Slashdot Mirror
Texas Vote May Challenge Teaching of Evolution
tboulay writes "The Texas Board of Education will vote this week on a new science curriculum designed to challenge the guiding principle of evolution, a step that could influence what is taught in biology classes across the nation. The proposed curriculum change would prompt teachers to raise doubts that all life on Earth is descended from common ancestry. Texas is such a large textbook market that many publishers write to the state's standards, then market those books nationwide. 'This is the most specific assault I've seen against evolution and modern science,' said Steven Newton, a project director at the National Center for Science Education, which promotes teaching of evolution." Both sides are saying the issue it too close to call. Three Republicans on the school board who favor the teaching of evolution have come under enormous pressure to reform their ways.
1. "Texans are all ass-backwards hicks and should be murdered" -Tolerant Liberal /.er that claims to have read an issue of Scientific American
2. "This is why America sucks" -EuroTard
3. "Religion is the root, trunk, branches, and leaves, of all evil" -Sgt. Atheist
4. "Intelligent design is not Creationism. It's philosophical." -Closet Creationist
5. "Science is..." insert simplistic, high-school-esque view of 'The Scientific Method' -Every
6. "Although this proposal, and the people behind it, are certifiable, the idea that a theory of evolution holds some special uncriticizable position because of the 'preponderance of evidence' is just as stifling to scientific progress as the dogmatic fervor with which academia held to Newton's theory of gravitation. A theory should always be accepted as necessarily conjectural, and all efforts should be made to falsify the accepted 'best' theory and replace it with a better theory." -Me
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
I'm just grateful this wasn't us for ONCE. Of course, now our redneck legislators will feel the need to one-up the Texans with some Bill declaring Jesus the official state mascot or something.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I mean, this is the same state that gave us the amazingly anti-science George W. "I believe God wants me to run for president" Bush.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Seriously, for the country that's supposed to be the most modern and have the best technology (all ofcourse delivered through scientific study), it remains unbelievable that evolution is even questioned.
No such thing in Europe. Not even the Vatican and the Church of England (both the foundations for the US churches) doubt evolution theory. They even support it !
Wake up, Americans :-)
Duh, her name was Hera Agathon.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Whatever gets taught, proper scientific method needs to be taught first and then applied. There *are* problems and holes in the current evolutionary theory, and by pretending those don't exist and teaching evolution as unassailable dogma (not that this is how it's taught everywhere, but it is in most places I hear about) the proponents of evolution prove themselves no different than the people they claim the creationists are.
So, it is bad to provoke thought and questions regarding evolution? Gosh, that would lead people to possibly re-evaluate observations. That would be dangerous because .... We have a lot more recorded data than Darwin had available to him in much more widely accessible forms. Obviously, challenging his conclusions and conclusions based on his conclusions is bad. It would almost be, well, blasphemy? The science community sure seems unscientific some time.
The fundies don't mind crashing and burning in their own intellectual black hole, and that's their business - but I'll be damned if I'll let them take my children with them. They can teach this garbage at home all they want, keep it out of the damn classrooms.
I am glad they open the way for my scripture to be taught side by side with christian beliefs once they step on this landmine! Prepare the pasta! We have learnin' to do!
There is no 'proof'. So how can it be taught as fact?
everyone else's textbooks. Texas is such a big state that they serve as a de facto standard for textbook companies. If you don't ask your local school board, books written for Texas are likely to show up in your system. How many at Slashdot have ever asked their local school system how, or even if, science in taught in their school system?
I heard that they are also planning to revamp the prison system to concentrate on poking out eyes and pulling teeth.
How about they teach Evolution and just leave out the part about how the amino acids and the first cellular life arrived.
I mean, scientists still can't give a definitive answer on how the first cells were formed, only some scifi-esque ideas. That question won't be solved until scientists actually create cellular life or observe it form from nutrient soups.
Since student's really don't need to know the details about the planted seed life vs magic combinations of nutrients theories, the curriculum should just omit that part.
Best part is, maybe both parties will stop arguing about the whole issue.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
So just throw science out the window eh? I think they should remove "Science Teacher" from anyone who teaches the newly proposed curriculum.
The Catholic church is in agreement with the theory of evolution, so it's time for it to make it clear to its followers they need to support the teaching of evolution over creationism.
California is a much larger textbook market than Texas. A much stronger claim can be made that California is the market that publishers try to satisfy. And California is the most likely market to demand evolution and reject its minimization.
in a free market education should be consumer driven (like anything else). schools providing better students will reap the benefits of higher royalties, will be able to charge more for their services, etc. the curricula of these schools will be thus chosen to reflect higher profits, thus better results in training theitr students. if science curricula which follow peer reviewed publications (aka "good" science) prove to be the bettwe way to train students in science, then those are the curricula which will be followed. every time govts intervene to dictate what and how to teach "our children" we get these sort of ridiculous situations like mention in the OP. schools with these govt run curricula will thus reflect the preference of burecreauts rather than the consumer, which in this case is the public at large. if the burecreuts are ignorant (when are they NOT?!) then the curricula will be ignorant as well.
Whew, thank God for Texas!
Take oil companies. Finding oil is a very important and high-stakes issue for them. Literally hundreds of billions of dollars are riding on it. When the chips are down and they need to find the most likely spots to drill - what kind of geology do they use? Flood geology, or mainstream? Which one actually delivers the goods?
Let's assume the Earth is only a few thousand years old. Where did the oil come from? Was it created in the ground with the rest of the Earth? If so, is there a way to predict where it might be found? Or perhaps it really did form from plants and dinosaurs, but about 10,000 times faster than any chemist believes it could? Any way you look at it, a young Earth and a Flood would imply some very interesting scientific questions to ask, some interesting (and potentially extremely valuable) research programs to start. How come nobody's actually pursuing such research programs?
Why don't fundamentalists put together an investment fund, where people pay in and the stake is used as venture capital for things like oil and mineral rights? If "Flood geology" is really a better theory, then it should make better predictions about where raw materials are than standard geology does. The profits from such a venture could pay for a lot of evangelism. Why don't they do this?
(It turns out some people actually are doing this - or, at least, claiming too. But it appears that deeply-held beliefs are easier to exploit than deeply-held oil reserves.)
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
I've never understood why religious folk have such a hard time with evolution. I mean, can't they just say "okay, fine, evolution is the process, and God is the architect". Far as I can see, that kind of solves it.
I do not recall any teacher or textbook saying that evolution proves that God doesn't exist. (For me, bigotted religious zealots did quite a good job of that all on their own).
I know there are those born again types who fervently believe that the Earth is only 6000 years old so they'll never be satisfied until the schools are beginning and ending each lesson with a prayer and throw out all textbooks in favor of bibles, but cummon, there have got to be SOME sane people in Texas.
The Digital Sorceress
perhaps it would be better to release the members of the board into a remote ecosystem with limited resources, and allow them to compete, whereby the most well-adapted board member is selectively chosen not to starve, and he or she at that point decides the issue of whether or not to teach evolution
if on the other hand, angels are heard singing, a bright light shines from the sky, and a booming voice chooses one particular board member while the rest perish in a scream and a flash, destined for eternity to hell, maybe that will decide the issue instead
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Texas is such a large textbook market that many publishers write to the state's standards.
Well, there's the crux of the problem. Book publishers probably shouldn't write the science textbooks. Scientists should.
If you read the article, you will see that it is likely that the vote will be 8-7 against this proposal.
We all know the physical universe just magically appeared from thin air several billion years ago.
Frankly some of these people are an embarrassment to the country. Maybe they can band together parts of the old Confederacy, make Chuck Norris its new Jefferson Davis, and get the hell out of the US. As it stands, most of these states survive on federal aid handouts (they take more in federal assistance than give in in taxes). The reason is simple - educated people and the high paying jobs that follow them don't want any part of their 19th century thump-the-good-book-to-get-all-answers "paradise".
With Chuck Norris, they can take their rightful place along with witch doctors of Africa, voodoo practitioners of the Caribbean, fundamentalists in rural Afghanistan and Pakistan, etc. and form a living human history museum of sorts, where we can bring our kids off and on to show how we used to live in the old times.
Evolution states among other things that not all members of the same species evolve/progress at the same rate. The odd century gap between these jokers and the rest of humanity is a startling confirmation of that.
Steven Newton, a project director at the National Center for Science Education, which promotes teaching of evolution
Why would you even spell that out? I bet the NCSE also promotes teaching of water being wet and the sun being a hot thing we orbit.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I am a Christian who believes the Bible. I therefore believe that "God created the heavens and the earth." However, I also believe that Evolution is possible because it fits most of our current scientific views and it seems to be compatible with my beliefs. This includes the idea that even humans are descended from common ancestry with all other life on Earth. After all, the Bible does tell us that God created Earth, but not how he created it.
Students should not be told that the theory of evolution is wrong. Nor should Students be told that it is right, either. The fact is that as a scientific community, we still do not know for sure. Also, every day we disprove things we thought we knew "for sure". This is the nature of Science. We have to teach what we think we know, and present it as such. Doing anything else would be dishonest.
Evolution hasn't been proven, and the only way to strengthen the theory is to question and attack it and repeatedly fail to disprove it.
Further, universal common ancestry is a really weak theorem; life formed in stages, first as DNA that protected itself with a membrane, then as self-reproducing cells. It's entirely possible that various single-celled organisms developed independently, and that things forked off completely isolated evolutionary lines, even to the point that the earliest single celled creatures may have co-existed with newly forming DNA that started the process over again.
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Government official lied that Mexico was launching attacks on the US from that area...and so the US Army went in and took over what we now call Texas.
Too bad those attacks were fabricated.
Maybe Iraq will become our 51st state. Just thought it was interesting in that Bush came from Texas.
Blar.
"Three Republicans on the school board who favor the teaching of evolution have come under enormous pressure to reform their ways."
:)
Lest they be sentenced to eternal damnation and cast into hell.
Eris is displeased... or she's not.
Obligatory quote from South Park: "Simpsons already did it!".
In the episode titled The Monkey Suit, to be exact.
I didn't realize that science could be changed by a popular vote.
It amazes me that people are still wasting their time with crap like this when our economy is in ruins and we have to win two different wars. Don't we have more important things to focus our energy on?
never considers itself complete, always acknowledges there are holes, and looks at all anomalies as potential realignments of contemporary dogma
yes, there are plenty of closed minded scientists who scoff at challenges to established dogma. but these are human frailties, not aspects of what real science is. in the early 1980s there was an australian scientist who said stomach ulcers were caused by an infectious agent. he was laughed at. now, he has the nobel prize, and we have isolated that bacterium. in other words, science is not captive to entrenched unyielding dogma. it is flexible, it can change
now contrast that with creationism. creationism starts with an untestable hypothesis and adheres to it as unassailable truth. theres nothing to debate. theres nothing to argue about. there is an idea put forth that no one can probe with their minds or find fault with. you either accept creationism, or you reject it. but it is entirely rigid and opaque
this is not science. it has no place in science. it is alternative idea for why we and other living creatures are here. but it is not science, and it never will be science. it cannot be taught along with evolutionary theory. it simply doesn't belong. talk about it in church, pleas,e be my guest. but it has zero validity in any scientific context, including a classroom whose purpose is to teac children science
in other words, you have it backwards when you point out that there are holes in evolutionary theory and this is a weakness. on the contrary: the holes in evolutionary theory are aspects of its strength, adaptability to new discoveries, and intellectual honesty
creationism puts forth an idea. the idea cannot be tested. end of story
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Better than that - they dug up fossils.
Oh, by the way: "Water boils at 100c and freeze at 0c" is not a fact. You're being much too dogmatic there.
Is to make their voters dumber than them and aggressively push religious beliefs that teach unquestioning loyalty. The Republicans have cracked and are grasping at straws.
What I wish these extremist nuts would understand is that the theory of evolution does not, ipso facto, rule out the possibility of a supernatural creator. Evolution is simply an ever-refining description of how life unfolded on Earth. No one is staking any claim in the theory concerning who or what (if anyone or anything) might have initiated or guided or overseen the process. There are tens of millions of Christian clergy, theologians, and laity who accept evolution as the process that God used to achieve his purposes. Even among evangelicals, most no longer subscribe to the literality of Genesis -- they understand the "six days" of creation as metaphor. They also understand that the Bible is not meant to be a complete, literal history that can be quantified (a la Bishop Usher) to produce a firm figure for the age of the universe.
So, who are these Christians who are on the anti-evolution bandwagon? Not Christians in general. Not even evangelicals. It's a tiny subset that still insists that evolution "denies God," that the universe was literally created in six days, that species were set and defined at the moment of creation, etc. In other words, a minority of a minority of a minority, if you will. And yet, these vastly outnumbered idjits carry incredible weight and influence, especially in the heartland, and people cower in fear of upsetting them.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
I feel sorry for the kids of these parents to be honest with you. But I am not worried that this will do much other than cause all the kids who didn't learn the correct commonly held theory to have to take an extra few classes in remedial science before they can get to their real classes...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
OK, their creationary process.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
A bit off topic, but I've recently changed my thinking a bit about this whole debate, and I'm wondering why ID or other philosophical concepts can't be discussed in schools as philosophy? ...as long as it's made clear that evolution is science and any questions about the existence of the universe or life or some kind of intelligence other than humans is (currently) philosophy. I think open discussions of philosophy in logical, rational terms among kids is a good thing, and might be more beneficial to science than just pretending like the debate doesn't exist, and letting religious-fanatic parents program their kids without addressing the issue at all in schools.
A good scientist would also doubt that all life on Earth descended from one common ancestor. Who is to say for, for example, that early life didn't arise spontaneously in more than one place at (approximately) the same geologic time?
The difference between science and religion is that science can change when new evidence becomes available. When I was in grade school, Pluto was a planet and dinosaurs were cold-blooded. Pointing out areas in evolutionary biology where evidence is lacking, or conclusions are uncertain, would be fully compatible with a rigorous scientific education.
But if the pro-evolution camp were to admit that it's OK to question scientific conclusions, that would open up the possibility of the religious right getting something they want. Atheists would generally rather misrepresent science than do that.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
What on earth is this people thinking?
Ive heard of special interests, of powers-that-be that would prefer certain curriculum to prevail over others...
But this?
I mean, come on!
NO SIG
Anyone who says, "Evolution's just a theory" should read up on what the word "theory" means within the scientific community:
Natural selection meets these criteria, as does evolution as a whole. Saying "evolution is a theory" is like saying gravity is just a theory. If you want to test gravity (and natural selection, for that matter), jump off a tall building and see if you can fly.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
I'm getting really tired of hearing about the immanent death of the republican party.
Their values are ingrained deeply in about half our populace. They won't go away that easily because they represent the (NECESSARY) voice of selfishness in this nation, its just that enough people are now on the wrong side of selfish policies that they're realizing that side of the government needs to be toned back down a bit.
People screaming about how the republican party is dying because they lost a few rounds in the elections are the same people who claim the US is "declining" whenever there's a recession.
In a couple election cycles they'll gain more representation and will resume pissing me off every day of the week : ) !
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I worked for years at a branch office of a company based in Denton TX. I was amazed at the level of ignorance and poor education that the folks at head office displayed. For example, when programmers were planning trips to Toronto (Ontario, Canada) I would get calls asking me how much snow they could expect in August. Correct answer is none. They had trouble believing Canadian currency could be called a dollar and not be a US dollar. Well... they were on par with George W... All of these folk are supposedly College / University educated but couldn't challenge a 5th grader in a basic knowledge pop quiz.
Having them now want to decide through a board of education vote the evolution vs creation question simply boggles the mind.
Good luck America... Remember China has more gifted honours grads coming out of universities than there are college students in all the US.
You have to teach the students something in science class. Teaching them evolution with an asterisk seems horribly inadequate. "We all came from monkeys." *rolls eyes*
Texas probably wants to teach intelligent design but cannot do a frontal assault on evolution, so they have chosen to flank it. Query whether or not they would be okay with teaching the African or Islamic genesis myths as opposed to the Judeo-Christian model.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Respect the Constitution
Actually, doesn't water's boiling point depend on a number of factors?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_point
So I guess evolution is above challenge and being questioned? Last I knew it was still a theory, not a law.
