain their peculiar set of "known facts" about Creation or Christianity.
In other words, they're an embarrassment. Every religion has them and to our shame and regret, we let some of them stay in charge. These people certainly don't need to be in charge of educating public school children. And ID doesn't deserve to be taught there.
Where? Considering what a mess we're in you would think they could have done a better job.
I think the consensus logic of /. posters has led to an inescapable conclusion..
If the children of La are now doomed because they MIGHT not be taught the ToE as absolute fact in a government run school, then it follows that people like Newton, Hume, Hobbes, Voltaire, Galileo, Descartes, Plato, etc must have been retards, because they weren't taught the ToE either. Worse, some of them may have been taught Creationism instead.
So I guess we need to go ahead and throw out their works and go back to drawing board now that we have solid proof by consensus that their education was fatally flawed
As a life-long resident of Louisiana, I can tell you that I won't be wringing my hands over this. 20 years ago, public school sucked, and it sucks just as bad today if not worse... it's more like an Orwellian prison than it used to be. Send your kids to private school or home school them if you care about their education.
So when will the students themselves sue? If I was the head of a department and someone said they had a science degree from Louisiana, I would be less than inclined to hire them because I know their teaching of science there is highly flawed.
Why are so many Slashdotters fearful of opposing viewpoints? Every time there's an article posted about Creationism, ID or Evolution, most of the comments are just one straw man after another. Get off your intellectual high horse and engage in the discussion scientifically, not irrationally. Science (including Evolution, Big Bang and Anthropic Principle) is your religion whether you admit it or not. Stop being a zealot and start thinking critically.
The more I read, the more I think you americans are fucked
Um, I wasn't aware that microorganisms reproduced sexually. I thought that Escherichia coli reproduced via mitosis, not meosis?
we don't see animals or plants in the middle of a species transformation
All animals and plants are in the middle of a species transformation. That is why it is called "evolution."
No offense, but for the record, the parent post is a great example of how ID advocates spin evolution into a non-science.
For something to be science, it must be testable. You have to be able to experiment with it to either prove or disprove it. You cannot do this with intelligent design, therefore it has no place in school classrooms. Anyone who calls this science is daft and needs to have his/her head examined. I a not saying that science and religion should be mutually exclusive, because this is not true. If there is indeed a God, what better way is there to show our appreciation than to strive to understand the universe around us that he created?
So, if nature we're observing is too complex to have evolved through a basic set of rules and requires a divine creator to come into existence
... then who the hell created the supercomplex deity ?
I smell a new religion folks.
"Violence is the last refuge of the competent, and, generally, the first refuge of the incompetent" - Thing_1
Ever. Kthx.
I can ask the question: "what is natural selection?" and get a reasonably precise answer.
I can ask the question: "what is God?" and spend years getting no answer.
Natural selection is something that can be subjected to the scientific method. God cannot be subjected to the scientific method. So even if you are right and God is responsible, God is still not science. You can teach ID in a philosophy class, and say it's an alternative theory to science. That's fine. Just keep it out of science textbooks, because God is not and never will be science.
There has been a lot of discussion of this type of stuff over at http://www.jerrypournelle.com/
What is the big deal? Can allowing local schools and local teachers to set their own policies be worse than centralized control? Say a handful of schools (or even a handful of states) taught intelligent design over evolution (or FSM over evolution). Would that really be the end of the world?
I think that people who get all worked up over this are 1) too optimistic about the ability of schools to shape children, and 2) too fond of the same centralized control that has destroyed the education system in this country.
See that "Preview" button?
These people vote for such a law, yet they don't think it is possible that they are related to monkeys?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Current evolutionary theory doesn't hinge on speciation.
If you insist that evolution is only true if there is speciation, the problem is with what you are insisting, not with evolutionary theory.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Were I a college or university official selecting students from various national high schools, I would immediately exclude all graduates from the State of Louisiana starting three years hence. This would apply to all fields of study because science, along with reading, writing and mathematics, makes up a central core of educational training essential to High School graduation.
There is one simple reason: The students may not have been taught scientific rigor, that for a hypothesis to be proven it must be supported by observable, repeatable facts. And any science teacher who teaches that "science" permits a hypothesis or theory to be supported by wishing, conjecture, supposition, acts of unobservable forces and so on is not appropriately training students for any future in higher education. And I would have to say that it is not the job of my college or university to teach remedial science to students who ought to have been correctly taught the basics in high school.
I should mention that the Pope has stated that Darwin's theory of evolution [is] compatible with Christian faith. And anyone who has actually read Darwin's Origin Of Species By Natural Selection and The Descent Of Man will quickly come to the conclusion that Charles Darwin was a very religious man and couched his arguments in terms of his own beliefs, but never once deviating from scientific rigor in his statement of his hypothesis.
The Christian wing-nuts who would teach religion as if it were science have managed to confuse the English definition of the word "theory" with the scientific definition of that word. In English, the word allows for considerable uncertainty whereas, in science, a hypothesis becomes a theory only upon rigorous peer review and only when not disproved by physical evidence. During Darwin's lifetime, his book was always seen as a hypothesis and it graduated to the level of theory as actual evidence that supported his statements came rolling in.
There is genetic and physical evidence for Darwin's statements on natural selection. And we have evidence supporting evolution and none, whatsoever, for any other hypothesis for how plants, animals and humans appeared on the earth.
I would urge any college and university admissions offices to consider denying admission to any and all students who have not appropriately learned science, which means they have been taught to not follow the rules of scientific enquiry in schools in Kansas (in the past) and Louisiana (going forward).
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Absolutely correct, in some respects. Misleading in the case of this article.
What you are missing is that (if, as has been done before and incorrectly) the creationists wish to teach their religion, there is a time and a place. Creationists have so far, undeniably, chosen to teach religion in Science lessons. In my country, you can't even teach religion in Religious Education lessons - you have to teach what the curriculum tells you to teach even if you're a satanist and satanism isn't on the curriculum. If you disagree, get the curriculum changed - but the curriculum SHOULD always be set by experts in the SUBJECT CONCERNED. Hence, religious experts should get as much say in a Science lesson as Scientists do in a Religious Education lesson. NONE.
Teaching creationism (as it currently stands using their previously-displayed tactics) in a Science lesson is the equivalent of me coming into your church/mosque/other place of worship, forcing science textbooks into your congregation's hands, demanding that Bibles all carry warning stickers about how unverified their sources are, lecturing to them about how wrong they all are, and FORCING THEM TO LISTEN.
In fact, it's worse than that... it's the equivalent of me doing this to YOUR CHILD'S SUNDAY SCHOOL, with nobody but a scientist "at the front of the classroom" and you not being present, for MANY HOURS a week. That's what creationists are asking, trying and in fact to some extent have achieved in certain states for a limited time (until uproar ensued and EVERY governor was thrown off the board and replaced with someone who DIDN'T believe this was a good idea).
