Slashdot Mirror
Review of Discovery Institute's Evolution Textbook
Darwinned writes "Intelligent Design is still a hot topic, as evidenced by recent legislation mandating that it be taught in school. Pro-ID group Discovery Institute has released an evolution textbook for use in schools, but a review shows it to be chock full of bad science and questionable reasoning. 'The book doesn't only promote stupidity, it demands it. In every way except its use of the actual term, this is a creationist book, but its authors are expecting that legislators and the courts will be too stupid to notice that, or to remember that the Supreme Court has declared teaching creationism an unconstitutional imposition of religion.'"
Good point. Instead, we got good looking genius boy.
"Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do." -- Ronald Reagan, 1981
"I have flown twice over Mt St. Helens out on our west coast. I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that that one little mountain has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere of the world than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind that people are so concerned about." -- Ronald Reagan, 1980. (Actually, Mount St. Helens, at its peak activity, emitted about 2,000 tons of sulfur dioxide per day, compared with 81,000 tons per day by cars.)
"The American Petroleum Institute filed suit against the EPA [and] charged that the agency was suppressing a scientific study for fear it might be misinterpreted... The suppressed study reveals that 80 percent of air pollution comes not from chimneys and auto exhaust pipes, but from plants and trees." Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, in 1979. (There is no scientific data to support this assertion.)
There followed a long decline. Wars, on and off, with the crusaders of Europe raiding into the Middle East. Various rulers of Arabic and Persian and Turkish dynasties competing for domination of the Islamic world. A gradual eclipse as the nations of Europe set about building their empires. And finally irrelevance, a culture respected only insofar as it provides crude oil to its betters. Small wonder that a civilisation brought so low from such a glorious past turns to its god for answers, and finds dark counsels.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
"Therefore, the seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deficiency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency."--Ibn al-Haytham
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-haytham
This is what too few human beings do, they always trust in what they have been taught... when much of what they know is fraught with error. I am weary of anything I say as well as anything any other man says, that cannot be demonstrated. Therefore, I only defend what can be demonstrated.
The majority of people do not take the above view, they are overconfident in what they think they know when they hardly know anything at all.