Hopefully you were just trollng, but 'laws' in science are no less subject to challenge than any other theories.
Is it really so hard for schools to understand that their job is to provide education and information? They are not to dictate what is true and false, science will do that on its own and it is up to the individual to choose to believe what other scientists state, or disprove them.
With such a big concept as creation vs. evolution, why can they not just be made to teach that these are the two primary theories in existence, and present them in an unbiased manner? I see so many pro-evolutionist "scientists" completely discredit creationism before they even look at it, much the same as creationist fanatics would rather damn anyone who views differ from their own.
These are the two theories, leave it up to the individual and their families to decide which, if any, to believe.
Here's a vote for #5 and how about not re-defining words or procedures just because some morons feel like it?
Now, Evolution is a law of nature, not a theory. Natural Selection is a theory. I have no problem with people coming up with theories that fit the scientific method, because THATS HOW YOU FUCKING PLAY THE GAME CALLED SCIENCE.
If someone wants to come up with their own words and rules and whatever, fine, go do it. If they call it science, I'm going to have a major problem with it and the people doing it.
Well, there are a lot of religious folk who don't have a problem with evolution: e.g., Catholics, pretty much any mainstream Protestant church, lots of Jews...
And in fact, many of them have taken just that tack of "evolution as process, God as architect." It's nothing new, either - Darwin's book prompted controversy in religious circles when it was first published, but plenty of religious figures accepted it then, and plenty do now.
If you're interested in reading historical religious perspectives on it, check out The Post-Darwinian Controversies, which looks at a bunch of different religious reactions to Darwin.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Texans are already seen as an unsophisticated bunch of hooligans with guns and pick'm'up trucks. Let them cement that with this vote. How hick can you get? Well let's see, we can change science by popular vote and execute any one with a valid challenge. That ought to about finish the state as a force for civilization!
Why bother
I don't come from monkeys. I come from Martian water life.
'a';DROP TABLE users; SELECT * FROM DATA WHERE name LIKE '%'... if you're reading this, it didn't work.
1. False, I've met some very bright people from
Texas
2. True, but it is only one of the reasons
3. True, more often than not
4. False, Creationism, ID, it's all the same
bullcrap
5. Possibly, but I'd need to see a complete
sentence first
6. a) True, IDers are certifiable
b) Deceptive, nobody I know says evolution is
unassailable, just better supported by
data than the alternatives offered by
religious nutballz.
c) Deceptive, Relativity was not held back by
dogmatic people, it was held back until
someone came along who was smart enough to
see the world differently and express it
mathematically. Supported by experimental
evidence, it has become generally accepted.
d) True, that's why we teach evolution today
If people don't like what the government schools are teaching (evolution, creationism, or whatever), let them quit the government school and go to a private school. People should not be forced to attend a single school Monopoly, anymore than they should be forced to buy into a Microsoft or Comcast monopoly.
And "I'm too poor to afford private school" should never be an impediment. Let them apply a tax credit equal to the School Tax rate (which would be $2000 where I live), since they are not using the government school and therefore incurring zero cost.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
In the last decade it seems there has been more and more attempts for politicians to attempt to proliferate their uneducated opinions by passing laws that would restrict teaching of known facts. In light of this, perhaps it is necessary to make a new constitutional amendment that prohibits non-scientists from having the final say in accepting or rejecting the results found by real scientists when it comes to education. Because the fact of the matter is that it should be an inalienable right to teach correct information to our children
Better than that - they dug up fossils.
Oh, by the way: "Water boils at 100c and freeze at 0c" is not a fact. You're being much too dogmatic there.
You are being too dogmatic if you can't admit that altitude affects the boling point of water.
I like your logic. You completely bypassed the scientific merits of each side and went straight to the heart of the matter, that
1) "proponents of evolution" are stubborn, close-minded pricks,
2) "no different than the people they claim the creationists are."
Ergo,
3)creationist dogma deserves the same airtime as scientifically proven fact.
QED
Since zero and 100 are arbitrary measurements handed out by the good Mr. Celsius, for observed phenomena, I challenge this as a fact. I've seen water fail to boil at 101 Celsius and at other times it did boil at 97 Celsius. Hardly the fact you think it is!
Why bother
Well, the 100c boiling point and 0c freezing point is kinda what the Celsius scale is based on.
However the boiling point of pure water at 1 atmosphere is 99.9839c so it's just almost 100c.
School is there to educate so that people can develop skills which will help them be a productive member of society. Attributing creation, even if true, in the face of even weak or circumstantial evidence, is still a complete waste. There can be nothing gained by anyone on any side by saying "God did it" because at that effectively ends scientific inquiry. There maybe additional understandings - as to the how - but not to the why. And to say that "God did it this way so that the creature was better suited to its environment" is to equate God to evolutionary processes. At that point, what are the religious arguing with.
We are dealing with some bass-ackwards people. Even the Vatican recognizes evolution.
I don't think these people are stupid, just that they don't understand the mechanisms of evolution - natural selection, random mutation, and punctuated equilibrium. They've been told that they evolved from monkeys - which is a straw man argument. They didn't evolve from monkeys, we evolved from a common ancestor.
Furthermore, to regard humans as the height of evolution is flawed. Birds have the best eyes, dogs be best noses, we have some of the weakest muscle tissue. The only thing we have is intelligence, and there are animals that can match us in early childhood. In fact, there are several things that prove we weren't divinely created, vestigial tales, the appendix, overactive immune systems in the developed countries (arthritis, asthma, etc).
They attack geology/age of the earth using flawed science.
There is nothing but ignorance to be gained from assuming we were divinely instantiated.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
This appears to be an ongoing assault by the fanatical religious masses in the United States. It is not just an assault on particular truth or facts per se, but an assault on the idea that truth and facts are inherently valuable. It is also a willful blindness to the harm of propagating the idea that the world is not governed by a set of rational and predictable principles, but by some omniscient super-being in the stars over which we have no control. Ironically it is the peddling of religion as the answer to problems religion cannot answer.
While we ponder the great Creationist/Evolutionary arguments of today, I can see ourselves "becoming" the "creators" of a new breed of life. Thanks to Science. What then, will those creatures we had created, say to one another when "we" are long gone and they themselves ponder their own existence and "perhaps" a distant of a "once lived creator/s" Some of us may not believe in creationism, however we sure are trying to prove it, by allowing ourselves to exercise the freedom of creating new life. Ahhhh, and so the circle of life comes full turn.
>.
Stop making my state look bad.
China is pushing for a new world currency.
Now is not the time to be teaching religion in the public education system. America needs to teach proper science if she expects to survive the next 20-50 years.
This isn't a game! The Chinese are working hard to build a first world nation - one with an economy that will shortly dwarf the US economy. If the US abandons proper education, there is no way it will be able to compete in the 21st century. Someone please shut down these religious nutballs before they do any more harm.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Why can't a REPUBLICAN [politician?] actually come along and have the courage to say, we shouldn't teach that non-science crap to our kids because "I don't want [my kids] to die poor and diseased!!"
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
Assuming that this goes through, what will they do next? Teach that tectonic plates don't really exist, and all continents have always been exactly as they are? Or, more specifically, teach that all scientific theories are flawed, and have no basis, or place in the school curriculum? After they finish all that, they can tell us that all conclusions we make are false, because proof is provided. Damn.
Epic. Just epic.
6a. "Here are a bunch of straw men, watch me knock them down!" - Arthur Grumbine
STFU about slashdot bias.
You are damn right!
Nations should be free market. And we could all choose what flag color and name to follow, what money to mint, and what taxes to pay. Or to what age take our children to school. Or maybe a working school where they will sooner learn to become profitable.
No, really I agree. But we are oppressed not to become profitable.
This anti-scientific nonsense spewing out of the mouths of right-wing fundamentalist Christians is bad for the state of Texas. Many well-educated, scientifically-minded people would rather drown in a puddle of sewage than live in an environment where sense and reason are ridiculed, and ancient misinformed, mistranslated, and misread stories become the basis for academic "fact" in the public schools. It is indicative of a larger-scale cultural rejection of the modern world by a faction of Texans that is too huge to be ignored. I would take less money to live in a place where people are not quite so ridiculous and ignorant in their beliefs and knowledge. What is it about people from Texas that allows them to deny the truth when it stares them in the face? Does the hand of God somehow touch them in a way that blinds them to the obvious? What an asshole if He is. And if He isn't, then what assholes those Texans are.
In Canada, we have Science class.. and we have Theology classes.. pick which one you'd like to attend, or attend both.. up to you.
----------------------------
Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
Let the americans have the ID,creationism,whatever. The rest of you "smart americans" can still join us in Europe
This is Texas! Everyone knows that Texans don't evolve.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I see so many knee-jerk reactions here today. Do any of you even know what is being debated? The debate is revolving around a phrase that has been in the curriculum for 20 years. The phrase is "strengths and weaknesses." It's not even specifically targeting evolution for crying out loud. Now, I got my B.S. in Physics, so hopefully I can speak with a little authority on understanding the scientific method. The root of the scientific method is indeed identifying and understanding the strengths AND weaknesses of any given scientific theory. Einstein's Theory of Relativity is probably the most tested scientific theory in existence. It has been borne out with tests that go out many decimel places. And yet, scientists still try to understand new data that we come up against that may indicate that there are weaknesses in this theory. That's all that's being fought over in Texas today: the ability to teach our students how to think critically about science and the world around them. How to take data and understand it. How to challenge a well accepted theory when new data arises AND how to support that theory when the data is strong. How can ANYONE want to say that the best science education does NOT teach about the "strengths and weaknesses" of a given scientific theory? If we do NOT teach children how to do that, then we fail them miserably and set them up so they cannot defend the scientific theory when it is attacked.
... now it's the creationists forcing their pseudo science into the minds of children not just at home, but now in the context of a science classroom.
As soon as I hear any single one of them clamoring for "alternates" to the theory of gravity, then I'll let this go, but until then, it's making a mockery of education and makes us the laughing stock of the world.
I've never been so ashamed to live in Texas.
"Oh my God! The dead have risen! And they're voting Republican!" - Bart Simpson
Atmospheric pressure.
I don't know, but there must be something in the air, because of every anti-science retard out there seems to be jumping up and down trying to get to the front of the "I'm The Most Ignorant Brain-damaged Troll On the Planet" line.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"Might Creationism actually be blasphemous?"
No. The whole of observable reality is merely a test of faith to these people. This is the Abrahamic God we're talking about - "God said to Abraham, kill me a son . . ." - dinosaur bones and distant EM are mild in comparison - This is why no amount of what you and I consider rational argument will EVER make any headway against this meme - for a fundamentalist, faith in spite of evidence is virtuous, so faith in spite of an overwhelming preponderance of evidence is overwhelmingly virtous - it fuels the martyrdom/persecution delusion which is the lifeblood of all monotheistic zealotry . . .
All I see in these comments are anti-religious statements without much fact. You all should watch "Expelled", It is available on netflix and then talk with some facts.
If this vote goes in favor of intelligent design, and so does this, I'm betting employers and schools elsewhere will be scrutinizing VERY carefully any degrees (high school diploma included) from educational institutions in Texas, particularly medical schools who are screening applicants.
Will the intelligent, normal Republicans please get control over their party? The rest of us Americans would appreciate it.
One must first understand the story of Noah is based heavily in Sumarian lore. When civilization was first spawning it's first resou...er cities they choose to stick them in places rather convenient for growing large amounts of food and such.
One of these was near Ur and Lagash and such which just happened to be where the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers come together. Oh! By the way did you know that land there, well that land there, is a low land and in the past was prone to massive flooding.
So yes, to early civilization as the stories and tales spread out from the epicenter of humanity, the entire world DID indeed flood.
--- I do not moderate.
Then their fundamentalists braked in their mind-control!
Hello Houston - we have a problem!
not Apollo 13 any more but the whole nation
I am all for it. Lets dumb down America even further. We can became a nation of angry, pissed off religious fanatics like them Muslims. Lets kill people who do not believe in Jesus!
this is sad, its a science class - not beleif/religious study. Perhaps another, seperate class if the children so choose like one mentioned for us canadians. But it should not be influenced by parents nor forced upon since religious beleif does not make it science. Trying to fill the missing peices of the theory of evolution/creation of universe with religion is dumb and supersticious. I'm not saying inteligent design theory CANNOT be possible, but its one thing to teach kids this as a science when there is no basis for this.
I say give them the option later in life when they are ready to study religious beleifs.. question the science and, based upon that, form their own beleif system instead of forcing kids into a phylosophical debate at such a young age as they cannot form their own opinions or beleif system and instead simply adopt those of their parents or guardians.
You need to brush up on what "theory" and "proof" means in science.
And the same goes for the ones who moderated your post "Insightful".
it's in my head
There really is an amazing amount pointing towards it being true, and we see it all around us taking place, from moths changing colours over decades to remain camoflauged to the massive varaity of dog breeds there are.
As of late we even have DNA to back up the claims of old.
>but until there is substantial proof it should remain quietly in the upper echelons of academia, not taught to grade-school students.
Oh right, so we're to ignore the massive amount of evidence backing up evolution, forcing school kids to think about life and instead teach religious crap to them from birth?
Makes me sick, it really does.
Don't panic
Next we'll be teaching that gravity is "Just a theory" and that there are other reasons that things might fall to the ground, and that planets might move in their orbits -- if you believe in planetary orbits, that is.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
...Great! Another small minority making my entire state look like backwater hicks!
And we were just beginning to recover from being blamed for Dubya.
Of course evolution is not exempt from challenges and falsification, but Intelligent Design (creationism) does not qualify. It is not even science.
There is no such thing as macroevolution. It is a term used by creationists and anti-evolutionist either out of ignorance, or an attempt to underhandedly lure others away from science and observation. All evolution takes place at the "micro" level. Speciation is simply the result of many small changes (micro) over a long period of time.
Evolutionists, ID'ers shouldn't be allowed to spew their propaganda in public schools. None of this is science just silly speculation to justify what they believe.
Belief based upon the results of the scientific method is called, "SCIENCE". Belief based upon anything else, is not.
For example of science "Water boils at 100c and freeze at 0c" this is scientific fact.
Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't based upon the conditions. Climb a really high mountain and try it and you'll have disproved that theory, which is why the scientific method adopts better and more accurate theories as more experiments are performed. Whatever the best theory to date is, is the one scientists believe is true. Anything else is pseudo science.
The origin of life or any such nonsense is just speculation. Did someone go back it time and video something? It isn't fact.
No, they came up with theories and tested them and the one most supported by the evidence using the scientific method is the leading scientific theory on that subject and what every rational person should believe until we come up with something better.
It isn't fact. People beliefs do not belong in school...
Outside of mathematics, nothing can be proved absolutely. It can just be supported by the evidence or not. It can be a belief decided upon by a formalized, objective, logical method (like the scientific method) or it can be decided by an illogical method and defended logically or illogically. Your equivocation is just another way of claiming science is no better than non-scientific methods. That's a fine belief, but it has jack to do with what should be taught in a science class. Hopefully, this attempt to undermine science will fail and the kids will not be as uneducated as you when they walk out of it.
While democracy and majority decisions are quite a great tool for decision makings, and in fact groups usually make better decisions than individuals(*) - facts are not something that's subject to majority decisions and the processes of democracy. Like it or not, 1+1 equals two, the earth isn't flat, and evolution holds up to the most rigorous tests.
I would be in favour of "more variety" if that would mean something like "teachers must present all widely accepted scientific theories on a particular subject", but not this political, religious bullshit that teaches kids the entirely wrong things, namely to accept nonsense as truth.
(* despite all "design by commitee" cries - yes, design is one of the few areas that are exceptions
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I think if Texas wanted to just secede at this point, no one would object . . .
"Questioning a theory is far from wrong, but until there is substantial proof it should remain quietly in the upper echelons of academia, not taught to grade-school students."
If you're saying there is no proof, it's impossible to "prove" without a time machine. However, there's a tremendous amount of strong, dramatic evidence. Certainly there's far more evidence in favour of evolution than there is evidence supporting creationism/intelligent design. If that's not enough, we'll also have to take all other "theories" out of the classroom, starting with the theory of gravity. After all, we only have a large body of evidence that our model of gravity works.