Nobody cares about what anybody "believes in", what most people are concerned about are the methods, the venue and, to a much greater extent, the back-handed forced-ignorance of established curricula. Creationism in Science is the equivalent of being forced to learn that Pi is four in Maths, that full stops and commas don't exist in English, that sitting around makes you fit in PE or, indeed, that electricity runs through cables not by the transference of electrons but by the "magic angel dust" that a God put there in Science. They aren't relevant or correct within the scope of the subject being taught.
This is a SECOND underhanded attempt to change the law in a state in order to teach religion in something not a religious lesson (which is illegal in my country, by the way, even in a school with a stated religious bent). They call it a "Science Education Act" when it has NOTHING to do with Science. They slip it in after previously-dirty tactics failed. That's the problem, not what they actually WANT to teach (even if they were fighting for the teaching of the existence of the spaghetti monster, they are DOING IT WRONG, and the same people would STILL be up in arms).
That said, I'm a scientist. I think creationism is a load of pretentious, fabricated, illogical bunkum, more so than most religions that I hold to be merely completely untrue. But I don't go into RE lessons in the schools I work in and tell them that, or force them to recite it. If I did, I would be sacked. If any teacher in the schools in my country did, they would be sacked and quite possibly sued (and if the school allowed it, the school would be sued, etc.).
From TFA, here is a truly scary argument:
"Academic freedom is a great thing," says Josh Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California. "But if you look at the American Association of University Professors' definition of academic freedom, it refers to the ability to do research and publish." This, he points out, is different to the job high-school teachers are supposed to do. "In high school, you're teaching mainstream science so students can go on to college or medical school, where you need that freedom to explore cutting-edge ideas. To apply 'academic freedom' to high school is a misuse of the term."
Man, I'm sure glad I didn't go to a high school where such an idea held any sway.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
"I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.
Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.
It is for this reason that Iâ(TM)m writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal action. Iâ(TM)m sure you see where we are coming from. If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith.
Some find that hard to believe, so it may be helpful to tell you a little more about our beliefs. We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it. We have several lengthy volumes explaining all details of His power. Also, you may be surprised to hear that there are over 10 million of us, and growing. We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence. What these people donâ(TM)t understand is that He built the world to make us think the earth is older than it really is. For example, a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 10,000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5,730 years. But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage. We have numerous texts that describe in detail how this can be possible and the reasons why He does this. He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease.
Iâ(TM)m sure you now realize how important it is that your students are taught this alternate theory. It is absolutely imperative that they realize that observable evidence is at the discretion of a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Furthermore, it is disrespectful to teach our beliefs without wearing His chosen outfit, which of course is full pirate regalia. I cannot stress the importance of this enough, and unfortunately cannot describe in detail why this must be done as I fear this letter is already becoming too long. The concise explanation is that He becomes angry if we donâ(TM)t.
You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.
In conclusion, thank you for taking the time to hear our views and beliefs. I hope I was able to convey the importance of teaching this theory to your students. We will of course be able to train the teachers in this alternate theory. I am eagerly awaiti
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
"Unless you have a time machine or can raise the dead, we can't ask the founding fathers what they meant when they wrote this stuff on parchment over 200 years ago."
sure we can. for example i just quoted and explained only a few of Jefferson's texts which can deduce that he was not against having religious expression in the public square. If the supreme court wanted to interpret what Jefferson meant then surely they would have come to a decidingly convincing conclusion that religion expression in the public square is ok and that there is nothing unconstitutional about it.
if you also look beyond just the constitution(since SCOTUS wants to pry out one sentence from a letter that they mis-interpreted) you would be able deduce that the founding father saw fit and saw it good for religious expression and religion to be involved in the public square in including schools.
SCOTUS and judges are to interpret EXISTING LAW. It is not their job to re-interpret it, add to it, take away from or dilute from it. It is not their job to second-guess what they thought Jefferson meant or what the 1st amendment was supposed to mean when coinciding with Jefferson's Danbury Baptist letter. Instead, in this particular case, we know how Jefferson felt because of how he acted and legislated as president and as governor. Like i said it's right there in black and white but SCOTUS seems to be not concerned with that and want to rule based on what they think. This is dangerous for everyone.
SCOTUS and judges are not there to be the thought police. It is up to the legislative representatives and the people that they represent(you and i) to make the laws that we see fit, thus giving power to the people and their statehood, rather than a few blackrobed judges.
Sensible people always think and rule and err on the side of caution. Usually judges that sit on a bench are rarely sensible and this includes SCOTUS.
If:
1. The remaining work available in the U.S. is intellectual, and
2. Louisiana chooses not to teach their children to think logically and clearly
then,
Thanks, Louisiana, for helping to reduce the competition. Hey, the need for manual labor can be underestimated.
Well, I call myself an aignostic because there is the very distinct possibility there is *something* out there. But he might be completely unlike anything we have ever seen before. Something totally outside of our understanding. And we might have as much chance understanding it as your average amoeba does understanding Humans.
If "God" were really like that, Christians would have a real serious problem. He doesn't answer prayers, he didn't send his son to die on a cross, we made all that up.
Consider this.
Lets say, 500 years from now we are a space faring species and in our exploration of the universe we find a big unknown energy "thing" out in space, and it claims that was the very first organism in our universe to achieve sentience after we find this thing. (and after we find out how really to communicate with it.) That it really is observable and "there." and it has to operate within the boundaries of our universe. It just has been around so long it knows how things work and how to make things we don't.
What have we found?
I'm not saying thats the way it "really is" I'm saying that if in our future we start really encountering other organisms more advanced than Humans, the three religions are going to have a serious problem. Because, no God didn't create Humans in thier Image. And the whole Christian, Muslim and Jewish theism falls apart.
Here I fixed it for you:
Louisiana proves Intelligent Design Flaw
Oh, the sweet irony - the mere fact they are passing this proves intelligent design is a failed concept.
Teach the controversy.
sic
I'm sorry but they could solve/stop all these stupid debates in one fell swoop if they just had a seperate and different "Religious Studies" class. This does not force people to believe in god but actually allows them to debate theological issues, even for atheists it's a great lesson as it teaches them to understand others.p.s. I'm an atheist but still really enjoyed the lessons. I guess one proviso would be that you'd have to be allowed to question anything.
Thanks for the history lesson. Unfortunately, Thomas Jefferson did not write the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment. It is widely attributed to James Madison, who introduced it to Congress on June 8th, 1789.
Madison's proposed amendments to the new US Constitution were based on George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, which were introduced into that State's constitution in 1776 and written with Madison's input.
There were twelve initial articles offered to the US Constitution, and ten were ratified right away, with the other two, one on Apportionment has never received the approval of enough states for it to become part of the Constitution and the other on Congressional Pay Raises was not ratified until 1992, when it became the 27th Amendment.
While Thomas Jefferson may have looked on and cheered their passage through Congress and their later ratification by the States, he was, at the time, serving as the first Secretary of State under President George Washington and not involved directly in the passage of bills.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
The problem here isn't that kids should not be told what the idea of intelligent design is. We discussed it in my honors U.S. History class when I was in high school years ago. Ideally, as part of forming citizens in a democracy (as opposed to simply preparing kids for entry-level jobs in a service economy), public schools ought to be encouraging critical thinking and free-ranging debate. The fact that my history teacher described what intelligent design claims in no way threatened my integrity as a person or my understanding of science and reason. As long as kids are also presented with evolution and informed that this is the consensus of the scientific community, intelligent design is not the problem. The real problem is that kids are not being taught critical thinking and so they have fewer defense mechanisms to protect themselves against any bogus arguments. This is what happens when you cut the humanities and arts out of schools. Instead, we are creating legions of high school grads eminently suited for reading scripts and taking orders as telemarketers and fast-food cashiers. - Michael N. Escobar, San Francisco, CA
When the Creationists kids are injured or seriously ill they take them to the hosiptal, which is essentially a temple of science. When it comes to modern western medicine, most of the Creationists must agree that science works.
When Science directly contradicts their mythology then science is bad.
Remind me again why anyone takes these fools seriously?
Why are we so concerned about the origin of species being taught in schools? In my highschool we spent less than 40 minutes on Evolution and Creationism was mentioned (in Bio class). Why are we so concerned about this? Isn't it better to focus on the constructs of the science and focus on its real purpose then in debating the dogmas behind the two points of views? Its not like we aren't already finding it difficult to teach kids enough in School now already, why waste too much time on this issue, when the scope of most secondary science classes is to instruct about how to study and use science in those areas, rather than bringing these issues to light. I just have never understood it. And get this, I am a Christian, I believe in Micro-Evolution, but not Macro, at least so far, that Macro Can't happen on its own (If God wanted it to happen who am I to say it couldn't), but for high school biology and anatomy, shouldn't they be focusing on things that actually prepare those kids for college and allow those who want to specialize in such areas to have the opportunity at the College level to learn as much as they want?
... "No Platypus Left Behind"?
I always figured the command would be something like:
...
~/deity@cosmos# make world
checking for omnipotence in use... yes
checking whether to support http... yes
enable greed exploit check... no
# Building reality
# Creating universe
# Generating E.A.R.T.H.
Evolution is a fact. Like gravity is a fact.
The method in which evolution takes place is the theory, just like the method by which gravity works is a theory.
"Just let poor gullible children think for themselves for once!"
Giving somebody wrong information and the 'letting them think for themselves' is not the way to go.
"but on the other hand, neither is there any concrete scientific evidence of evolution,"
Could you be more ignorant. Here is a clue: Study some before spouting off and making a fool of your self. There is volumes of concrete scientific evidence.
" apart from the strong surviving over the week,"
And that further shows you have no grasp of the theory of evolution, a.k.a natural select.
With the theory of evolution, you can run tests and make predictions. If you can't do that, it's not a scientific theory, hence ID should not be taught in a science class.
You got a different theory? lets see the falsifiable tests.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Faith is the stalwart of religion and doubt is the stalwart of science but both are the opposite of certainty. If catholicism, the most hypocritical church on earth, has no problem with Darwin's ideas then why is it such a problem with other religions.
Supports of I.D must remember that limiting the discoveries of science is akin to limiting the glory of god, knowledge is not evil and neither is the extension and application of science. The discoveries of science test the limits of our understanding of the universe and should be seen, as such, to expand the understanding of the works of god. A God doesn't need defense from anyone and testing the limits of biology doesn't resemble testing god, it only tests the most pathetic of literal interpretations of the bible in it's most evangelical insecurity. If atheists test god, why do you care, who are you to judge? If atheists want to commune at the limit by saying god doesn't exist, who cares, you can't save anyone.
Atheists croon about people who have a faith and how stupid they but forget that a lot of people draw comfort from faith because there is a difference between intelligence and wisdom - it doesn't mean either is right or wrong - just different ways to get to death and that life can be a shit fight sometimes. We all have freewill with no interference, that's why you can choose what you believe, that's why you can't blame god for suffering in the world - because it's our world, our domain.
That said, I believe I.D is a blasphemous work of satan designed to dumb people down and distract them from what's important. Education is a weapon against suffering.
I think that it's really shitty that Atheist's and Theists are wasting time on this debate instead of standing up for things that matter like challenging human rights abuses, poverty, tin pot dictators, corporate corruption and so many other issues worth pursuing. Things that affect us no matter what we believe in.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
If ID is so preposterous why are the proponents of evolution so against it being taught. From the text of the intro to this, it claims that it would "could allow Intelligent design to be taught in schools." It doesn't say anything about it mandating it be taught or that it would taught exclusively. Why try to shut down discussing alternative views? Isn't evolution still a theory? That I know of it has not been proven without a doubt. What makes me really wonder is why, somehow evolution stopped before man knew it was happening. There is micro-evolution, within a species that is still evident today but One species becoming another is that evident. Dogs may evolve but they are still dogs. Through enviromental changes and selective breeding dogs change but they are still dogs. If it were truly a series of random events that occurred over "billions and billions" of years why is it not still occurring. Offspring of a species is always within the same species.
I think its interesting how everyone who claims to be for the free and open expression of ideas is against presenting both sides of an argument in our schools. Just present both sides of the argument to us, and let those of us in school decide for ourselves who to believe, we are not as dumb as you think we are. :0
but these ID messiahs will be the first against the wall when the evolution comes.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Because Big Bang theory makes predictions, such as the existence of the cosmic background radiation. That's the difference between science and religion. Science makes predictions that can be tested. Religion depends on blind faith.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Zeitgeist
I have no aversion to adultery and in fact recently was very tempted. But one has an aversion to his or her (especially his) partner committing adultery and I think that is surely from evolution. Kids from unstable homes, especially back when the world was more dangerous, had less chance to survive to puberty.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I should mention that the Pope has stated
This isn't going to help your case. You do realize that some of the ID'ers, Young Earthers, etc. are also of the belief that the Pope is literally the Anti-Christ incarnate on Earth, right?
I just wish our legislatures would spend less time on issues regarding the worship of YHWH.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
...falling should be taught at school too.
What is wrong with all of you geeks? Can you no explanation whatsoever on why gravity works? Yes, they got something about "gravitons" but no one has been able to prove their existence much less see one.
For that reason I demand that the theory of intelligent falling should be taught as well because it has as much evidence to support it as gravity.
Thank you for your time.
...but I do believe in Creationism. Many here have stated that they are waiting for the theory (yes, I will admit that it is a theory) to be proven before it lands in science class, or that it should be relegated to the philosophy and religion discussions and never make its way into scientific circles. To this, I will state that from what I have seen, creation has no fewer holes than evolution...