What else are you willing to sacrifice in favour of trimming out all topics but the completely, irrevocably proven ones? Certainly the biology, chemistry and physics textbooks are completely laden with theories as opposed to proven facts.
Social studies, philosophy, and history have also got to go. They are the very definition of theoretical topics. Every article is written by somebody with a subjective viewpoint, and some events reported in the history books probably never happened.
<quote><p>Seriously, for the country that's supposed to be the most modern and have the best technology (all ofcourse delivered through scientific study), it remains unbelievable that evolution is even questioned.</p><p>No such thing in Europe. Not even the Vatican and the Church of England (both the foundations for the US churches) doubt evolution theory. They even support it !</p><p>Wake up, Americans
<p>Questioning a theory is far from wrong, but until there is substantial proof it should remain quietly in the upper echelons of academia, not taught to grade-school students.</p></quote>
Right, any questioning of theories should be in the realm of academia, grade schoolers should be taught the facts as we understand them, and the scientific method. They can go on to question things later in life, grade school is where you get your grounding in the basics. The theory of evolution should be questioned and tested, but not in grade school, most of them aren't equipped to, or desire to, question things scientifically. Until there is substantial proof for some other explanation, they should continue to teach evolution as is.
Nothing to say here... move along
I found Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale to be an excellent read on "macro-evolution." He traverses the evolutionary family tree of human beings by successive common ancestor back to the bacteria and then speculates a bit on the origin of life from there. He admits where the data get fuzzier (i.e., the farther back you go), where it is harder to ascertain the exact ordering of common ancestry.
For those who have doubts about "macro-evolution" but not "micro-evolution," it can really clarify the links. I heartily recommend you read it.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
While I am sure this is not what Texas legislators have in mind, I do not see the problem with teachers encouraging students to challenge the theory of evolution. It is still theory and challenging it can lead other theories besides creationism. Sadly, I am sure Texas just wants creationism to be taught in school, which I also don't have a problem with as long as it is a philosophy class and they teach all theories of creationism, not just the Christian theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Parents teaching children their beliefs is a fundamental right of parents. Evolution, taught properly, doesn't conflict with most religions in this country. However, telling 2nd grades that they are descended from monkeys interferes with parents explaining their views to their children, which is normally more nuanced that a literal read of the Bible (note, two creation stories are given, and much of that part of the Bible only makes sense non-literally)
Could we NOT teach evolution until middle school or high school? Could we take a more nuanced approach in middle school?
"Evolution is FACT" is dogma, and science-ism, and only slightly more helpful than fundamentalists wanting to teach creationism?
The MOST important thing in science, in my opinion, is the scientific method, and understanding how we verify data and theories. Once you start pounding the podium and demanding that an idea you don't like NOT be taught, you aren't conducting science (research, formulate hypothesis, conduct experiment, gather data, reach conclusion), you're transmitting dogma. For those NOT pursuing a field in the sciences, understanding the scientific method IS CRITICAL... how many managers don't understand the need to test something before committing it, and therefore don't understand how you verify a theory... a process that is the SAME in the science classroom as testing a marketing strategy.
Facts are important, and evolution is a critical component of our understanding of the world. But at the impressionable ages that parents are concerned about, they aren't learning "science" with evolution, they are being told "we're from monkeys, the Preist/Preacher/Iman/Rabbi is a liar."
Evolution is a theory... it is our currently best theory to describe life, but who knows what tomorrow will bring. When you start codifying science into law, you lose the purity of science and enter the same realm of politics. When you outlaw questioning evolution, as some have done, you're dogmatically enforcing a theory, who knows, maybe someone will develop a new one and you've outlawed questioning. Same problem when you talk of scientific consensus. If 1 million scientists "believe" one thing, and one rogue scientists proves otherwise, science requires that we follow the correct rogue, not stay loyal to "consensus." Science is determined via scientific method, not polls and surveys.
It's more important that we preserve the method of science than if we teach particular information to children. Much of what I learned in school is oversimplified, or simply superseded by newer knowledge. We can teach in biology about antiviral medicine, not cling to dogma that antibiotics treat bacteria, you have to "get over" a virus.
I do not understand why this stuff is voted on. Science is not democratic and voting will not change reality.
A majority vote that water should freeze at 10 degrees Celsius will not make it do so.
Why would anyone think the origins of life would be any different? All science thus far has pointed at evolution.
Voting otherwise will change nothing. This fact has a fascinating and unsurprising parallel in prayer.
Question everything
OK, here's a kite -
if you choose the management route of advancement, then somewhere between level 4 and level 5 you will be taught about "Change Theory" (you will be taught this by those who have taken the psychologist route of advancement, though they learn it at level 2).
This is not about evolutionary change, but about how humans view change in general. There are two very simple conclusions that the psychologists present as their starting point (the training is on how to overcome the obstacles presented by their starting points!). They are:
1) Humans view any change similarly - it really doesn't matter what's changing;
2) In every population, for any change, the population will be spilt into 20% leaders of change, 30% supporters of change, 30% supporters of the status quo, and 20% luddite resistors of change (the really odd thing is that the same people are in the same groups, regardless of what the change is).
Now, the kite is - are the anti-Darwinists simply the 20% that are so agin change that they simply cannot believe in a world that changes?
They've got so much in common.
Drunk on oil.
Devoutly religious.
A questionable grip on reality.
Corrupt, dumb-as-f**k politicians.
In love with the death penalty.
They deserve to be together.
On a positive note, Europe will be able to screw the USA in biotech. Go Texas!
Why send their kids to school if they don't want them to be educated?
Bob's Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots
Could somebody just mail the Flying Spaghetti Monster original letter to everyone in this board?
Oh, and BTW, if haven't done it yet. Read it. It is the best rebuttal to Int.Design I have ever read.
It's not a compromise. That's not part of evolutionary theory, and that's not what the creationists attack.
They do attack the fundamental ideas of science -- that it's a process of observing the natural, not supernatural, world. That we gain knowledge through application of our senses, not through received divine inspiration. And, finally, least of all, that evolution sufficiently explains the variation and success and change of living things.
So the only people competent to question anything are the academic elite? That seems somewhat self serving to those who place themselves in that category thus putting themselves above reproach by any mere âstudentâ(TM) of study and reason. Basically they are just snobs so why should their opinion hold more credit than any reasonably informed person.
Thanks, idiot. Not everyone is in the US and able to watch the final series of BSG as it airs. I've spent all week avoiding spoilers on forums like Digg and Reddit, and you have to go and fuck it up for me in a completely irrelevant thread? You're lucky I already posted in this thread or I'd moderate you to oblivion.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
First off, evolution and abiogenesis (origin of life) are not the same thing. You saying that they are is either ignorance or stupidity. Evolution is very much a fact, though, and has been observed in experiments.
"Evolutionists" are not faithful zealots, at least not most of them. They simply realize that ID is nothing but an attack on science under the guise of "thinking". Evolution is as much a scientific theory supported by evidence as gravity is. Not teaching it is an intellectual disservice.
BTW, water boiling at 100C and freezing at 0C are not scientific facts. I can have distilled water still be liquid at 0C. Pressure is very much a part of that equation.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
We need to evolve as a society and stop teaching creationism in schools
Education should be consumer driven? Are you serious?
If that happened I'd give it about a generation before you had Idiocracy. The average joe doesn't give a shit about science.
Please try looking up the word 'Conjecture' and 'Theory' in Wikipedia, or any formal scientific dictionary. It is quite depressing how laypeople appear to substitute the common language interpretation of 'Theory' with its scientific counterpart :_(
Simply put, you don't 'question' a theory ... you either disprove it or you don't. There is not maybe here.
The issues with Neptune's orbit have to do with whether Pluto's the only other planet out there near Neptune, or whether there was some other larger body we haven't found yet that pushed it to be so eccentric, which were pretty strictly astronomy problems as opposed to cosmology problems.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Why does it have to be Evolution or God's plan? How can you be sold so quickly on anything? You don't KNOW anything, and digging up a bunch of bones doesn't prove shit. Their are countless possibilities and I find it predictably disappointing that so many people need to feel like they KNOW what happened in the past. Weak minds need security. Science (in this case Darwin's) is the new religion. Me, I'm open to other possibilities. We have creators but their not God & their not benevolent.
Pretty well by definition anything that we can observe is evolution happening small scale. Speciation events that we have seen seem to in part occur because we have trouble defining exactly what constitutes a "species". Larger examples of evolution, like creatures adapting from sea life to land life, in all likelihood are unprovable. Teaching something unprovable really should stay out of the classroom (which is to say I don't think ID should be taught in the classroom either - what's wrong with "we don't know"?).
So in the small scale, yeah, teach what we know. Here's the fossils we've found, here's the records we have, here's all the things we've observed. How did all this come about? We're not sure.
Do you deny that the Germ Theory of Disease is JUST A THEORY? Everyone knows that we don't get sick by exchanging tiny invisible organisms. We get sick from not PRAYING enough to GAWD! Hellelujah! Praise Jeebus!
That's what is meant by macro evolution and it's the part that is not falsifiable. It is legitimate to point this little fact out to evolutionists but they will not listen to reason. Claiming that part of the fossil record shows a progression is not proof. We see progression over time when we breed our pets and farm animals. Big deal! A chihuahua is still a dog. Its genes did not evolve; they were selected (or deselected) for expression from a pool that had existed for millions of years. The sort of pseudoscience that asserts that hippos evolve into whales (no falsifiability whatsoever) or fish into lizards will flourish whenever science is used to support a pre-existing mindset or ideology. Atheism and refusal to accept the possibility of creation/intelligent design is the ideology that underlies macro-evolution. A priori conclusions do not lead to good science. It is chicken shit science. Live with it.
Last time I checked there were other English speaking countries. Now, I happen to live in the Netherlands, so it may be that the end of the world has already come to pass everywhere else, in which case I still have thirty years or so, but I think there still are places like Canada and the United Kingdom. Nowadays you don't even have to physically import the paper books anymore, you can just license a local publisher the PDF. I simply don't understand why other states would have to make do with subpar Texan schoolbooks.
Sadly, not a lot of scientists are teaching science at any level below the collegiate level. It's more like, You teach what you want to in church, and some guy who had biology from a TA 25 years ago will teach whatever the textbook says in science class.
ffs.
all they have awarded us in the last 30 years had been various hardliner factions in republican party, the last of which managed to create a pointless war and burn 500 bn/year, all the while causing the world economy to go into a major crisis with 'deregulation' shit they pulled in usa.
ha there's also oil. and there's also grain. but then again the producers of both those products are the supporters behind these latest disasters.
and now challenging science ?
i question texas' existence. world may be better off without them.
Read radical news here
Now all graduates from Texas will be screened from all jobs related science or to critical thinking not to metion places in schools of higher learning. All the more positions for the rest of us.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Three Republicans on the school board who favor the teaching of evolution have come under enormous pressure to reform their ways.
Well then, we can infer that within a few generations their descendants will exhibit a tendency not to believe in evolution....
I am the man with no sig!
If I were the admissions officer at a 4-year university, I would stop accepting Texas high-school biology coursework as college prep. Students from Texas public high-schools would have to take a real biology course somewhere else in order to satisfy a science requirement.
Do you think that would influence the Texas school board or would they just take the defacto dis-accreditation as a "badge of honor"?
-S
Get off your butts and run for public office. Become a member of your local school board. Just don't sit back and complain and hope someone else will do it for you.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
I am so weary of these 24 karat gold dumb fuck idiots.
We have a hard core group of them here in my home town in Ohio that periodically use the school board to voice their inane views and get everyone all worried that the children are going to end up as uneducated mouth breathers.
If the earth is 10,000 years old, do you ban every scientific teaching that threatens that view? Do you not teach geology because it explains the history of the earth in terms that contradict their particular interpretation of the bible. Do you censor genetics because it shows the similarity of species DNA? Do you ban nuclear physics so students can't figure out how to measure the date of rocks?
...car says there is no you!
-- thinkyhead software and media
Why are we still arguing about something that was settled definitively nearly 800 years ago? Though he did not use the terms "science" and "religion", Albert the Great used the terms "natural philosophy" and "theology". Summarizing what he wrote in the modern terms, he observed that...
Science and religion can not conflict because they are both avenues to the truth. If they ever appear to conflict, then it can only be because you are doing bad science or doing bad religion.
Applying this to the current discussion: When creationists deny evolution, they are doing bad theology. They're missing the point of the creation story, which is not that the world is 6000 years old, but that creation is good and on purpose.
Of course, scientists can also be guilty of doing bad science. Just because it's useful to model the universe as indifferent, it doesn't logically follow that our lives are without meaning.
The proposed curriculum change would prompt teachers to raise doubts that all life on Earth is descended from common ancestry.
[Hudson with his iPhone Cylon Detector-application]
"I got signals, I got readings in front and behind! There's aliens all around us, man! Jesus!"
"Mama don't like no tattletales."
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Since evolution is not a fact, and the further we explore biology reveals more and more problems with the hypothesis of evolution, I don't think it's wrong to suggest that evolution could be wrong. In fact (if I can say the word), preventing people from considering possibilities will just lead us further away from science.
I would be wrong to right a textbook without mentioning the problems with evolution... and IMHO, it needs to give coverage of other possibilities.
I believe that before I die, we'll be laughing at our immaturity with regards the acceptance of evolution (which will have so many holes by then, that NOBODY will accept it), and we will have moved onto the "space seed" hypothesis which doesn't seek to answer the origin of life, but pushes it out of our reach (well.. it may make excursions farther into space more exciting anyhow).
Even Darwin in his book points out some factors which would make the ideas of evolution invalid and as far as I know, we've hit ALL of those factors in science today, thus making evolution invalid at least to Mr. Darwin. But hey... I think people just like believe in what they believe... no sense in doing science anymore.
Why do some people need faith? I was open minded enough to read a good chunk of the Bible, I even went to church regularly and decided it wasn't for me. Perhaps a few of them should read some of Richard Dawkin's books and see things from my perspective. I'm guessing not very many would even consider it. I really don't care if someone has personal beliefs just don't force them on me or my children. I also want to say how grateful I am that I don't live in Texas.
The thing about science, is it can and will only deal with observable evidence. Science does not concern itself with anything which is not falsifiable. As science expands, the list of that which is not falsifiable increases, but there some things for which science simply has no domain.
For example, the big one: God. No evidence, the scientists say. Can't write a theory to either prove or disprove God either, although one can only hope for an unexpected event in the future which swings it either way by meeting certain criteria, but defining criteria that disproves God is next to impossible. Any "clear evidence" for a lack of god could be met with "God put the evidence there".
When scientists are asked their question that it is not their job to answer, they can only go up one further level, which is philosophy. And this is my point. The "intelligent design" argument is not a scientific one, as it hypothesises the unfalsifiable as the cause of the observable. "Intelligent design" is a PHILOSOPHICAL argument, and has a rightful place for discussion in philosophy, alongside questions such as whether that which we know is the only thing that is knowable, and whether we all see the colour "blue" in the same way. If the ID lobby want their hypothesis taught in school, fine, teach it in philosophy where it belongs, and keep it out of science class.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
>Since evolution is not a fact,?P>
Wrong. Evolution is an observed fact. It has been observed in nature and in the laboratory. You have stated a false premise, so any conclusions drawn from your premise are also false. Your remaining paragraphs continue this pattern of logical fallacy. Perhaps you should learn something about evolutionary biology that isn't parroting the mouth breathers at Answers In Genesis.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
In the end, it's all about education not being right or wrong.
I wish both sides could understand that being educated and informed doesn't necessarily equate belief, endorsement, or apostasy. You can study Christianity (or any religion) without believing in it and you can study evolutionary science (or any other scientific theory) without believing in it. Ignoring the other view is just, well...ignorant.
I think it's best to approach education from a perspective of learning and understanding rather than discriminating against information in which you do not believe while promoting one's own agenda or belief system. That's not education--that's brainwashing.
That kind of thinking led to the dark ages.
Ignorance reigns amongst the absolutists.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Apparently people in Texas are showing that the complexity of organisms and particularly their mental capacities is declining with each generation. I guess this could be construed as a counter example.