Evolution states that we came from a "big bang". Before this big bang, everything in the universe existed as pure energy, then for some reason, space and time came into existence and all of the matter that we see today is a result of this sudden, massive transformation of energy into matter. My question is this: First, if matter didn't exist before energy, then what triggered the "bang"? Next, for the bang to happen, laws of physics would need to be in place. So did the laws of physics always exist? did energy always exist? did time always exist, or as I said before, was time a result of the big bang? How did this explosion trigger the creation of space?
Next, has there been any documented case in which a non-living collection of inorganic matter spontaneously became a living organism? Has this foundationally important step ever been observed, measured, or repeated? Even if I take the Big Bang by faith (is there a better description of it?), how did we end up with life?
Now, let's assume all of that. If we take the idea of life becoming increasingly more complex over time, the problem arises that in many cases, gradual changes would be impractical. A practical example we have seen is germs resistant to antibiotics. I'm not saying that there isn't a degree of practicality to this school of thought. Still, it's far from comprehensive. For example, every form of life would need a means of reproduction in every generation of its existence. If there was a problem with this reproductive system at any point, it would be the end of the species since it is incapable of producing offspring. Along a similar vein, every organism has a means of sustaining itself. In most cases it's either photosynthesis, digestion, or chemical processing (as we see on the floor of the deep sea). How could the process of turning light into usable energy have been done gradually? In the case of mammals, how could the process of digestion have been done gradually? Without a fully functioning digestive system from the start, mankind wouldn't last long enough to reproduce itself and sustain the species. A more glaring example of this would be the Bombardier Beetle, whose defense mechanism, if incomplete, would result in the immediate death of the organism. Even if it had a fully functioning digestive and reproductive system, it wouldn't live long enough to use them!
These are just a handful of problems with the theory of evolution. Like creation, much of evolution must be taken by faith. The difference between myself and many of those who believe in evolution is that I have absolutely no problem admitting it.
Joey
The universe, life and my Jaguar and Mac all appear to have been designed. Where do we find random movement of molecules creating complex information? How does life create an operating system and the ability to process energy at the same time? No order = no life. No ability to create negative thermodynamic entropy = no life. No ability to create negative Shannon entropy = no life.
If natural processes created life then why do we in science do require reproduction of results in all areas except evolution? Why the exception for just evolution. The evolution exception is called faith (faith in natural processes).
Richard Lenski has gotten zip for results (e Coli processing citrate is nothing). What Lenski has demonstrated is called stasis. 100% of his work has shown that make evolution is as real as the Piltdown Man and Haeckel's drawings ... which Miller used in his textbook til 9 years ago (even as they were known to be faked 100 years before that).
Stanley Miller's life work (all of it) is evidence that life does not arise without supervision.
"Religion depends on blind faith."
first of all dont put Christianity into the same category as religion because Christianity isn't about a religion or about works. Christianity is about a personal relationship Jesus Christ. Thats what separates it from the rest of the religions out there that base there doctrines and beliefs on works false idols.
Christianity today is so watered down, it has made itself a mockery in society. If i were to go all around my neighborhood and ask everyone if they were a Christian most everyone you would find would say yes but most of them would have no clue as to why. For those that venture off to tell you why they would say something to the effect, "i am a good person.".
Actually whoever says they are good is a liar. I am not good and no one on here posting is not good. If you have lied before you are a liar. if you have stolen something you are a thief. If you have lusted after another woman you have committed adultery in your heart. so by definition of those 3 things and i imagine most of us in here are guilty of all 3 we are lying thieves and adulterers and nothing you can do or say can save yourself from this fact. This is why and how the actual teaching of Jesus in the Bible squashes the idea that works somehow will get you into heaven.
secondly, it is not all blind faith. It is revelation from God through scripture. Maybe we should all read it more and understand that the Bible is the oldest text that is taken by jewish and secular scholars(non-Christian and Christian) alike to be historically accurate. This fact is undisputed.
So really the only thing is question is, was Jesus both God and man as the Bible claims to take the punishment of sinners through his death and resurrection on the cross, because the only default payment to us coming was death(since nothing that we can do can satisfy payment) or was He just a mere man who said some good things.
If you have experienced spiritual healing of the soul, changed from your old self, your heart made anew and your eyes have been opened to truth then that is not blind faith. That is personal experience of genuine regeneration through the Holy Spirit. No one can dispute someone's testimony if they claim it to be true unless you can find a way to somehow make it untrue.
Also the tomb is empty. Jesus' body was never found and has never been found. Thats where Christianity lies all the chips on the table. If Jesus did not rise from dead, then all is lost and Paul in the Bible says we are the most to be pitied and even make a case for believers that we would have the most reason to party and live it up. But his body has never been found. Joseph Smith, Mohammad, or any other "god" that people claim are in their graves as dust now.
but Paul celebrates and records that after Jesus rose from the dead He made Himself visible to more than 500 people all at once in different parts of the land. He challenged men to go and see from themselves to hear their personal testimonies, and yet the rulers of the day nor the unbelieving found that anyone was lying about what they saw and there was no way that 500 different people in different parts of the land could come together to form a conspiracy about what they saw. there was no phone, text messaging or internet.
Of course someone will discount this whole post because they don't believe the Bible is true yet they won't give you any explainable, plausable reason why they don't other than they think it is ridiculous to think this or that which is being intellectually dishonest.
It's good to know that these guys have such firm faith in their beliefs that they know the only way to express them is to crawl in through the back door.
Well then let's not let it in the backdoor. The first thing we can do is stop calling it 'Intelligent Design' which is a pr-term to disguise what it really is: Creationism (or in my mind: A step 1000 years back in time for real science.)
And if you are a grown, college educated person, who believe that the Grand Canyon was formed by a three day flood, you are not a believer. You are a fool.
Why oh why is there a need for such a law?
Fourty-two!
Creationist and ID'ers use the same facts as scientists. Mainstream scientists interpret *the* facts in light of their religion of Science. ID'ers and Creationists interpret *the* facts in the light of their religion. Notice I didn't say "their" facts, because everyone has the same facts, they just interpret them differently. They interpret the facts based on different preconceived notions - for instance, many radiometric dating techniques are flawed because there are variables that are assumed, like the concentration of a certain isotope in the environment. Since none of us were around on the day a certain dinosaur was buried, we shouldn't assume that we know the concentration of C14 in the air. Scientist that argue for "old earth" put their faith in layers of speculation instead of being honest and saying "yeah, we don't know the beginning ratio of C14 to C12, so we're not going to speculate".
by DaveScot
So Louisiana has a new law allowing science teachers to teach the weaknesses of time & chance evolutionary theory.
What's the big deal? Evolution by time and chance is as well tested as gravity for Pete's sake. How long does take to convince a kid that when he throws a baseball into the air gravity will pull it back to earth?
According to the theophobic evolutionists there are no weaknesses in their theory.