Well, unless you go to college, or do some self study, you are unlikely to be "reasonable informed" on very many things.
i.e. 90+ percent of the people who have a problem with evolution ARE NOT reasonably informed, some aren't informed at all.
That's kind of the point of university, a place where people can study, and GET informed. Self study works for some, but reading a 90 page synopsis of evolution written by a "hostile witness" is not the way to become "reasonably informed" about anything.
The problem with your statement about "opinion hold more credit" is that opinion has no place in science. Science is about facts, there is room for opinion about what theory best explains observed facts, but a theory that ignores the facts, isn't scientific. An expert in the field knows more about it than a layman, typically. i.e. he is more informed. So no matter how reasonably informed you think someone is, as a layman, they are likely to be less informed than an expert.
So do you think it's snobbery to let an MD make medical decisions over someone who watches general hospital a lot?
Also I wouldn't take the advise of an MD on building a bridge, over that of a civil engineer.
Nothing to say here... move along
I for one salute these brave souls in Texas for standing up to bigoted academics and helping cement America's competitiveness in the global market for cheap uneducated labor.
I look forward to the devolution of Texas' workforce into the burger flipping resource of the world.
... at least people who went to public schools down there.
If the goverment of Texas is going to indulge in such fatuous nonsense, at least the rest of us can avoid paying the price. Let Texans who are taught to be ignorant find jobs in Texas.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
You are assuming that the paying customers (parents) value cognition as much as you do. What if parents want their children taught religious dogma as science? Given the political popularity of not teaching evolution, I suspect that at least some parents would pay to not have it taught.
Go here and look for the PDF for "Terra Papers". It contains a lot more than Sitchen could even begin to guess. You may laugh at the ridiculousness of it, so if it's too much for to consider than treat it as sci-fi. It's a fascinating read either way.
Explain this me : if evolution doesn't exist, why doesn't just the animal world, but even mankind come in all colors and shapes ?
Also, we know for a fact that no species can come from 2 individuals.
Furthermore : if Adam and Eve have 3 children, all male, how did the human race survive ?
Genesis is a great story told by people who had no other ways of explaining where humankind came from. I'm certainly not discrediting everything that's in the Bible. I'm a religious person. But one has to separate fact from fiction.
If the Vatican, who once put burned people alive for saying there were errors in the Bible, simply admits Genesis is a nice story, but evolution is a fact, how can you believe such a flawed story is fact ?
The Bible was not written to be a book of facts. It was written as a moral guideline for life. Once you realize science and religion can go hand-in-hand if you look past the actual words in the Bible, you will find the Bible has a much deeper meaning than those words, a meaning that science complements with facts.
Well the do have a point, somewhat.. eg. no amount of breeding of dogs has produced a non-dog (a dog2 if you like).
I present to you... the miniature poodle! This is not a dog! This is a travesty of old-school genetic engineering fused with irritability and a constant yap that will drive most anyone with a Y chromosome to either put his forehead through a wall repeatedly... or remove his testicles with a spork and spend the remaining years of his life treating it as if it were his only child.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
I don't understand why people keep pushing Intelligent Design into *science* class. If you want to create a new class in which to teach ID that's fine, but it's not based on experimentation and observation so why should it be taught in a class which is based on teaching those principles. Programming isn't taught in math class (to my knowledge) even though the two are almost inseparable, so why would you teach ID (a subject that isn't even based on the same principles as science) in a science class.
P.S. I would weep to see a class added to the curriculum that was just about ID, but I still think the point is that it is not science.
I'm an optimistic cynic: I'm optimistic that my cynicism is well founded.
'cause I'm afraid that might be the end of those poor creationists.
Sigh.
This really illustrates the torturous path of creationist thinking. You will concede as much as is so blindingly obvious as to be certifiable if denied, and then as soon as you perceive a conflict with your dogmatic interpretation of your precious book, it's suddenly "not science".
If a single population becomes two reproductively isolated populations, and each one continues to change, what mechanism do you propose would keep the divergence between the populations below some upper bound? Perhaps God step in and say "nope, that's one micro-evolution too far. You'd be different species, and we can't have that."?
Why can various related but distinct species still interbreed (e.g. horses and donkeys or lions and tigers)? If your answer is that they are the same "kind", then why are the offspring usually only weakly fertile? Can't you see that continuing genetic divergence in the respective species will only push the descendants of each species further apart, and eventually they won't be able to interbreed at all? Have you heard of ring species?
While selection usually changes the frequency of existing alleles, new alleles are being constantly created through mutation. Most mutations are deleterious, but not all; multi-antibiotic resistant bacteria are a good example of a repeatedly observed beneficial mutation.
Of course these ideas, which all logically follow from facts you seem not to dispute, contradict your book. That makes them "chicken shit science", right?
I recall hearing a snippet on the radio from http://www.creationmoments.com/ a few years back. I tend to avoid the evolution/creationism debate because I don't personally have the depth of knowledge to push one way or the other. But I'm interested in a real evolutionist's answer to how critters like the bombardier beetle evolved/survived to live in their present state.
/. the site.
I grabbed the meat of their transcript so we don't need to
The bombardier beetle has a powerful and complex system for protecting himself from enemies. Glands within the beetle produce a mixture of two hydroquinone compounds and hydrogen peroxide. These chemicals must be held in separate chambers, because when they come into contact with each other they react. When the beetle is threatened, the chemicals are mixed in a third chamber where a third chemical is added and an explosive reaction takes place. This reaction forces the caustic solution out through a special "nozzle." The beetle is skilled in aiming this nozzle at its enemy.
If this system is missing any of its parts, it is more than worthless to the beetle; the chemicals alone are very dangerous. So this sophisticated defense system could not have evolved in stages. Imagine the poor beetle who evolved the ability to produce the chemicals but hadn't yet evolved the right chambers to mix them without blowing itself up. The first time he became alarmed, poof!-no more beetle at all!
"Water boils at 100c and freeze at 0c" this is scientific fact.
No, "Water boils at 100c and freezes at 0c." is a statement of (alleged) fact. Also, I guess antifreeze isn't big in your world.
Does ID lend itself to decent philosophical discussion?
The "ID" people rely on the very comforting, all-American, "teach the controversy" mantra. Hmmm..lessee.. gay sex is pretty controversial. How 'bout they start teaching that in health class along side hetero- sex. Ebonics is also controversial.. yo? That variant of English should be taught too... yo?
The OP is trolling, and has things exactly backward. Texas has for years required that all sciences be taught according to "strengths and weaknesses" (not just evolution). The current vote is to remove this requirement, not to add it.
As to those blindly commenting about Christianity, let me just say this: evolution is not a theory, it is a hypothesis at best (and I would say even that doesn't hold water). It requires more faith to believe in evolution, so you might ponder that in light of the facts.
Please explain why discussing the weaknesses of any given "theory" is a problem? If evolution is "fact" as claimed, then what's the problem?
The science challenged retards in Texas and Alabama will become the next centuries' sweatshop workers. And some of us who have learnt science will be the sweatshop owners. And we will be making goods to export to our Chinese Masters. Will serve them Texans right.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
With such a big concept as creation vs. evolution, why can they not just be made to teach that these are the two primary theories in existence
Aside from the number of creationist theories, how scientific is creationism?
That whales evolved from hippos is TRIVIAL to falsify. All you have to do is show that the DNA in whales does not seem to have descended from a common ancestor of hippos, perhaps by having far too many differences.
You seem to be thinking that "nobody has shown it to be false" is the same as "not falsifiable". You do not have a clue what you are talking about, do you.
Isn't it interesting that scientific theories are themselves the product of natural selection, so to speak.
Only those hypothesis' that have survived repeated attacks of logic and discovery can be accepted as theories.
Thus, Darwin's ideas on natural selection and evolution have survived and evolved into the massive pile of evidence now known as the Theory of evolution.
All of these people trying to attack this scientific theory are doing so with fictional stories, theologies and philosophies.
From the WSJ article:
What is a "militant Darwinist"? "Evolve damn it! Or I'll blow your head off!"
No surprise that the Texas GOP is backing the creationist head of the school board. They've had creationist language in their party platform for years now:
Theories of Origin - We support objective teaching and equal treatment of strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories, including Intelligent Design. We believe theories of life origins and environmental theories should be taught as scientific theory, not scientific law. Teachers and students should be able to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these theories openly and without fear of retribution or discrimination of any kind.
So sad to see the GOP become the modern day Know-Nothing Party.
Irreducible complexity is an argument made by proponents of intelligent design that certain biological systems are too complex to have evolved from simpler, or "less complete" predecessors
So God wouldn't make things complex? Doesn't that imply that creationists believe that God cannot be more intelligent than themselves?
Not all of us live in Texas there chief. Or in whatever podunk state of the month that comes up with these evangelical ideas.
You need to understand how our system works a bit better before you start lecturing other people on anything.
Turns out that believing whatever the group leader says and what other group members have been coerced into saying they believe, rather than checking things out for yourself, is evolutionarily adaptive. The group (the church or religion in this case) becomes a super-organism whose members help each other survive by agreeing alot. Collectively agreeing that you believe in X (substitute your favorite particular myth here) might be a way of practicing "collective agreement" itself, which you can then apply to all kinds of practical matters, like say, sheltering someone who believed they could afford their mortgage.
These little help-me-outs add up to a thriving superorganism. Exactly what the content of what the members agree to co-believe is doesn't matter much, as long as some of that content is about incentives and punishments for sharing and not sharing, respectively, or agreeing and not agreeing with the group, respectively.
(ps I know this is a "Just So" story, but at least it isn't a "just isn't so" story.)
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
... that the rest of the country's teachers can raise doubts that Texas is a state? Maybe Texas can try to shoot for the worst approximation to pi and mandate that it's equal to 5.
We shall go back to the fundamentals. Third grade fundamentals at that. I'd like to ask these school board members if they can name the fundamental steps to the scientific method. If they can't, they should be publicly ridiculed.
For the first time ever, I'm glad that they didn't build it. It was supposed to be built in Texas, and those clowns don't deserve it. Maybe if it had been built they would be more kindly predisposed to science there, but I somehow doubt it.
but rather "exhibits properties of both". What this really means is that in some cases one set of equations should be used to calculate numeric outcomes of an experiment, and in other cases a different set. A physicist knows which ones to use for which experiment. That is all. Anything beyond this is non-scientific.
Now, claims about complexity of life are as scientific as claims that a photon is "both a particle and a wave" -- they are both philosophy. Neither enables anyone to actually achieve or predict anything. Only equations do. Only experiments validate equations.
Teach equations and experiments. Philosophy will take of itself. "Evolution" or "intelligent design" as taught in schools are a waste of time and harmful, because these debates draw attention from the real problem -- math and physics are not taught properly, so as to produce capable engineers, not even by the standards of 50 years ago.
To put it bluntly: better a "creationist" school where students can calculate the distance a stone can be thrown with a given force at a given angle than the best "evolution" school where most students have trouble with quadratic functions and their applications such as above. The latter can only parrot back some "teaching" about some "fossils" they've never seen.
I mentioned interbreeding. I mentioned it because the current scientific theories have a sound explanation for what we observe, and your religious objections do not.
We could say that one prediction of evolution by natural selection is that reproductively isolated species diverge over time. This is indeed falsifiable; if it were never observed, even where we predict it should. Fortunately, there are geographical ranges of populations that can interbreed with close but not distant populations (most dramatically illustrated with ring species) and experiments with fruit fly mate selection, even without any recourse to the fossil record.
I think that "chicken shit" is a much better description of arguing against claims that are not being made. In each case you mention above, the two modern species in question have a common ancestor, and accumulated changes in different populations of its descendants eventually became the respective species. Nobody argues that one evolved "from" the other.
And another thing: the modern scientific (though not necessarily linguistic) consensus is that humans are apes, inasmuch as apes are a valid biological group. Chimpanzees, bonobos, humans and gorillas are more closely related to each other than any are to orangutans, so any sensible group that includes all the great apes must also include us.
The scientific method?
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
Mathematics is the language of all sciences that give us any ability to manipulate the material world. Physics would be DEAD in an instant without math, modern physics IS graduate-level-and-beyond math.
Community consensus was never any help in determining truths about material world (aka "science"). There was "no controversy" about Newtonian physics, and no doubt of its applicability on all scales, until a few pesky experiments gave different results than expected.
fire her already.
The universe in centered on the sun?
Good to know.
Makes me feel kind of special.
Sol! Sol! S! O! L!
Of course some people might think of some other place as the center of the universe.
Galactocentrics must be reformed or killed.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Methinks the lady does protest too much. Your post is just the usual propaganda with a hidden atheist agenda. It is no better than creationist (YEC) propaganda. Any scientific theory that exempts itself from challenges and falsification is just that, propaganda. Macro evolution has no evidence other than a seriously flawed fossil record and the evidence, when it does exist, proves nothing. Macro evolution is no more falsifiable than creationism. The shrill cries that science is under attack is just BS masquerading as legitimacy. Isaac Newton believed that the universe and lifeforms were created but that did not stop him from revolutionizing physics. Texas should be applauded for its courage in the face of persecution. If your science is superior, it will survive. If not, it will fail. I am seeing signs of failure and the latest news doe not bode well for macro evolution and atheism.
Good science takes courage, courage to stand up in the face of mainstream boneheadedness. I got the guts to write the above on Slashdot, a bastion of atheism and Darwinism because that is what it takes. Now do your duty, moderators. Mod me down and see if I give a shit.
Can you give even a off-the-cuff reason/mechanism that would prevent what you call macro-evolution, given that micro-evolution is accepted? Unless you can show that macro-evolution is somehow fundamentally different than micro-evolution you have nothing to argue against except personal preference.
Do you understand what falsifiable means? I know several people who think it means "have found evidence against" instead of "can find evidence against".
There are also plenty of people who don't understand that facts don't need to be falsifiable.
If I drop a ball, on earth, that it falls is a fact. Different theories of gravity can explain it's motion. If my theory says that big objects fall faster than small objects, that theory can be falsified by experiment or observation of events. i.e. dropping two differently sized objects and show they fall at the same speed.
The fact of evolution cannot be falsified any more than the fact of things moving toward a lower potential energy in a gravity well.
Evolution can and continues to be observed.
The theory of evolution is multifaceted, the origin of species part is one that many have a problem with. That many diverse species came from few common ancestors. There are many things that can falsify many different parts of the ToE, the problem that annoys many creationists is that none of them have ever been observed. The REASON the ToE has endured is because none of the things that could falsify it have ever been observed, or if they have, the theory would has been revised. That's the neat thing about science, when it's wrong, we fix it. Religions don't allow that, and typically see it as a weakness, thus demonstrating their lack of understanding.
Nothing to say here... move along
So in the small scale, yeah, teach what we know. Here's the fossils we've found, here's the records we have, here's all the things we've observed. How did all this come about? We're not sure.
And I'd reply, "here is a scientific theory to explain how we got here."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Hmm - nice strawman. The question was "do you believe" (which is shorthand for "do you think it is true") not "do you believe in" (which is generally reserved for the supernatural/faith/ and other unsciency thinks). I believe the earth orbits the sun - meaning I think it is true even though I will never be in a position to observe this directly - but the evidence supports it. However I don't "believe in" the earth orbiting the sun. I think this is a case where the overloaded meaning of believe is tripping us up.
That's what is meant by macro evolution and it's the part that is not falsifiable. It is legitimate to point this little fact out to evolutionists but they will not listen to reason. Claiming that part of the fossil record shows a progression is not proof. We see progression over time when we breed our pets and farm animals. Big deal! A chihuahua is still a dog. Its genes did not evolve; they were selected (or deselected) for expression from a pool that had existed for millions of years. The sort of pseudoscience that asserts that hippos evolve into whales (no falsifiability whatsoever) or fish into lizards will flourish whenever science is used to support a pre-existing mindset or ideology. Atheism and refusal to accept the possibility of creation/intelligent design is the ideology that underlies macro-evolution. A priori conclusions do not lead to good science. It is chicken shit science. Live with it.
Macro-evolution is falsifiable, if you can show it is somehow different than micro-evolution. You seem to think that every little conjecture that touches upon evolution needs to be individually falsifiable, some things are just conjecture. They are more along the line of reconstructing what we think happened based on the evidence we have and the theory explaining the process. (like forensics)
It a common misconception, or commonly expression misinformation, that evolution = atheism.
i.e. Ignorance or a deliberate attempt to mislead.