So the teacher will quickly present just a small fraction of the "overwhelming evidence" that time & chance turned mud into Mozart, he'll have a list of zero things to present to argue against it, and all will be well with nothing lost. The biology teacher can then go straight on to teach really important specific things like how fish grew legs and lungs, dinosaurs became birds, and hippos became whales. These are things kids need to know in order to be successful, productive members of western civilization. Without knowing these things all of science will surely collapse and with it all of civilization itself. We can't let that happen. Failure to convince children of the fact of evolution by time and chance is a risk that makes global warming look like small potatoes. This is Really Important Stuff.
Uncommon Descent
I can't think of a time when a narrative dream in the Bible was ever literal. Think about Joseph's dream, the dreams of the cupbearer and baker, Pharaoh's dream, and Nebuchadnezzar's dream. This too is an ALLEGORY. Peter, the one who experienced the dream, clearly explains that the message God sent to him was to be understood allegorically.
Please notice that the sheet with unclean animals was let down THREE times (10:16). Then...
19 While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him, "Simon, THREE MEN are looking for you. 20 So get up and go downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them."
The Spirit sent three men just as He had sent the sheet down three times. The focus is on people -- three Gentiles -- not food.
I think this is the New Covenant doctrine that is being illustrated:
Or is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since indeed God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith is one. - Romans 3:29-30
Remember what God said: Do not think that the Son came to abolish the Law. (Mat. 5:17) Not one jot (iota) or tittle has passed away.
>>There are plenty of well-documented examples of bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics. That, in the context the bacteria are in, is beneficial and passed on.
They become resistant by losing information. Same with malaria. Humans with sickle cell anemia get protection from malaria because their DNA has LOST information. String 'aaa' does not contain twice as much information as string '.
Natural selection offers no clue as where the larger set of information comes from that in turn LOSES information to become more able to survive. Behe has written about the edge of what natural selection can explain. His critics can't explain how life came to be as it is. So they are believers in magic ... results for which there is no provable cause.
What do you expect from a state that is virtually a third-world country made up almost entirely of inbred rednecks and niggers?
I always find it comical (or sad, depending on how you look at it) to see how ignorant the Slashdot crowd can be.
There are over 30,000 different "denominations" of "Christianity", and the vast majority of them, including Catholicism, make no dogmatic statement at all about the "how" of our coming to be (there are some groups that do, yes). That is left to the realm of science.
It irritates me to no end to see ignorant statements being modded up as "Informative" or "Insightful".
I see plenty of well founded but familiar criticisms of the intelligent design philosophy and its mind shrinking consequences, plenty of explanations of science, some ire aimed at the Louisiana legislature, but not a single question as to whether or not the state or federal government should be meddling in schooling curriculum in the first place.
No one questions the notion that government should be providing for our childrens' schooling needs, even though this law demonstrates the structural vulnerability of such a system when increasingly vocal theocrats obtain authority in these capacities. I'd like to see this example as fuel for a discussion of a free market in schooling. The religious can send their poor kids to creationism school and localize the intellectual damage, and the rest of us can select schools for the quality of curriculum and presentation.
I wonder how this law would affect private schools whose governing bodies wanted to fire a science teacher for introducing mythology into the class.
Let states pass legislation like this, on the grounds that they rename their science curriculum and classes to reflect what they're teaching: pseudo-science. That way, it's clear to everyone (especially universities) which students (potential employees) have had a proper science curriculum, and which have taken pseudo-science classes that teach them that non-scientific concepts need to be considered as legitimate alternatives to scientific ones. I could care less if a state wants to fuck up all of its children, and raise a generation that can't properly apply the scientific method, just as I could care less that there are millions of parents that do exactly the same thing to their kids with or without good schools today. But at least make it clear to everyone else what's going on and call it what it is.
You are confusing radiometric dating, used for determining the age of fossils millions of years old, with radiocarbon dating, used for determining the age of organic material thousands of years old. Sounds like you need to learn *the* facts before you can interpret them correctly. Anyway, if you have any solid evidence that either radiometric or radiocarbon dating is seriously flawed, let's see it. As far as I know, both dating techniques match other evidence. For example, radiocarbon dating matches what we would expect from historical records, and radiometric dating matches with the age of the solar system.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
1: Assuming straight-line evolution of a modern mouse genome into an elephant.
2: Assuming straight-line evolution of a modern mouse genome into a whale.
3: Assuming that the protoforms of these three species only diverged AFTER the death of the dinosaurs.
4: Mice reach reproductive age at 40-50 DAYS after birth with a gestation of approximately 20 days, and the female is fertile again within 1-10 days with a litter of 10-12. So, assuming mean turnaround of 80 days, that's 5-6 generations A YEAR (for math purposes, we'll assume 5.5, giving 11 generations in 2 years).
So, no changes have occurred in modern mice in approximately the last 2000 years?
65,000,000-2000=64,998,000
So how many generations does this give us?
64,998,000*5.5=357,489,000
And how much larger of a generational span is this than the simple E.Coli experiment?
357,489,000/44,000=8,124.75
And how much more complex is something like a mouse than an E.Coli?
And how much of even MAJOR revolutionary changes to the animal's biology would be visible?
And we're talking with a sample size of, easily, trillions or quadrillions of mice over that span of time, not just "One mouse was followed by one mouse, was followed by one mouse, was followed by one..."
That's the problem with your oversimplified model. You're looking for a serial, linear progression in what is a massively parallel environment with parallel lines of progression.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The word metaphysics is derived from a medieval compilation of the works of the philosopher Aristotle. The compiler wasn't sure what to call the philosophical books he placed after Aristotle's Physics, so he called them the Metaphysics. In these books, Aristotle discusses the nature of reality and the patterns and structures governing it. Discussing metaphysical questions does not imply that you're dealing with invisible extra-spatial and extra-temporal forces, as you imply.
I have to recommend Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World". It was required reading for an honors Texts and Critics class I took at an Engineering land-grant university, not even a crunchy granola liberal arts college.
In my local Christian school (Lutheran) they do this. Never really see secular schools do it, too 'controversial'. But the school I am talking about is big on making christian faith your own rather than just the one you have by default.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
Radiocarbon dating is a form of radiometric dating - that's a fact. :)
The three radiometric dating methods I'm aware of (Carbon, Potassium & Uranium) all start out with the notion that we know isotope ratios at a given point in history. But what good is counting half-lives if you don't know the starting quantity or ratio?
And even though radioCARBON dating is pretty consistent with written history, archeologist almost always give deference to the carbon date, even when multiple written references say otherwise. A good example is the dating of the Egyptian dynasties. Mainstream archeology is quick to point out, for instance, inconsistencies between radiocarbon dating and Jewish history, even if the Jewish history is corroborated by Greek history. It's just another example of modern arrogance toward our predecessors. Perhaps academia is just a little too "generationalcentrist", if that's a word :)
And where is what I asked for, the evidence that radiometric dating techniques used in determining the age of fossils are flawed? Radiocarbon dating is irrelevant to evolution, because it doesn't measure the long time periods over which species split. If you have the evidence I'd like to see it. I keep seeing over and over in this thread that scientists are unwilling to debate the facts of the matter, but those same people are unwilling to give specific facts to debate about. You are simply claiming without evidence that radiometric dating is flawed. There's nothing to debate, as it's an empty claim.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Is there a textbook I can reference?
I can picture what a science curriculum would be like but not an ID curriculum.
What gets taught each class?
What's the lesson plan, Kenneth?
Buddhism has an interesting viewpoint on issues like this.
You'll notice all kinds of gods in Buddhist iconography and mythology. If you're a Buddhist, you're not expected to believe in any of them. You can if you want, but belief isn't an end in itself. Belief is something that on its own is hard to maintain. You can't be expected to believe in something all the time.
It's this heavy burden of trying to believe in something all the time that is going to prompt the development of the Electric Monk...
Bow-ties are cool.
But evolution also isn't science.
I have never done this before, but this time is really necessary.
You're a complete idiot.
Hope this comment may help you exit from your religion and become an half-decent human being.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
This is not an empty claim, it's science, logic and math. Radiometric dating is flawed without a true benchmark. It's like determining the distance of a star WITHOUT establishing "standard candles". It can't be done. Radiometric dating is flawed in it's conception. You can calculate distance on a grid by determining the delta of y and x, right? So how do you determine the delta, if you don't have the origin? Now please tell me how the above is not true? How can you calculate the change in something when you only know the current state of it? This is just one example of how scientists make the data fit their preconceived notion that the earth is billions of years old, and thus capable of spontaneous generation of life.
It's a damned good thing we have more than one method of dating, and that we're all not epistemological nihilists who, out of a need to prop up a long-defunct view of the world, would deny any capacity to gain knowledge.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So instead of accepting the dates that have been observed by real people, you'd rather rely on dates supplied by faulty reasoning? Would you calculate your date of birth based on your height? I'm guessing not, because your rate of growth changes throughout your life. You might be better off asking some people who actually witnessed your birth (hopefully they wrote down the date) instead of relying on a date calculated based on unknown factors. On that note, dendrochronology is definitely a great way to date things, as you can observe that a new tree ring is created each season. Where it becomes black magic, though, is when a samples become ambiguous. Still, I'd probably trust dendrochronology over C14 > 2000yrs.
First of all, what real people? What are you referring to? Moses? Adam? Joshuah?
Second of all, what does anything of that have to do with radiometric dating? Maybe you comfort yourself with imaging that this colossal non-sequitur somehow debunks multiple dating methods that can be, in fact, synchronized with each other, but it makes you look rather sad and desperate.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
ID is not a theory. Please stop perverting that word. A "theory" is a scientific term for a model that is backed by evidence, has not been rejected by evidence, and is falsifiable.
ID is NOT backed by evidence and is NOT falsifiable, thus it is NOT a theory. It is a belief. Evolution can be proved wrong. ID cannot be.
While I think ID is total crap, it is potentially a valid theory. The premise of evolution is that speciation is caused by small, random genetic mutations that occasionally increase survivability. In order to "disprove" evolution, one would have to find evidence of instantaneous, large genetic mutations that are statistically improbable. This is exactly what the ID people argue. The problem with ID is that the evidence is really weak.
What do you think is more likely, A meteor that strikes the earth carrying the first bacteria, or heritability arising from natural chemical reactions? Is the meteor theory valid as a theory?
Bit of a correction first - what you stated is not the premise of evolution, it's merely one theory of how evolution could work. There are others, not all incompatible with each other.
Here's the thing which gets me about this whole thing - and I often find it hard to express this complaint clearly...
Science starts from the idea or observation that something did happen, must have happened, and attempts to find a solution that will fit the available evidence. There is life on Earth and we know it must have started somehow, and we assume there is a reasonable explanation for that.
Intelligent Design basically circumvents this. Rather than starting with "this must have happened, so there must be an explanation" it instead starts with its own premise and tries to substantiate it, mostly by tearing down competing theories. "Science can't sufficiently explain how this biological process could have come to be (never mind the fact that the previous statement may be false) therefore the development of life must have been guided by an intelligence."
I find this apparent negation of the basic model of the world's events disturbing - if things happen not because of an unknown cause-effect relationship but rather, because of an unknown intent of an unknown designer - if we make no assumptions that we can connect pieces of evidence and try to come up with a mechanical explanation that fits the facts, then what can we rely upon in this world?
I hope I've expressed my idea clearly. I have a lot of trouble trying to get this particular point across.
Bow-ties are cool.
Do scientists not accept many theories without direct evidence proving them? Do they not read text books that describe events that 'prove' theories that were written by people in the past whom they've never seen, talked to, or really know exist other than from what someone else or some other book told them?
But its silly to believe a book from a long time ago?
I believe in evolution, but these retarded arguements about how science has proof and is somehow different than religion on a cosmic level are just retarded.
In my opinion, if you truely believe we have the right idea about the origin of the universe, the big bang, or what happened in the universe billions of years ago, you are a very piss poor scientist.
Going on a theory, which was built on some theories which were built on some theories which explain events that we have no possible way to observe or test is just as dumb as faith in a mythical being that created the universe from nothing.
Everyone needs to stop with the religious wars, and like it or not, many scientists are religious zealots with a different god. I'm sure we'll have the scientific crusades soon enough.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
You're right about all those points, but I'd just like to point out that one of the bigger problems with a married priest is what happens to their property.
Generally, priests take vows of poverty, so they have no personal property any more. As such, managing priestly families is not something the church can do very easily.
Mind you, it's nothing impossible. After all, Protestants have managed with parsonages and without vows of poverty for a very long time now. But there are plenty of practical difficulties to the 'flick of the pen' approach.
That said, IMHO, they should allow married priests. But that's just me.
Why would anyone risk hiring products of Louisiana's education system?
Go to New Orleans and spend lots of money, but boycott the rest of the state. Tell you boss and your HR people that Louisiana schools are deliberately turning out dummies and that you don't want them working with you. Pull your contracts out of Louisiana.
Tell them you'll come back when the current idiots in the legislature and the governor's office are replaced by rational human beings.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
there is an easy response to ID: embrace it. teach it in science classes. of course, any theory of ID must also include the possibility of a "design team" (after all, there may be more than one god; maybe each is a specialist?). teach this type of thing for a while and see how the ID fans like it.
The Eggtropian view of the universe is that we were intelligently hatched from eggs after being baked in the inner workings of a blond nova. Once that baking was completed our atoms were squished inside a blue hole and we were then spewed into the bowels of some unsuspecting gnats and reborn as chickens.
Once you begin to allow one sort of view you must permit all sorts of views to be taught. The schools will have to give equal billing to Jesus freaks as well as Allah freaks, among others, such as Satanism, etc.
The Supreme Court ruled that cities/states, etc., didn't have the right to discriminate against religion any more than it would be allowed to support one religion over another. If the cities/states wanted to promote one religion it had to promote them all, as well as anti-religions.