You might want to go back and read about 'a priori' and 'a posteriori' again, I don't think they mean what you think they mean.
Nothing to say here... move along
Yet another slashdotter who thinks science is in the business of proof. Science does not prove anything it offers the best theory for the available evidence.
There is plenty of evidence that life colonised the land from the sea. There is also evidence that sometimes it goes the other way, eg: remnant hip bones in whales.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If George W. Bush didn't embarrass Texas enough then this anti evolution nonsense ought to do the trick. No wonder they had Lee Harvey Oswald working in a text book repository. These people are really, severely stupid.
Science requires peer review and reproducible results. If a hypothesis is proven wrong then it is modified to account for the new data. Religion on the other hand can be proven, if it can be, by one method only. That being Socrates's method, drinking hemlock tea, or otherwise dieing.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The Bible! You actually believe that? Anybody with a brain knows our real creator is the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
Come to think of it, maybe I do agree that George Bush and I could not possibly share a common ancestor!
PaulW, IT Consultant
Texas- George W. Bush
Alaska- Sarah Palin
God Dammit! Some of us watch BG on hulu and are still waiting for the last episode. Could you keep your spoilers to yourselves. Sheesh.
-- QED
I went to Catholic high school (as an atheist - and was that ever fun!), and in theology class the teacher explicitly stated that the theory of evolution didn't disagree with the Bible because the creation story in the Book of Genesis is a parable meant to teach....something. I forget what it was supposed to teach, since I didn't care and it was 20 years ago. I do remember, however, that the Catholics weren't on board with the crazy Protestant born-again idea that Baby Jeeezus made the animals in six days and anyone who disagreed with that should be set on fire.
They only respect Popes that are anti-gay and against abortion. the last two have been very conservative so they are willing to ally with Catholics on those issues, but most hardcore evangelicals are actually anti-catholic at heart. My dad could tell you lots of stories about that, especially what members of his church said during the election of 1960.
Oh yea, there were a lot of Protestants and others who were afraid the Vatican would take over the US government if a Catholic, Kennedy, won the presidential election. These people were the same type of Know Nothings who feared Irish Catholics in the 1840s and '50s and tried to make it illegal for them to immigrate into the US.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
California is a much larger textbook market than Texas. A much stronger claim can be made that California is the market that publishers try to satisfy. And California is the most likely market to demand evolution and reject its minimization.
Some one up the thread said that though California has a bigger population than Texas whereas in Texas the state orders all the books in California different cities, counties, or districts order different books. California isn't one big orderer of books.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
So do you think it's snobbery to let an MD make medical decisions over someone who watches general hospital a lot?
Also I wouldn't take the advise of an MD on building a bridge, over that of a civil engineer.
My wife and I had a doctor look us in the face and tell us our daughter couldn't breastfeed. It was really odd, because she was breastfeeding at the time, right in front of him. I don't know what caused this expert to ignore the reality right in front of him, but I've seen that sort of thing happen enough times that I'm forced to reserve judgement to myself.
Experts where in charge of the financial system, it seems. Certainly we should take advantage of expertise, but to blindy trust on that basis is unwise.
Just to clarify, though, I am not in favor of public school creationism science classes, just making a comment on experts.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
The article, and the Slashdot summary, misrepresents the situation. The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) standards have had for years the phrase: "The student is expected to analyze, review, and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information."
(I find it interesting that similar phraseology is used for Social Studies in the Texas standards - "The student is expected to summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation." - http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/ssc/teks_and_taas/taas/review/articles/articles.htm .)
Now all of a sudden a change has been proposed to remove the "strengths and weaknesses" requirement.
Note that in the attempt to retain this language, there is no challenge to evolution. There is simply an insistence that the strengths and weaknesses of ALL scientific explanations (gravity, atomic theory, evolution, astronomy, physics, whatever) should be examined.
Why any scientist would refuse to consider both the strengths and weaknesses of a scientific notion is beyond me.
Methinks someone doth protest too much.
What's worse, is that 99.9% of Slashdotters are so religious in their hatred against Creationism that they blindly buy into the anti-Creationism propoganda that the sloppy reporters have spun the story into, when in reality Creationism/Evolution has NOTHING to do with it.
Sheep. Pfft.
While I'll grant that fundamentalists believe in the literal, word-for-word translation of the Bible, their theology of anti-evolutionism is not based on said literal reading.
Rather, they can't come to terms with the notion that sacred scripture describes creation *from God's perspective*, and evolution describes it from a scientific perspective. A careful reading of the first chapter of Genesis does not reveal any conflicts with the commonly accepted theory of evolution, if one understands general relativity. Scripture even says, "With God, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day." If the Bible really is inerrant, and God cannot lie, the only conclusion one can draw is that the Genesis account was not talking about what we would call a 24 hour day.
In fact, if one really thinks about it, a simple thought experiment will suffice. (Some of you will recognize this as based on Einstein's work). Suppose, for example, you had limitless power and could do all things. You decide to create a universe. But as you create this universe, and it grows in size, you must travel progressively farther away in order to bring all of it within your field of view. If one is traveling at the speed of light away from an object, the object appears frozen in time; light from subsequent events never reaches the viewer. If one is stationary with respect to an object, time proceeds at the same rate for both observer and object alike. At some point between these two extremes, there exists a speed at which 14 billion years occupies one day (or six) from the perspective of the observer. In fact, from the perspective of someone riding the wave of background radiation at the edge of the universe (that is, the remnants of the big bang), the universe is scarcely a second old.
The debate over evolution isn't a debate about whether or not certain scientific theories are valid. It isn't even a debate about the proper interpretation of scripture. It is a debate over the role of Fundamentalist Christianity in public life. The fundamentalists aren't interested in an interpretation of the Bible which cedes any authority to science. Nor are atheists interested in ceding any power to fundamentalists.
I suppose I could go out on a limb and suggest the reason most life forms exhibit similar characteristics is because God writes in C++ and reuses base classes... But then, who am I to question ./ orthodoxy?!
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Citation NEEDED!!!
"Darwin renounced evolution on his deathbed."
"The story of Darwin's recanting is not true. Shortly after Darwin's death, Lady Hope told a gathering that she had visited Darwin on his deathbed and that he had expressed regret over evolution and had accepted Christ. However, Darwin's daughter Henrietta, who was with him during his last days, said Lady Hope never visited during any of Darwin's illnesses, that Darwin probably never saw her at any time, and that he never recanted any of his scientific views (Clark 1984, 199; Yates 1994). "
But faith in God DEMANDS a verdict. If you earnestly seek out the truth and read and study the Bible.. the claims made by it and those that follow its teaching .. well - those claims DEMAND a verdict. You must choose whether or not you believe. You will either have eternal life with the Father (eternal joy) or with the condemned (weeping and gnashing of teeth galore). Christ was either who the Bible claims, a liar, or crazy. You must decide. Evolution presents nothing similar. That alone distinguishes faith in God.
No, that means that if "God" exists it is sadistic. If something will inflict an eternity of suffering on someone just because that person does not believe in the right "God" without proof then it is sadistic and not worth being worshiped.
I choose meaning and purpose and hope and joy and TRUTH over a theory filled with innumerable holes.
Where are these supposed holes?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The entire concept of Darwinian evolution threatens the religious bottom line, how much money finds its way into the collection plate.
This idea presupposes that it will succeed on its merits. These merits are demonstrated through logic and experimental evidence. Neither of which are accepted by religious zealots.
Just to be different; here's car^H^H^Hhorse analogy... It's like saying that a horse can't die of dehydration right next to a huge body of drinking water. If the horse neighs '*neigh*, I choose to disbelieve in the recuperative powers of water', it's screwed.
Requiem for the American Dream
The fact that they don't think doesn't really bother me about the anti-science crowd. What bothers me is that they keep insisting that no one else should think either.
You are right - we don't get to choose how the world is, we do get to choose what we believe in.
No, we don't choose what to believe in, they choose us. And those beliefs may change. I know they did for me. I used to believe in a soul or spirit but more than 10 years ago I almost died in a accident, while I was in a coma the docs told my family it would be a miracle if I lived. Well, I did live but my life has been a living hell since. Through no fault of my own I no longer believe what I used to believe.
the Bible defines one and only one way to eternal fellowship with the creator. It declares that Christ is the only way.
Then the creator is sadistic!
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
In the Vatican. I mean when I was growing up in the 70's our local priest pretty much would rip into anybody who said evolution was right and even then the Vatican was theoretically ok with it. (Of course he was the old "evil bastard" priest who was a counter point to the young "hippy" priest they had.) Yes, I made that mistake once. (But he was still a bastard.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
I think the vast majority of Christians (not just Protestants or Fundamentalists) would agree with at least the first half of this statement. I'll explain the "without error and free of contradiction" below.
I also think you'd be hard pressed to find many Christians of any denomination who disagree with this point. Catholics would certainly be big proponents of the virgin birth, so it certainly isn't peculiar to fundamentalism.
Jesus' death as atonement for sins and his resurrection is the core of Christian belief, and I think almost Christians would agree with these statements. If you don't believe Jesus being the Christ I daresay you're not a Christian (note the similarity in the words).
I'm not sure on this one, but again I think the majority of Christians would believe this is true. The reason being that the gospel writers use the miracles as proof of Jesus' divinity, which is central to Christianity.
Back on topic: the vocal minority of Fundamentalists that believe in young earth creationism get the belief from a strict adherence to the 2nd half of your first point, that "[Scripture] is without error and free of contradiction". They take this to mean that the Bible should therefore be read literally, so when it says things like "God created the earth in 7 days" that means 7 * 24hours to them. If the book of Revelation talks about some sort of beast, it means a creature like that will really, literally come to Earth at some point in the future.
The problem with the literal reading is that it doesn't take into account the purpose of scripture (to teach about God). Nor does it take into account the genre of certain passages of the Bible e.g. about 40% of it is told in stories. Are all stories meant to be taken literally? What about poems? What about dreams (e.g. Revelation)?
Applying this to Genesis 1-3 we see that its in the form of a story. Also if its purpose is to teach about God then what it says about the "How" isn't important (and Chapters 1&2 contradict each other on this anyway), and it certainly wasn't intended a scientific textbook.
According to Karl Popper, a late philosopher of science who's very popular among people who are not philosophers of science, but not so among his actual colleagues.
Falsificationism is a decent rule of thumb in arguing about science; it's very useful to ask oneself what kind of evidence would lead one to abandon a certain hypothesis. But attempts to flesh out the concept in a precise manner as a criterion to distinguish science from non-science fail utterly, because of the Quine-Duhem thesis. No observation can ever truly falsify any hypothesis, because some background assumption can always be abandoned instead.
GP is basically right, BTW. The principle of natural selection is more of a mathematical model of population change than an empirical hypothesis. If you go by the silly criterion that every "scientific theory" needs to be falsifiable, well, the principle of natural selection fails that test, just as "2 + 2 = 4" or the fundamental theorem of calculus do. That's not exactly a problem, you know.
Are you adequate?
SOME believe that 2+2=5, and we must NOT SAY that the fivers are wrong, because their god hates to be contradicted.
Actually, 2+2 = 7, because the holy trinity must be included with every expression. Likewise, 2*7 = 42, 108/9 = 4, and the volume of a sphere is 12r^3 (because the ancient Greeks were right: pi = 3).
The only facts are the observations. All generalizations, interpretations and explanations are theory.
Yeah! Once you get beyond the incest, mass murder, rape, infanticide, and misogyny, the bible is a great moral guideline for life!
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
If you put the top 10% most religious people in a state by themselves and gave them 0 support. They would wipe themselves out in a matter of decades.
Unfortunately some fundamentalist Mormon sects disprove that. There are sects that have lived isolated for decades.
I've got to say though I disagree with them, a lot of the people in these sects are hard working people.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Like it or not your beliefs take precedence to science you blindly believe that you evolved from sub lifeforms... I believe in God there is empirical evidence for both however my beliefs account for such evidence whereas yours cannot explain God.
Darwin didn't collect any empirical data regarding evolution afaik
you are however right that he wasn't a psychologist my bad ... I guess I was remembering the studies he did on children etc
moding me as troll.. thats abit harsh
Did I ever say the scientific method should not be followed? I just happen to believe that certain events namely creation encompass the entire world of science in such a way as to invalidate certain theories not that I believe they are entirely useless ie I don't believe the universe originated as a singularity trillions of years ago but rather was created with that appearance so the physics that can be learned from studies involving such theories could prove usefull
<quote>
<quote><p>Seriously, for the country that's supposed to be the most modern and have the best technology (all ofcourse delivered through scientific study), it remains unbelievable that evolution is even questioned.</p><p>No such thing in Europe. Not even the Vatican and the Church of England (both the foundations for the US churches) doubt evolution theory. They even support it !</p><p>Wake up, Americans :-)</p></quote>
<p>Questioning a theory is far from wrong, but until there is substantial proof it should remain quietly in the upper echelons of academia, not taught to grade-school students.</p></quote>
Right, any questioning of theories should be in the realm of academia, grade schoolers should be taught the facts as we understand them, and the scientific method. They can go on to question things later in life, grade school is where you get your grounding in the basics. The theory of evolution should be questioned and tested, but not in grade school, most of them aren't equipped to, or desire to, question things scientifically. Until there is substantial proof for some other explanation, they should continue to teach evolution as is.
Exactly. I'm glad you're reading my comment as intended. Sadly many others fail at such basic reading and comprehension.
I'm thinking I may cease posting to slashdot after witnessing this gross inability to cogitate.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Though the argument gets dumbed down to a debate between Evolution and Creationism, it's really about whether spontaneous speciation is probable or even possible. The useful definition of speciation is that from a single species, two or more species spontaneously generate, the new specie or species unable to mate and produce offspring with members of the foundation species. What hard core evolutionists tend to do is use thousands or millions (or in the case of Carl Sagan, Billions) of years as a time span, but in reality speciation has to happen spontaneously, in the fraction of a second during the first cell division of mytosis.
The problem with this requirement is that (single cell or monosex organisms aside), you have to have the spontaneous generation of a pair, or at least a single individual member that 1) cannot mate with other members of the [old] species, but can create more members of his/her [new] species, which, when you get to higher life forms, requires a spontaneously generated mate. and 2) the [new] species has to be robust enough to survive long enough to mate and reproduce, and 3) has to be more adept at survival to satisfy the theory of natural selection. I'm willing to set aside requisite #3 because it was just the theory of a madman, but chances of #1 and #2 occurring spontaneously are pretty slim.
There are arguments for parapatric and allopatric speciation, but they are just smoke screens because separation of population is immaterial with spontaneous speciation which occurs sympatrically. Another way to look at it is even with a slow "drift", there still has to be measurable movement. Even within a million year time scale, you still have to have a single moment in time where there are members of a NEW species that can no longer mate with the original species. The larger time frame becomes irrelevant when you consider that the two members (one old and one new) are no longer sexually compatible but co-exist. You don't need millions of years and you don't need geographic separation, because the subdivision of the population is simply the new species existing within the original species from which they originate. The scientific name for this phenomena is "punctuated equilibrium", but simply put, it eliminates the need for a long stretch of time, because it again comes down to the simultaneous "birth" of two inter-compatible members that are strangely incompatible with the balance of the population of the original species. No getting around it.
Ironically, every observable example of alleged speciation does not actually involve sexually incompatible species, or at best only alleges that the two separate species were at one time sexually compatible. Most of these are classified as "island genetics" and do not evidence speciation (there is no actual observation - Darwin didn't observe anything but a snapshot of the creature populations on Galapagos, no actual division of a species into separate species), just genetic drift resulting in modified traits, but not genetic incompatibilities.
But, alas, the creationists cling to their bibles and throw out evolution (genetic drifts) with the repulsive idea that man descended from the apes of the jungle, and the "evolutionists" attach speciation to their dogma in order to protect their priestcraft and justify an existence that denies a creator. Both are wrong, and the argument from both sides fall on deaf ears. It becomes a wedge issue dumbed down so that newspapers and magazines can print fantastical articles about educational curriculums giving fodder to the housewives and hippies who take up the extreme sides of the issue.
the next time you look at that tree and wonder, "where did that come from?" and answer, "evolution", you should keep asking. "Where did that come from?" "the beginning of life" "and that?" "the big bang" "and that?" "we don't know".