Now, if this State decides that schools are to teach intelligent design they must also now teach my Eggtropia. Intelligent design isn't fact, it is faith. Faith is the belief of each individual and the level of that faith is the commitment of each individual. It is inappropriate for a government to force upon our children a faith that really is a subjective matter.
That law will be held unconstitutional. Legal challenges will begin immediately. Smart governments know how to stay out of this sort of debate. This tells us that those individuals that enacted these laws will not be in office much longer.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Well, chalk one more freedom up as being completely dead. No that it's OK to make laws to tell our teachers, professors and other educators what they can and cannot teach we've turned our schools into indoctrination centers. Give this 10-15 years and schools will be nothing but a useless brainwashing that teaches nothing of value because ANYTHING of value is dangerous to someone's status quo.
Remember that slippery slope thing that your professors said was a falicy? Well it sure seems like it's working - and against the people who think it doesn't exist. Remember the old frog boiling analogy? The one where you slowly turn up the heat instead of toss it into 211 degree water?
Thanks a lot evolution zealots - you successfully shot all of us in the foot by trying to shout down and silence anyone who opposed your (much more fact based) view of the world. Even though you were right, you left your opponents no room to do anything other than change the rules. And so the rules change, and we can only hope for another Scopes Monkey Trial. Remember, you can win the battle and lose the war. SPECTACULAR FAIL!
-- $G
Science is the search for truth. There are many scientists who have come to believe that everything around us didn't just happen by accident. And most people of faith have no problem accepting that evolution exists. Things change over time, just look at fossils. But just because things evolve over time does not explain how they got here in the first place. There's a giant leap between a pile of chemicals becoming a cell that can protect itself from the environment, feed itself, reproduce, move around, and sense things like light and heat. Science can tell us how, but only religion can tell us why. What I don't understand is why people who claim to be so knowledgeable and open minded never want to hear any other points of view and try to ban competing ideas and mock and ridicule those who don't agree with them. And yet every day we find new evidence that disproves theories that have been held as truths for decades or even centuries. Just because it's written in some text book doesn't make if infallible.
Seriously...The Feds squashed Texas for trying to do the same damn thing. This, whether you believe or not, is the real reason it should not be taught in public schools. There's a chain of schools called "Catholic" for a reason - You want your kids to have a decreased affinity for seeking out why the universe works because they simply believe that it does? There's the school chain for you. The general public (and more importantly, the state) is barred from permitting this kind of non-sense.
Now leave the rest of us who have more important work to do alone.
Overwhelmingly, child abusers self-identify as heterosexual regardless of the genders of the children.
That is, by their own definition the priests are "straight pedophiles".
This is because pedophilia (and indeed rape and most sexual offenses) are about a redistribution of power, and have nothing to do with sex.
A teacher's job is not to tell the children what some people believe, his job is to teach what is known to be the most accurate theory in existence.
I disagree. A science teacher's job is to teach science.
A teacher should not be afraid of teaching old theories then showing how people discovered that the old theory was wrong, THEN teach the newer theory. It's that critical thinking about falsifiability which is at the core of the scientific method, and that's what we should aim to impart to the next generation.
No, it's more like this:
- "I've tested it in the laboratory, and many other people have verified my claims!"
- "No, you're stupid, it's all written in THE BOOK!"
- "Oh, yeah?"
- "Yes, EVERYTHING that's written in THE BOOK is absolutely true!"
- "Well, can't you see the obvious discrepancy between Matthew 1 and Luke 3, 23~38?"
- "Doh! Well, yes, now that I've read it, I guess you're right. See, I had never really read that book, I just assumed what people told me about it was true."
Are you saying that the 10 commandments were not meant to be taken literally? I'll agree that the creation story is too ambiguous to be taken literally, but most to the Bible is meant to be taken literally.
Unfortunately, the origin of life as it is currently taught in schools does require a lot of faith (or ignorance) as well. Maybe it's not something that should be taught in science class either.
I've got to post to undo some incorrect moderations. Whee! For some reason, slashdot picked the next moderation in the list, substantially changing things. Oh well.
Oops, I accidentally left the last part of my post off...
As a Christian, what I don't understand is why God couldn't have used evolution as a tool for creation
Great! Then you are on the evolution side of this conflict. The majority of Christians accept evolution, and (in the Western World) the majority of "evolutionists" are Christian.
It's only the anti-evolution side trying to push the wacky line that evolution and God are in conflict. Precisely once I saw someone post that evolution somehow denied God and I personally gave him a verbal smackdown for it. He immediately retracted his earlier words and called it an accidental misphrasing.
Just like in the Galileo situation, it's the anti-science folks pushing the line that Galileo/Darwin conflict with the bible, that the science is somehow an attack on God and that it somehow equals atheism.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I want to say that I oppose the teaching of creation, no matter what you call it, in the curriculum of public schools if the teaching of evolution is not also included. And I respect the other side saying "no teaching of evolution without teaching of creation."
I believe the lecture should go something like this. "How the universe came to be is a matter of controversy, ongoing for millenia. The two basic theories are Creation and Evolution. Creation is defined as {______brief neutral definition______}. Evolution is defined as {______brief neutral definition______}. The controversy of the issue means that I cannot tell you which one is right. You must discuss this with your parents and/or your spiritual advisor".
You're right, this is something of a cop-out. But if it is done any other way, the children will only get one side of the story, depending on which camp lobbies the school board more effectively. I'd rather see the issue 'non-taught' than see this happen. At least my version will inform the students of the nature of the controversy, and spur them to discuss the issue with parents.
TANSTAAFL GIGO Acronyms to live by!
I could care less...
Just how much less could you care? I, on the other hand, couldn't care less, not even a little.
Okay, I'm tired, so sue me.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
just stating the obvious i suppose when i say that we can at least all agree (those of us who have at least two brain cells) that it is imperative that church and state should be separated and even though it is an undeniable fact that there are great mysteries in the universe which are still beyond our comprehension. But the old grey hippie in the sky who designed the world ... that's just a bit too far-fetched imo ... or actually maybe not far enough ... religion is outdated and obsolete, it's only use is to appease the insecure and the ignorant (bold statement, yes) and we will not see great progress or the next step in evolution until we leave that childish foolishness behind ... look to the stars people, and see STARS !!! never forget that MAN created god to be it's spitting image :p
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
Too bad this law only applies to the teaching of science. I would love to see the community's reaction to a satanist social studies teacher bringing "supplementary material" into the classroom.
There is no reason that any of this cannot be tied into your faith.
Did God take 7 ACTUAL EARTH DAYS to form all of creation? How is that possible...there where no "Earth days" when he started!
"God" is really just all of nature and existence around you (in the end, after all, it IS what created you and everything else). Those of ancient times simply personified it because they didn't have any explanation for natural occurrence taking place without some type of living being being the cause (Volcanos caused by underground demons? Floods caused by angry gods of the sea?)