First, I don't wonder about those things. And secondly I don't think religion is relevant except in how some religious people try to control others. To me religion is just a hierarchy sometimes hypocritical dictating to others. Spirituality on the other hand I don't know.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
in a free market education should be consumer driven (like anything else). schools providing better students will reap the benefits of higher royalties
...and in thirty years everyone will be studying advertising, 'cause it pays better than science ever will.
"Laugh while you can a-monkey boy!" - Dr Emilio Lizardo
Texas is wonderful in many ways but wondrous strange as well.
mt
"The textbooks will "have to say that there's a problem with evolution -- because there is," said Dr. McLeroy, a dentist. "We need to be honest with the kids.""
-A fucking DENTIST is making these claims?!?!
If he want's to be honest with the kids, he should be lecturing them on brushing their teeth daily, and not be lecturing them on something that he obviously knows very little about.
I hope some kid coughs on him the next time they are at his office for a checkup.....
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
The government is superior in this regard to a charity
Citation needed.
Did you know that Mother Teresa tried to open a homeless shelter in New York City? She dropped the plan after NYC insisted an elevator be installed in the 2 buildings? A private group wanted to help people but then government came and stopped it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
A good biology teacher should be able to explain to his class why these are false arguments against evolution, how scientific arguments work, etc. Now the teacher has a reason (its in the curriculum) to discuss and falsify ID as an alternative to evolution. Kids who still want to believe in ID, well, they're hopeless...
assignment != equality != identity
Seems like all the ID-ists/Creationist are Anonymous Cowards
I've read a number of posts by people who used their ID to post who were IDers/Creationists.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
with all these anti-Evolutionists... it's becoming increasingly hard to tell when someone is just joking or if they're making what they think is a serious argument against Evolution :(.
HAND.
Most Protestants would believe those 5 fundamentals you list, and I suggest most Christians
I don't know though I think it depends on how you define "Christian". Using one definition I am Christian myself but using another I'm not. That may sound mixed up or something, so I'll try to explain. I try to live by Jesus's teachings, if he really lived. See I don't believe or know if such a person in fact did live, and therefore I don't believe or have faith he was the "Son of God". Instead I think that if he did live he may of been a great teacher but that's it. If so he was but one in a line of great teachers. Others were Lao Tzu, the Buddha, and maybe even Mohammed. Thomas Jefferson too was like this, didn't believe Jesus was the "Son of God", he was a Deist.
Back on topic: the vocal minority of Fundamentalists that believe in young earth creationism get the belief from a strict adherence to the 2nd half of your first point, that "[Scripture] is without error and free of contradiction". They take this to mean that the Bible should therefore be read literally, so when it says things like "God created the earth in 7 days" that means 7 * 24hours to them. If the book of Revelation talks about some sort of beast, it means a creature like that will really, literally come to Earth at some point in the future.
Thomas Jefferson took the Bible and cut out all the stuff about miracles, the supernatural, and such and created his own Jefferson Bible. It wasn't to be taken literally but as a guide on how to live.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If it were polygamy it'd be fine with me but it isn't. Instead it's polygyny.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Oh, I do so wish that next election will let me mod the government "funny"...
That they haven't blamed us mexicans for human evolution, because everyone knows, the worse of america comes from Mexico, even the PS3s.
If the law passes and science books explaining evolution must be changed to accommodate the religious point of view then just start the book chapter off with the religious point of view and then the rest of the chapter can explain how that point of view stacks up against evolution. Start off with how the great library in Alexandria and most of the science books were destroyed at the orders of the Christian Emperor Theodosius I in 391 and then whatever science books survived were destroyed by the Arab army led by Amr ibn al 'Aas in 642. Then move the subject to how religious leaders proved that Galileo Galilei was wrong by persecuting him and continue on from there to Charles Robert Darwin's evolution and beyond. That way, the youngsters can get a good whiff of how religious dogma affects the study of biology while at the same time making the "strengths and weaknesses" of creationism easier for biology teachers to teach about.
Evolution doesn't seem to be nearly as controversial in the UK. Can anyone offer me a succinct answer to why it's so controversial in the US? Is it vested interests, genuine religious belief, ignorance or a combination of all those things? This is a serious question, honestly, not a dig at the US.
The I.D. crowd picks on Darwin since telescopes are too easy to acquire and the observations supporting heliocentricity too easy to make.
Brian Greene, Niels Bohr, and others may be the targeted next, since initiatives of this ilk seem to gravitate towards scientific disciplines with hard to quantify theories.
Or maybe not. After all, physicists aren't challenging anyone's place as the apex of creation.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Bush's ignorant policies brought the Dow from 10587 to 7949, with a run up to 13930 in the middle. Do you think that the recent boom-bust cycle based mainly on "creative" accounting was good for our economy?
You can't pick one single number from the middle and say it represents his presidency. The economy tanked, and it was on his watch, not Obama's.
How fast do you expect a change in economic policies to make measurable effects in the economy?
This sentence no verb.
Bush's ignorant policies brought the Dow from 10587 to 7949, with a run up to 13930 in the middle. Do you think that the recent boom-bust cycle based mainly on "creative" accounting was good for our economy?
The fact is that Democrats stabbed the country in the back, as usual. First they deliberately derailing Fannie Mae, and then, talked down world confidence in the economy, and finally, promised a whole slew of socialistic changes. When you see that the most dynamic economies in the world remain the ones that are the most deregulated, you can easily see that Democrats do not care about freedom at all, as much as they want to derail the free markets to put us all into their socialist slavery.
How fast do you expect a change in economic policies to make measurable effects in the economy
I expect Obama's plans will make the economy worse, not better. He will tout some successes in terms of class warfare but in terms of real wealth, the nation will continue to evaporate as more and more people are barred from engaging in free enterprise in the name of whatever it is they think up. This week its the environment, next week, it will be something else.
There is no hope for America at this point. We're headed to socialist slavery now, all dragged down by an ignorant lower class that lacks any utility or drive to compete, and that Dems keep that way so they can have more power.
The only thing to be done now is to passively resist the government where ever it is legally possible, collect as many munitions as possible until the revolution is necessary, and pray.
We shall overcome.
This is my sig.
I thought slashdotters might get a kick out of this. A philosophy based on trust in your fellow man (when he's not being an idiot).
Find a human skeleton in some precambrian rock strata. Congratulations, you've just falsified common descent.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Cripes, why is it that there are so many people on both sides of this argument who don't seem to know what a "law" and "theory" is? The theory of evolution is proved to the point where it would be absurd to consider alternative explanations, much like the Germ Theory of Disease, but like the GToD, it's a theory, not a law, and always will be.
Gravity is a fact, a theory, and a law. Learn the difference. The law of gravity mathematically describes the force of gravity between any two masses. The theory of gravity explains how and why gravity works. Interestingly, the theory of gravity (unlike the law of gravity or the theory of evolution) isn't proven (it won't be until someone proves the existence of a graviton).
ok, lets say most of the people now care about advertising, as you suggested. within the next 15 years, the number of people looking for jobs in advertising will have increased tremendously. the supply for advertising jobs will have increased dramatically, while the demand for advertising jobs will have dropped tremendously, since very few are learning science, so productivity in the economy has decreased. since manufacturing decreased, the level of living drops and those in advertising (a majority) have less and less to advertise about. their productivity falls as well. pretty soon there is a bust in the advertising market. here comes a long an educational facility which recongizes this problem (maybe ahead of time), and they cater to those students interested in sciences. when the "advertising recession" comes, these schools will "steal" market share from the other "advertising" school and reap handsome profits from their teachings of science, etc. this is just a scenario, but given a large enough population, this sort of imbalance will never happen. there will always be enough people recognizing the problem with an "all marketing curriculum" and try to find niche markets for their training and trades.
Praise Cheezit now I will be able to spread the Cheezit way across the land!
Most arguments for Creationism hinge on the premise that complexity implies a divine creator. The conclusion of the argument, that a divine creator "made" everything is contained in the premise. They are just begging the question.
Maybe instead of requiring schools to teach the supposed faults in evolution theory, they should teach the big fault in religion; that something exists (God) but you can't hear, see, smell or touch it. Religion has far more faults in it then Evolutionary Theory.
ok, lets say most of the people now care about advertising, as you suggested. within the next 15 years, the number of people looking for jobs in advertising will have increased tremendously. the supply for advertising jobs will have increased dramatically, while the demand for advertising jobs will have dropped tremendously, since very few are learning science, so productivity in the economy has decreased. since manufacturing decreased, the level of living drops and those in advertising (a majority) have less and less to advertise about. their productivity falls as well. pretty soon there is a bust in the advertising market. here comes a long an educational facility which recongizes this problem (maybe ahead of time), and they cater to those students interested in sciences. when the "advertising recession" comes, these schools will "steal" market share from the other "advertising" school and reap handsome profits from their teachings of science, etc. this is just a scenario, but given a large enough population, this sort of imbalance will never happen. there will always be enough people recognizing the problem with an "all marketing curriculum" and try to find niche markets for their training and trades.
'This is the most specific assault I've seen against evolution and modern science,'
This sounds like the prevalent attitude in "modern" science. When I was in school, we learned that scientists are supposed to question everything. Now that I'm a little older and have actually listened to what the scientists are saying, I know what they really mean: question everything unless I say it's true.
How dare anyone question evolution.
Typical creationist, still trying to debate the science of the 19th century. It has been a long, long time since the fossil record was the primary evidence for evolution. Today, we have gene sequencing, so we can look directly at the DNA, and compare differences between species to those within species. And what do you know? they turn out to be the same kinds of small DNA sequence changes, translocations, and duplications, exactly as predicted by evolutionary biologists. The supposed "wall" between species that ID/Creationists imagined to distinguish "micro" from "macro" evolution turns out not to exist.
That's pretty much the way a huge number of religiously inclined scientists, as well as most major Christian denominations think of it. But those people do not become Creationists.
Creationists are people of shaky faith who demand proof of the existence of God in nature. The problem that Creationists have with evolution is that while evolution could be God's method (and a brilliant method it would be), it does not require God.
As a stiff-upper-lipper you probably know, America was mainly founded by religious dissenters from the Church of England. They believed the Bible, not the king and certainly not the pope, was the sole spiritual authority as well as THE ONLY acceptable explanation as to how life began. Such beliefs became embedded in the American constitution, the documents forming the foundation of the government:
Right there in our founding documents is the declaration that God created us.
This declaration is in conjunction with the first sentence in the bible "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth." The bible goes on to say God created all life and also created humans, both male and female. It does not say how God did this, other than doing so from the dust of the earth.
Enter evolution. It says creatures change over time. Indeed they do, for example, bacteria undergo mutations and genetic recombinations resulting in different species of bacteria, some with resistance to penicillin, some that can digest previously undigestible substances. This is a proven fact backed up by enormous amounts of observed data. It is indisputable, just as it is indisputable that trees absorb water and nutrients from its root system, just as it is indisputable that water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius.
In every instance, however, over hundreds of thousands of generations, the bacteria never change into amoebi or amphibians: they remain solely within the bacteria kind. In fact, there is zero evidence for any kind of creature (cat, dog, bird, deer, swine) ever becoming another kind such as reptiles becoming birds. There are supposed transitional forms like tiktaalik that is touted as "proof" that lizards became birds butthis is not any proof at all, just a possible interpretation of a few fossilized bones.
This is not an argument from incredulity, it is an argument from not accepting an impossibility, such as, it is impossible to accept that you donned scuba gear and a pair of feathered wings and flapped yourself up to the moon.
Building upon evolution is the Theory of Evolution. It says since living things can change over time (they can) then man was not created but evolved, over millions of years, from a simple cell to more complex cells to a snail-like creature to a rodent-like creature to an ape-like ancestor and then to humans. This is in direct contradiction of what the bible says and why the theory is opposed so vehemently: if the bible is untrue, Christianity is untrue.
Because the Theory of Evolution is not proven (except in the minds of some people), and that there is no evidence that humans evolved from an apelike ancestor only the speculation and assumption that humans did so, it is therefore unacceptable to have this theory taught as a fact when in truth it is only speculation, a possible explanation how humans came to be.
If some American institutions and groups of people would stop declaring the Theory of Evolution as fact and place it in its proper position, that is, it is an unobserved, unproven explanation as to the origins of all the species, then there would be no argument. Mutation? Speciation? Adaptation? There is no problem with such teachings as they are backed up by observation and testing. Issue is taken when adaptation and mutation are claimed to have resulted in all the life forms we see today, starting from a single-celled organism changing through millions of years.
The argument really goes further than the debate on origins, because you have to go back to where matter came from and how life arose from that matter. Basically, either matter has always existed and it moved itself to form living entities, or God has always existed and created matter and forme
A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver --Proverbs 25:11
Thank you Langelgjm. I appreciate your response. :-) I'll look at the link and go from there.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
I just want to point out that there is a tremendous difference between saying that evolution is undoubtedly false (and one should believe creationism), and saying that evolution might NOT be true.
We could never say for sure that all life came from a single organism. We can never go back in time and see whether animals did evolve the way we think they did.
I mean, being willing to question our theories is what makes science, science. If no one had questioned Newtonian physics (though it had been established and universally accepted for years) then we never would have developed to the state we are now.
I will leave my personal beliefs of evolution vs creationism / the compatibilism arguments aside and just state that there is no reason why either belief/theory needs to be taught in any public k12 school. Their purpose is to prepare students for either college or a job once they graduate, and these subjects are in no way doing anything to further the intellect of a student for life outside of high school.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
You need to brush up on what "theory" and "proof" means in science.
And the same goes for the ones who moderated your post "Insightful".
and you need to brush up on your reading and comprehension if you believe my post was promoting creationism.
its sad the number of people who are incapable of this on slashdot, just look at all these post denigrating me for something I never said.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
No, sorry to say, but there is no way to misunderstand your misconceptions on what more "substantial proof" the theory of evolution would need to be presented to grade school students.
In science, a theory is something that already has passed a lot of scrutiny.
Words have precise meanings in science. For example, 'theory', 'law', and 'hypothesis' don't all mean the same thing. Outside of science, you might say something is 'just a theory', meaning it's supposition that may or may not be true. In science, a theory is an explanation that generally is accepted to be true.
http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistry101/a/lawtheory.htm
it's in my head
The fragment:
"has been unfalsified (using rationally designed experiments) for a long time"
should be replaced by:
"has not been falsified, despite many attempts to falsify it by scientific experiment"
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Ah I suppose I hadn't thought of that. Sexism is pretty bad.
Well polygyny goes back thousands of years. Semites, descendants of Shem, which both Arabs and Hebrews are believed in a man being able to have up to 4 wives. But only if then man could take of of them, and in some cases a man would take a second, third or fourth wife if the previous wives did not bare him a child. Actually that's what happened with the split between Arabs and Hebrews. Abraham was a Semite married to Sarah. She didn't bare him a child so she gave her slave Hagar, yes they had slaves, to him so Hagar would bare him a child. Hagar bore him Ismael. Only after Ishmael was born did Sarah bare him a child too, Isaac. Then Sarah forced Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael away. So, Arabs descended from Ishmael and Hebrews from Isaac.
However the Middle Eastern tribes weren't the only cultures who practiced polygyny. It was practiced in what's present day China and other places. As for polygamy where both males and females could have more than one spouse, that I know of it was only practiced by one or more Indian tribes in South America. The Zoe or The Marrying Tribe of the Amazon had both sexes marrying more than one spouse.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If that is your claim, then what is the harm in teaching both theories?
I don't care if creationism is taught, where it belongs in a philosophy, religion, mythology or other class but it does not belong in a science class. And if it's going to be taught in other classes then other creation mythologies should be taught alongside it. Such as the The Navajo Creation Story and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
And creationism is no more scientifically discontinuous than evolution is.
Evolution is a scientific theory but creationism IS NOT. And Intelligent Design is just an attempt to sneak creationism into the science class.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I am glad you also live a happy and productive life with your believes too
I wish I did but I'm don't. I had an accident and survived a permanent disability. The accident put me in a coma and I was after I came out of it I screamed at everyone to let me die. Even today, more than 10 years later, I still wish I had died.
and just wish others would too, rather than just saying "my imaginary friend is better than yours"
Oh I agree but unfortunately there are many who feel insecure about their religious beliefs or feel their religion calls them to convert and therefore dictate to others how they will live. Thing is with me, one of the things that bothers me is that while I am now agnostic or "without knowledge" I used to believe in a soul or spirit. That is one of the things I lost because of the accident.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It is a "theory"
Yes it is a theory, a scientific theory which is and has been tested but has not been falsified. There is no evidence evolution is not correct. Anything else is religious mumbo jumbo.
I did not evolve from a monkey
I find that more plausible than some magician waving his wand in the sky.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
But that doesn't make the _whole_ genetic string any longer.
You've got one more breed but you haven't got a more sophisticated life form.
Sure you get new sub-species croping up frequently but they are only
specialised forms of the species, not new ones.
Lets say that that the organisms that you came up with are fish, gene B entering
the pool won't turn these fish into amphibians like you pretend, we just get more
fish that breed faster.
Sometimes evolutionists (let's call them ANTI creationists because a creationist can still believe in evolution) refer to laboratory experiments where single cell organisms can be observed to not just mutate, but sexually speciate, but I think you have to parallel that with a creation event and not a spontaneous event, because assuming that the scientists neuro-receptors are firing off, there's intelligence at the helm. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principal supports that you cannot measure the results of a phenomena without affecting the results, so without being too pedantic, you can't observe an evolutionary phenomena without introducing the element you were trying to disprove which is intelligence. Kind of like the primary objective in Star Trek.
Another misplaced proof is that of using astoundingly large numbers. The old "ten-thousand-monkeys-typing-on-ten-thousand-typewriters-over-ten-thousand-years can eventually produce a sonnet from Shakespeare". Given enough time, anything can happen, right? Well, not so fast, first, let's get it out of the way that the ten thousand monkeys aren't going to "evolve" into a higher life form because that would create a circular proof. The question isn't can 10,000 monkeys type, it's can ONE monkey type. Can the monkey hit the keys and avoid the strikers from getting tangled, can they insert the next piece of paper, can they return the carriage? But, oh, you're drawing the analogy too far! No, because you have to ask the same question of a population of a given species. In order for a large number of the species to embark on an alternative speciatic journey, first ONE member has to be able to mutate, survive, and breed. Giving more time and more members doesn't solve the problem. Just ask the guys at Norton Thiocol who thought that 3 bad O-Rings would compensate for a flawed design for O-Rings.
Another way to look at it is a scatter diagram. You can make your own. Drop you wife's best vase (or your mother's if you're a blogger still living at home with "mom") and measure the distance of each broken piece from the center of impact. You'll have a few in the center, some in the near vicinity and even some strangely falling 4 or 5 feet away. Depending on angle of incidence, velocity, ambient temperature, lead content in the crystal (we're going to use a really good vase for this experiment), you may even have some pieces land 15 or 20 feet away. Well, you say, then couldn't we have some that fall 30 or 50 feet away? What about 100 or 1000 feet? Surely if it breaks in a million pieces, one of those tiny pieces can fall and bounce and end up on the other side of the city given the right circumstances. So, to prove that, you break a hundred vases. Is it going to happen? No, but you'll really piss off your wife (or "mommy").
It doesn't matter how many vases you break, only one piece has to prove the theory that it can bounce 1000 feet away, the piece that fell a thousand feet away. So, the question to ask a physicist isn't "from a million pieces could some fall 1000 feet away?", but "Can ONE piece fall that far away?". Back to Spontaneous Speciation, it's not "can a new species randomly generate given a million years and a large enough population", but "can a SINGLE member (or two members for sexually reproducing species) of a population, with no outside stimulus, survive a genetic mutation that would render him/her/pat sexually incompatible, yet robust enough to survive, and (to accommodate Darwin's theory) better able to survive than the balance of the population?"
Exhibit 'B'.
Hyperbole and pejorative are not an adequate substitute for arguing the substance, and hardly an exhibit of evidence makes. You don't win an argument just because you hurt the feelings of your opponent.
Give me a break. For those of you declaring evolution as a fact, or holding it up to the same standards as gravity, you'd better rethink your status as some kind of expert in science. I am not speaking about micro-evolution here. I'm also not speaking about "survival of the fittest" concepts. Those two concepts are scientifically proven and irrefutable facts.
Macro-evolution (the theory of how we came about as a species) is LARGELY unproven. There simply is not a single scientific experiment that proves it. There is no concrete evidence of it. There are no scientific experiments that have been done to observe it. All we have is a good theory that MAY explain things.
Gravity is on a whole other level. Drop an apple... voila! Observe attraction of large bodies in space... voila! Observable proof, or experimentally sound proof of gravity. It can be tested again and again demonstrating it.
I'm sorry, but the concept of one species evolving into another is 100% theory. It's a guess. It is a fairly sound one, but don't go about proclaiming it as fact because your puny brain can't possibly fathom anything else.
So, there it stands. Scientifically speaking, evolution is theory, and should be taught as such, or at least be taught as the most agreed upon theory to date among scientists. Until there is true science (experimentally proven) backing it up, it will remain as theory, just like the idea of a supernatural being. Woops!
I get a royal kick out of how most of you are getting your panties in a twist over a few people challenging some aspects of the theory of evolution (yes, theory). RTFA. They're not being preachy, just showing an interest in students learning critical thinking skills. And yes, evolution should be questioned and tested constantly. Hell, Einstein's theories are still constantly tested, with some being very legitimately questioned because of further observations.
Questioning a theory is far from wrong
Correct. Scientists constantly question everything from gravity to quantum mechanics.
However some highschool teacher "questioning" chemistry by teaching scientifically-refuted garbage and propaganda to children is very very wrong.
until there is substantial proof it should remain quietly in the upper echelons of academia, not taught to grade-school students.
Your terms are acceptable.
One of the sides in this battle obviously must be wrong.
One of the sides in this battle obviously must be being unreasonable.
One of the sides in this battle obviously must be spreading gross misinformation.
The issue is which side is telling the truth, and which side is spreading gross misinformation, which side is misleading people.
The only conflict here is that you were never taught in school the extensive proof of evolution that does exist, and you have the mistaken impression that it doesn't exist. Just because you never saw it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Evolution is also in the core "standard accepted science" by any remotely reasonable definition. DNA analysis proves the family tree relationships between people in a court of law - proves it true in courtroom-style Beyond Any Reasonable Doubt. And in almost the identical manner, DNA analysis proves the evolutionary family tree relationships between species with the same Beyond Any Reasonable Doubt certainty. Not only does the "gappy" fossil record establish evolution Beyond Any Reasonable Doubt, but there are parts of the fossil tree that are in fact continuous and complete. For example the fossil record for Foraminifera is absolutely continuous, a perfect complete record not merely thousands of of transitional species, but a continuous record of transitional forms ALONG individual speciation events. A record not merely that parent species can and did split into new child species, but a detailed of exactly how it happened. A perfect complete record tracing diverse modern living species back to their common ancestor a hundred million years ago. Mathematicians have proven exactly how evolution can and does create new complex information. Computer scientists (and in fact *I personally*) have done computer implementations of evolution on "digital DNA" and experimentally proven the fact that the evolution process can and does create new useful complex information. In fact computer-implemented-evolution is an applied science. It is in fact used somewhere in their business by more than half of all Fortune 500 companies to create valuable new information and to solve problems, in many cases creating new information and solving problems above and beyond the "intelligently design" capabilities of the best human experts.
Every national or international scientific body with a public statement on evolution has stated that evolution is in fact overwhelmingly established by the evidence.
Rounded to the nearest full percent, 100% of professional biologists agree that evolution is overwhelmingly established by the evidence. If you want to get picky about it and go for decimal percents, 99.9% of professionals biologists agree that evolution is overwhelmingly established by the evidence. Out of about a half million degreed experts in all of the earth and life sciences, only a few hundred consider the "Creation Science" to have any credibility whatsoever. The number of "experts" disputing evolution is effectively zero. Zero percent. The handful that do exist are crackpots. Every field has a handful of crackpots. The number of "biologists" that dispute evolution is comparable to the number of "astronomers" who dispute stellar fusion and instead argue the sun is powered by electricity. Some people try to claim a "lot" of scientists question evolution by calling a few hundred a "lot", however it is ZERO percent. It is ZERO POINT ONE percent if you want the decimal fraction of a single percent.
One side is wrong.
One side being unreasonable.
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I'm going to just cut to the chase. I have no problem with evolution and I'm sure that most "bible hugging" Christians, Jews and Muslims don't either (before anyone gets offended, I didn't capitalize "bible" and I am using it in it's near-Latin form for "Book" or more precisely "Sacred Cannon" (not to be confused with my sacred Canon 1Ds Mark III) to describe Old/New Testament, Torah, or Koran).
It's patently obvious that genes mutate, genetic codes adapt, and that there are drifts (I call them "tides" because they often are observed to be reversible). What is also obvious, meaning it is readily observable, is that genetic characteristics are discreet and at least with complex multi-celled organisms, the genetic codes are permanent within an individual (okay, okay, I enjoy X-Men just as much as the next guy, but it's just a movie) and cannot be "rubbed" off or passed between members of a population in some cases can't even be transferred to offspring. An individual's genetic makeup doesn't change other than under unnatural circumstances (like that episode of X-Men...).
What I don't accept is the circular argument of "gradual" drift. Your statement that "individuals don't evolve, populations do" is true within the context of my prior statement, that genetic characteristics are set at conception and once set aren't subject to "evolving", but if you are saying that evolution doesn't begin with individuals or doesn't occur at the individual level wherein a trait that did not exist in the population shows up "spontaneously" in a single individual, you are patently wrong. Not only do they commence with a single individual, but they commence within a single cell. No matter how large the population or how many years two segments have been separated, it still comes down to a mutation occurring within a single or a pair* in single moment of mitosis. You simply can't escape that; it is truth self-evident. If a portion of a population experiences a mutation, then logic dictates that an individual did as well, or more accurately, it commenced with an individual:
If A is part of B and B = C, then A = C
or
Framed in the current argument, if individual A is part of population B, and B has a genetic characteristic C, then before B is identified, A as an individual must also have said characteristic C. So, where did it commence within the population? It had to start somewhere. If it's unlikely that an individual could mutate, survive, retain the power to pro-create, yet not with the larger population, yet be more robust and prone to survive than the population at large, it's even less likely that it occurred simultaneously within the entire population, or within all of the new offspring of the population simultaneously.
While I don't necessarily agree with the proposed Texas Curriculum (haven't read it yet), what I disagree with is Evolutionism v Creationism being hauled around as a thumping stick or wedge issue. I firstly object to the mischaracterization that occurs with the semantically lazy truncation of the theory of [speciation through] evolution. This is what Darwin purported and what most people mean when they reference "evolution". As a single word, "evolution" connotes, but does not adequately describe the belief of the "evolutionists", namely that new species evolved from older species.
The point of contention though falls on the untenable and improbable stretch that extrapolates the concept of a new species from the process of evolution. It's not observable, it's not logical, it's not remotely probable. I object to it being taught to my children under the pretense of "science" because it's no more proven and verifiable than the Biblical accounts of the creation. The only thing different is that the guy (Moses) that recounts the story of the creation has an older claim and since [Speciation through] Evolutionists rely almost wholly on large vague expanses of time, it puts Moses closer to observing the phenomena, or at least closer to the commencement of (an) evolutionary cycle. In t
I've highlighted the problem. That's it right there. Evolution doesn't predict hopeful monsters. A new species doesn't arrive in one mutation. Individual mutations arise in individuals, yes. But they don't produce reproductive isolation in one shot. They spread if they are beneficial (or even neutral, often enough). The American Gull population only has a few mutations relative to the Herring Gull population, enough to be a subspecies but not enough to cause reproductive isolation. A few more have accumulated in the the Vega, and so forth.
Eventually, we get to the Lesser Black-Backed Gull. Multiple mutations have accumulated (over distance, in this case), to the point where they're not cross-fertile with the Herring Gull. The entire point of the example, though, is that there's no sharp dividing line. (There are, of course, more examples.) The sub-populations can breed with each other, there's no point where you can conclusively say, "Okay, at this point we're at a new species."
Now, explain to me why mutations can't accumulate exactly this way in time? Especially if two sub-populations get separated by whatever means - a new river, a new mountain, a forest burning down, whatever?
I can understand why you have such problems with evolution if you have a saltationist misconception like that. But, seriously, check out that book I recommended. It'll help. You might also want to look at this, which may help you understand why so many people - including creationists in the 18th century who started finding things that just didn't fit - came to accept common descent and the rest.
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I will spell it out to you since you seem incapable of understanding it the first two times I said it:
the theory of INTELLIGENT DESIGN must be proven substantially to supplant evolution in grade schools.
get it now?
I'm absolutely embarrassed to point out such "epic fail" at reading comprehension.
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Nowhere in the parent to you post, nor in your own, is ID mentioned. The only theory named is evolution. It's also named in the parent in the context of being "questioned", which is then the topic of your post.
You should be embarrassed. Getting caught like this.
it's in my head
Okay, chump! It took me only 2 minutes to Google over five independent sites listing the recorded interbreeding of said gulls, with successful offspring. It appears that they don't LIKE to breed together, but apparently still do sometimes. They ARE cross-fertile and had our methodology for observing these birds been better we wouldn't have been chasing down a dead end alley over several decades trying to support Darwin. So this anecdotal evidence doesn't even hold water in itself let alone establish any credibility to parapatric speciation on the whole. Nice try! The most definitive finding was on January 28th of this year, which is why you can't take a hundred or even a couple hundred years of faulty observation of bird colonies and make that your evidence, especially when you rely upon "Millions" of years for speciation to take place or you're sure to be disappointed. Face it, asserting Speciation as more than a wishful theory to support the leap of faith necessary to follow Darwin is a losing proposition. Any other "new species" that demonstrate REAL speciation?
You keep alluding to a non event where something happens over time, but can't be identified at any point in time (gee, this is starting to sound more mysterious than the Nicean Creed, are you sure it's science?) Maybe we'd get somewhere if the Darwinists hadn't been so quick to toss Goldschmidt under the bus. Given the discrete nature of genetic traits, and given that individuals don't evolve in themselves (they are born with their genetic makeup and it doesn't change after the first division from one to two cells), in order for there to be a new species there has to be a moment in time where a member that can no longer mate with the rest of his species is born. It can't just be that they can't mate because of preference or separation, but there has to be a physical incompatibility to comprise a new species. I mean, this is pretty simple logic where "you need a new species for there to be a NEW species." Speciation is a split of a source population into two species, the original species and a NEW species. You have to have some point where you indeed conclude, "Okay, we're at a new species", otherwise you just have a sub species or just the same old species that doesn't get along or doesn't share the same proximity in which case we've observed nothing.
The theory of evolution is fundamentally hostile to faith because it explains one of the great mysteries that form a core part of pretty much every religion
Um, no.
The theory of evolution is fundamentally hostile to fundamentalist dogma.
To be a Christian, one is not required to believe that every word of the Bible is true. There are a hell of a lot of Christians who know without a doubt that most of it is either totally made up or allegorical. The ones who don't are, for the most part, stupid, raised to be stupid, and raising their children to be stupid.
I know you're an aggressive atheist who believes that all religion is nothing but delusion, but I would like to think that you're not as closed-minded as those you deride. Please don't make the mistake of believing that the extremist nutjobs of Christianity represent our entire faith. That's just as bigoted and prejudiced as believing that all Muslims are suicide bombers just waiting for the right target.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
"Micro evolution" happens.
Life is has been around for billions of years.
What prevents something from changing slightly over millions of years to becoming completely different?
Fossils can be dated.
Type of fossils (species) only appear between certain dates. Never before or after.
Why?
The genetic code of many domains of life has been read.
The genetic code is almost exactly the same for everything from bacteria to animals.
Is not everything therefore sharing a common origin though the genetic code itself? If the common origin was through a designer would it not try different designs?