Likewise, they decided on an arbitrary time frame because they had no concept of "billions".
If you ask me, knowing that the God I learned about for 9 years of Catholic school is in fact the world around me (including myself, and you too) and that (just about) all the lessons in those religious texts where written in order to guide the mindset of those who followed them to prevent disease, war, poverty, and ultimately the failure of our species, is in fact much more amazing to me than thinking there is a big ghostly guy in the sky behind golden gates who keeps tabs on everyone at all times. Really.
Just because I don't choose to perceive God as a being doesn't mean the concept of God can't apply to what I know about the world.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Typo: "the layers down stop 5300 layers down" should read don't stop.
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Sorry, got lost pouring that out to the world (finally) and forgot my conclusion! The point of the parent post is:
Let your children learn about the world around them via science, which is a process to do as best as possible to gather unbiased facts about any subject.
Teach them to tie it into your religion on your own time. It's possible, and it usually works.
My tax dollars do not pay to support your religion, and your tax dollars shouldn't be used to support mine. This is how we maintain FREEDOM OF RELIGION, which is one of the founding principals of the United States of America. If you don't like it, well, there is the door. Come visit whenever you want, the door is always open (let's hope, but that's a whole other topic).
...and I thank you for thinking carefully (and critically!) before replying.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
days later to the big rock smackdown.
PS I reckon they ought to teach satanism. After all, our children MUST know all sides, not just propoganda from one..!
Darwin's theory about how it happens (natural selection) can be.
And Creationism isn't at its base questioning evolution either. It IS questioning Darwin's theory by positing that it isn't natural selection but unnatural selection driven by God.
ID, oddly enough is disagreeing with natural selection too, but makes a big boo-boo by saying "aliens did it" so disagreeing with creationism and yet not explaining how the aliens came to be, which stops it being science.
Intelligent Design should be known as an exercise in philosophy and not in grounded science fact. It is just as probable to take this as fantasy against reality, reality wins everytime. It would take a degree(College) to understand the real science of evolution. It would take an ordinary high school education to understand ID.
Damn. I was trying to come up with a joke about schools run by fundie principals...
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
If you have compelling, verifiable proof of truth on the issue, let's get it published so we can end the debate.
Until then, it is a matter of beliefs, and should be handled as such, by the parents and spiritual counsellors of the student.
Science class needs to present it as a contentious subject, noting that there has been no definitive proof, and noting both sides positions. However, not all teachers are unbiased enough to present it this way.
In the end, on this and most other subjects, PARENTS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR CHILDREN'S EDUCATION. This should not be in the hands of the government.
TANSTAAFL GIGO Acronyms to live by!
Would I be correct in assuming that the total number wasn't strikingly higher?
The school quotes tuition as $3500. With all of the buy-outs, it's $4200 (this year). You have to volunteer for bingo. You have to sell bread, chocolates, raffle tickets, Pre-Christmas shopping tickets, candy and so on. Children are not permitted to work bingo because that's gambling and the State does not allow that so busy parents must carve out time. My issue is that it's "mandatory volunteerism."
My wife was constantly wanting to buy things for her students that we couldn't well afford - we had to frequently chat about which items were luxuries and which were really efficient, reusable tools. And sometimes we bought lumber instead of an expensive finished good and I was assigned to the table saw.
How are her writing skills? Has she and has the school considered writing for grant money from some of the retailers and corporations in your area? Where is the Principal and the Administration? Giving to local schools is seen as a way to expiate corporate sins in the eyes of the consumers who buy from them. I also realize that she is one teacher in a large school and something like this needs to be coordinated. I also realize she's working hard, probably on a Masters degree as well as the daily lesson plans and test grading. Also, I would suggest that she ask parents of children in her class to collect boxtops from the various tissue and cereal makers and send them in with her students. It really takes nothing to collect these things and throw them into an envelope for the school and they do result in some needed cash for the district, if not the school.
Mind you, I am not suggesting your local and state government abdicate its responsibility to our children.
I admit to being ignorant of the specifics of the regional legislative actions, but I do hold out hope for both the teachers and students.
Here is what they did in Delaware and Kansas: The Top-Down approach. The Kansas State School Board redefined "Science" and then bought millions of "science" books that included language that specifically was designed to cast doubt on evolution as a theory, essentially reducing it to the level of hypothesis. Then the Theory of "Intelligent" Design was offered with no aspersions to its validity and introduced as "new" and "perhaps superior." If you study theories on how the planets formed, the new ones tend to be considered the most correct and tend to be presented that way to students. This creates a bias.
[W]e covered spontaneous generation as a theory. We also covered Pasteur's refutation of it.
Thas is how science should work. Students should see widely-accepted theories that have been disproven and read the refutations. I also was informed on another theory of evolution called Lamarckian. We studied the issue of heuristics in hypothesis and how that can prove to be a trap. Sometimes these traps can serve as really advantageous accidents.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Is Our Children Learning? - George Bush This is throwing us back 200 years. I cant beleive it , it ticks me off to no end. I am going to become a teacher ad try and teach the feasibility of the "tooth fairy" causing problems with global warming because her wings are flapping too fast generating heat. http://godandall.blogspot.com/
Two words: Isochron dating. Uranium-lead is a good example. Please explain the collinearity of the points in the first graph here. What assumptions are problematic in this example? Please be specific.
What is your take on the tools used to calibrate carbon dating methods over time? Ice cores, tree rings, etc?
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Future generations will view the rise of Intelligent Design and other challenges to materialism in the same light as we view Gallileo today. The fact of the matter is that those who are fighting "to save science" are actually those who are destroying it: They are materialist reductionists. Science used to be about empirical evidence, testable hypothesis, and an honnest search for the truth, whatever it might be. However, during the 20th century, this was replaced with materialist ideology. When someone says "ID is anti-science", he actually says it is "anti-materialist". According to materialist reductionists (MR), everything can be reduced to primitave particles including the human consciousness, the universe created itself without an intelligent agent, and it has no meaning. This is a philosofical worldview, not science. When ID proponents comes with empirical evidence and solid arguements, MR-ists claims it is "anti science" and "a return to the dark ages", comparing it to all kinds of debunked medieval ideas. It is interesting to note that they NEVER give an accurate description of what ID actually states. The reason for this is simple : if you can't debunk it, deface it. And while ID "have no evidence and can't be falsified", these MR-ists are happy to promote Evolutionary phycology as a science. Here you have a "dicipline" that is based purely on speculation, with no data, and no way of being verified, being promoted as a valid science. All the "sciences" dealing with origins are actually based on philosofical assumptions which has nothing to do with science. That's why they haven't developed much in 150 years: They ignore evidence that goes against the materialist worldview, and some are even willing to fabricate evidence to support materialism. As a result, science are comming to a standstill, because those who claim that they do not believe in anything without evidence, is forcing science to support materialism, even when it goes against the evidence. But then again, what can you expect from people who honnestly believe their own consciousness is an illusion?