The theory of evolution gives predictions and reasons for the points above. Creationism simply hand waves them away, "It just happened that way cos God did it".
The most dangerous drug
Nowhere in the parent to you post, nor in your own, is ID mentioned. The only theory named is evolution. It's also named in the parent in the context of being "questioned", which is then the topic of your post.
You should be embarrassed. Getting caught like this.
Oh my god, I didn't directly reference the obvious target of my post! Subtlety is not your forte is it?
You're absolutely hopeless.
Maybe one day you will find actual, productive therapy rather than coming to this forum to search high and low for someone to hate, then invent it when it does not present itself.
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Dr. Manhattan:
Now, you can claim that you're not convinced by the evidence that this does happen. But there's no way to claim that this logically can't happen.
Geotopia:
I reckon from your last statement that the argument for speciation is crumbling from being supported by empirical evidence and observed phenomena to being induced from the "fossil record" and extrapolated from genetic experiments in the laboratory, which actually isn't very conclusive, at least not in support of Darwin's THEORY. Furthermore, you're shifting the burden of proof from evidence that it has happened, to the doubter to prove that it can't happen. I'm not discrediting the observations, the data collected, or the societal benefit that the ongoing search has produced, but I assert that Darwin's theory rather than solidifying, is either stagnantly dependent on a dogmatic faith, or is in fact diminishing in credibility and is in dire need of an overhaul or wholesale replacement.
Let me comment on the evidence you propound in the case of horses, donkeys, and mules...
Dr. Manhattan:
Horses and donkeys can interbreed, but the mules produced are sterile. Hence they are separate species. It would help if you would cite some sources or at least list the search terms you used - makes it hard to check your results. Hybrid gulls have been noted (even the wikipedia article I linked you to said they "do not normally hybridize"), but viable populations of hybrids have not.
Geotopia:
Let's be careful with our statements here. "The mules produced are USUALLY sterile". There's an important distinction here. Since 1527 there have been more than 60 documented cases of foals born to female mules around the world, the most recent case in 2007 in Colorado with a foal named "Kate". This would actually work towards your argument, that a new species can be created, except that there is yet to be found any male mules that can reproduce, which means that the fertile mare mule was re-introduced into the horse and pony population, able to mate therein.
In essence, mules are not a new sustainable species, but a brief genetic anomaly that is only sustained in a domesticated environment and perpetuated by human breeders. While it demonstrates that there can be drastic differences in the genetic makeup of members of sub species even to the number of chromosomes, it isn't a witness of the creation of a new species and doesn't support the most significant premise of Darwin's theory that the diversity and advancement of higher order species arises from survival of the fittest.
However, even though it's patently obvious, let's explicitly expand the stated definition of a species to include that it has to have some hope of propagating. In other words, extinction within a generation does not a new species make, and so sterile offspring are not a species of themselves and provide no support to Darwin's explanation of life as we know it.
In the broader picture, it wouldn't have taken millions or 100s of millions of years, but trillions of years to obtain the diversity, complexity, and robustness of life we have on the earth if all we can come up with are false starts like the sterile mule or the hybrid gull and it's thin shelled eggs (here's a citation - http://sites.google.com/site/appledorelbbg/). These would seem more to be examples of de-evolution (D-E-V-O) and don't fit into Darwin's theory by any stretch.
It might be easier to cast this in the light of a human genetic disorder because it's obvious that a Trisomy 21 (Down Syndrome) person is still of the human species. While there have been accounts that a carrier of an extra 21st chromosome pair has successfully had offspring (Journal of Medical Genetics, 1989, Vol. 26, 294-298), it's near universal that they have no prospect of offspring.
Remember, we're not just looking for genetic mutations, but in the spirit of Darwin, we're looking for mutations which improve the subjects' chanc
It's absolutely a low blow of weak minded groupthink to label that post a troll. I disagree with Arthur, but he has a perfectly legitimate point of view.
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"Questioning a theory is far from wrong, but until there is substantial proof it should remain quietly in the upper echelons of academia, not taught to grade-school students."
"Please re-read my comment rather than railing on against a creationist philosophy i opposed"
When I read it I took it to mean that you believed the theory (creationism/ID assumed) should be questioned only by academia until substantial proof of evolution was accumulated, whereupon it could be taught to grade school students.
If I understand you right, now, you're saying that it's the questioning of the theory of evolution that should be keep out of the classroom until more evidence is available.
Your original statement was ambiguous to me.
I'm, er, at a loss to understand how you got that from what I said. The links I gave you are to speciation events that have happened entirely in line with the theory I've attempted to outline for you, (and no, not all or even most of them are 'in the lab'). And how, exactly, are the 'fossil record' or genetic sequences not 'empirical evidence and observed phenomena'?
We've got a ton of geologic evidence indicating that continental plates can and have moved. It's normally too slow a process observe on a human scale, but we have observed GPS measurements and radar ranging data in some places on Earth that show regular, progressive offsets entirely consistent with continental drift. Those offsets haven't added up to moving a continent between hemispheres while we've been looking, but the theory doesn't predict rates that fast. Still, it's really weird that all this stuff adds up so consistently, if plate tectonics is really wrong.
That's what I'm getting at by bringing up fossil and molecular evidence. We see real, honest-to-goodness transitions: I linked to one in my previous response, one you can even partially observe on your own body. Lay your fingers on the side of your jaw. Now, trace along the edge up to the very top of the jawbone. Notice how close your fingers are to your ear canal? Inside the inner ear are three bones, the ossicles: malleus, incus, and stapes. They are carefully arranged to transfer sound energy from the eardrum to the cochlea as efficiently as possible. How could such an amazing mechanism arise? (One that's been cited, even, as 'irreducibly complex' - just Google around a bit.)
It turns out that a classification of dinosaur called the therapsids had two jaw joints. The therapsids are known (by several independent lines of evidence) to be ancestral to modern mammals... and we have a basically complete fossil record of the gradual transition of one of those jaw joints into the modern bones of the inner ear. Fossils representing over 11 separate stages have been found, in the predicted order. Note that intermediate steps were all advantageous, though not as efficient or optimized. Some transitional forms did help amplify sound energy but didn't work while the animal was chewing. We still have problems with that under some circumstances (try to listen to someone while eating celery) but the separation is far more developed now.
And another item I linked to, the molecular evidence. This one is seriously a slam dunk. We've built a 'tree of life' based on animal morphology over centuries, a nested hierarchy of traits. You never find lizards with nipples, or animals with chloroplasts, etc. (Linnaeus started this. It's a little-known fact that he tried to make such trees for minerals and such too, but they failed miserably... since minerals don't arise from descent with modification.) And now we've got a new tree - that of DNA. And, with very very few surprises, it's the same tree that was derived from looking at physical traits. It didn't have to be that way. Even very critical genes for life - like that of cytochrome C - have a few neutral variations, minor mutations that don't affect it. (Genetic sequences for cytochrome C differ by up to 60% across species.) Wheat engineered to use the mouse form of cytochrome C grows just fine. But we find a tree of mutations that fits evolution precisely, instead of some other tree. Instead of one of the trillions of trillions of possible alternate trees. (Imagine if a tree derived from bookbinding technology - "this guy used this kind of glue, but this other bookbinder used a different glue..." - conflicted with a tree that was derived from typos in the text of the books. We'd know at least one tree and maybe both were wrong.)
Now, when you add up things like this,
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I don't have time right now for a lengthy response to each issue raised, though I wouldn't mind continuing the debate with you later - you refrain from pejoratives and hyperbole indicating if not a temporal maturity, at least an intellectual one and I appreciate that. I also appreciate that you provide some background and references rather than the standard everything-I-read-on-the-web-must-be-true bupkes that constantly pops up on blogs.
At any rate, I'll just address "entropy". Now I'm not a mathematician and certainly not a theoretical mathematician, so I'm going to have a hard time translating something like Entropy into an equation, but I do have 3/4s of an Electrical Engineering degree under my belt (don't ask why I dropped out in the 4th year, though it does have something to do with non-linear algebra) so I'm a bit better than a schlub when it comes to comprehending math, and I don't use the word "entropy" loosely. I'm specifically using it in the context of Newtonian physics and second law of thermodynamics (with credit to Joule and Carnot), where as a compliment to matter and energy, you can't move from an entropic state to one of less entropy without investing some energy, or as Newton's third law of motion put it, every action has an equal and opposite reaction and thus bodies in motion tend toward releasing kinetic energy rather than absorbing it and moving to a higher potential energy.
Quick example of entropy in action, drop a glass from a counter, it breaks (bonds broken, sound energy released, minor heat generated, glass chips scatter, etc.). Now pick up the glass shards, all of them if you can find them, raise the "pile" of glass 10 or 100 times higher than the original counter top to increase the available potential energy, drop them again. You can even put the pieces back in their original spots and do it again. Not one single bond will reform. It may seem obvious that it won't, but that's the point. The only way to pull entropy out of the given system is to meticulously re-assemble the glass and if there was a good bonding solvent, you could glue it back together. But you've transferred energy and organization from another system to achieve that.
I took enough chemistry to understand some quantum physics and know that moving to outer oribtals and creating long covalent bonds takes a molecule to a discrete state of higher potential energy (didn't this thread originally started with a discussion of forming fossil fuels under heat and pressure over time?). As it applies to speciation, evolution, and genetic mutations, I believe it is consistent with Newtonian physics that without an infusion of directed energy, molecular chains are going to tend towards breaking down rather than building up. That rather than moving towards complexity, objects, structures, and organisms tend toward simplicity or even chaos. That rather than self-composing, life decomposes. So whenever presented with a scientific conclusion that requires that disorder spontaneously move towards order without fully explaining the source of the energy or the intervention of an organizer, I'm going to immediately assume it's a premature conclusion and in the context of the scientific method, relegate it to a theory that still needs some work. I'll want to see some proof other than just anecdotes.
I'm also going to be suspicious of models that assume linear behavior outside of the observable linear range. This is why inductive reasoning is such a dangerous tool in the hands of science. The Challenger crew that died in 1986 can pretty much lay the blame for their deaths on this failure - the engineers (with the exception of the whistle blower, Roger Boisjoly, that got railroaded) assumed a linear behavior in the fuel tank seals success rate across ambient temperature ranges and failed to consider that even in Florida you can have a frosty morning (for an analysis http://www.onlineethics.org/cms/13470.aspx). In their risk calculations, they neglected to draw o
Gee, thanks, "chump"! :->
The link I provided before does so, using the actual thermodynamic definitions of entropy. Here it is again (PDF paper it links to, costs money though). Even by a major overestimate of the amount of entropy in living things, the sun puts in over a trillion times more energy available to decrease entropy than all living things on Earth produce.
The main problem is that Entropy is not "disorder". The other problem is that entropy can and does decrease on Earth, all over the place... though the total entropy in the Universe does go up. If the naive understanding of entropy were correct, snowflakes couldn't form. Here's a discussion that addresses your 'broken glass' example pretty well, noting that "order" and "design" are two quite different things still. It also addresses something else you say:
You didn't cover semiconductors in your electrical engineering classes? They did in mine. Holes, doping, band gaps, etc. - such phenomena can't be observed in single atoms, only in collections thereof. (BTW, entirely unrelated aside: I once ran it through an anagram generator and discovered that "electrical engineering" could be rearranged to "rectilinear negligence". :-> ) What about convection? How about dipolar bonding in water - of no import in an individual molecule, but leads to anomalously high surface tension in liquid water, and the paradoxical expansion of solid vs. liquid water at Earthly temperatures and pressures?
Ponder for a moment how you'd measure the behavior of shear-thickening liquids in a single molecule. How would you make a quasicrystal out of one atom?
Early on, a blastula is composed of identical cells, but patterns of chemical reactions make "standing waves" around those cells, and start differentiation. You don't get that behavior from the individual cells - indeed, if you split those cells up, they form new blastulas, which then differentiate and develop. (One way identical twins are formed.)
Those are just the simplest examples I came up with off the top of my head. I'm going to ask a few buddies to come up with more examples of behavior seen only in populations, not individuals. It's actually a fun puzzle, thanks.
Next to my name is a (slightly mangled) version of my email address. If you click on my nickname, my email's there, and you can find my home site with a "contact" page.
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Religious people are naive has hell as how do we know God has any good intentions with humanity in the first place.
On top of that, the bible is full of atrocious stories and contradicts all over the place.
What annoyes me the most is that creationists accept the fruits of Science like: modern medicine, cellphones, airplane flights to sunny places but go fuzzy when that same Science explains the nature of things.
Can't wait untill the day the last reglious muppet sees the light of reason.
I guess I would appeal to the "Occam's Razor" principle, which says, if you can explain the observed phenomena while positing fewer entities and fewer and simpler relationships, this is in general more likely as a cause of the phenomenon than an explanation that posits additional entities and relationships.
Positing God as an explanation for phenomena is positing an extra entity and positing extra, complex, relationships, for which no scientifically credible evidence has ever been found.
Now in a previous world where there were no credible scientific explanations for many things, it was not possible to outright discount the God hypothesis. But as science now reaches back to explanations of the generation of the current form of the physical universe all the way back at least 14 billion years, and reaches (with generalized evolutionary theory) into the explanation by simple principles of the generation of complex layered, emergent-property physical matter-energy systems, such as life and its higher forms like human behaviour and societal behaviour, the need and the "room" for an EXTRA explanatory agent concept (i.e. GOD) recedes.
(By scientifically credible evidence, I mean evidence gathered by a logically valid and repeatable experiment, and evidence which does not have more likely alternate explanations. )
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
It sounds like you're saying God doesn't exist because some dead guy (Occam) says say it's unlikely. And anyway, how is the theory "God made it" not composed of fewer entities and simpler relationships? I count 2 entities: God and existence. I count 1 simple relationship: God vs existence. Count the entities and relationships involved in the big bang and evolution. I hope you have a lot of time and know a lot of big numbers.
Besides that, no one was around 14 billion years ago to prove whether these "explanations" are correct. We don't even have first hand accounts of any of the things mentioned in these explanations.
We have first hand accounts of everything that's written in the Bible as witnessed by the men who penned down God's words.
The biggest problem with a "God did it" kind of theory, is it forces you to stop thinking at a big wall at some point, and just kind of go "Yeah ok, fine."
Examples of the wall. (Questions you have to avoid asking if you believe in God as source of way things are):
1. God created the universe and was particularly focussed on humans and gave us our character.
a. So who or what created God? Not allowed to ask?
b. What other things in the universe is God like?
c. Is God physical in any way (embodied in matter and energy patterns somewhere/everywhere?)
d. Why would God focus on an Ape species which happened to develop a generalized thinking and planning and language capability likely because it had very dexterous manipulators (arms and tree-branch gripping hands) that could be repurposed for a whole wide range of other tasks (spear chucking, house building, fire making etc)
e. Why is the particular God of a particular human culture among many "the actual God" as opposed to just a "false god of myths" as other cultures' gods are? I want an actual reason, not some "that's just the way it is" claptrap.
2. Why do we need God to explain "Love thy neighbour" and co-operation/altruism strategies? We don't. These strategies are theromdynamically more efficient (more energy efficient) per unit of survival probability, through economies of scale and specialization that they permit.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Here's where it comes down to whether you can believe in something.
I know God is real and THE God because I know him personally. I talk to Him every day. He works in my life in ways that no one else could, preparing me for things that have happened in ways that no one else could. I have seen Him heal people in ways that have flabbergasted doctors, just because those people prayed in faith to be healed.
To answer the questions why humans, what does God look like, etc:
Genesis 1:27-28
27) So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
28) And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
But the Bible tells us that the form God has is not a physical form, but a spiritual one:
John 4:24
24) God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
In answer to your question about teaching love, I don't believe people in general would hold to the idea of loving their neighbor if we hadn't been taught it by God in the first place. Many people STILL don't. This is why our nations are being consumed by the greed of their leaders and businessmen.
I think I may have hit the wrong reply button, so I'm leaving a little message here so you get the notification that I've replied.
I will keep an open mind to signs of God in my life, but to be honest I can only imagine God to be another word for the universe as a whole, the "why there is something rather than nothing" (and that doesn't help me out much in daily life other than by making it possible, in a general sense.)
Regarding your last point about teaching love, I did not mean to imply that teaching love is not necessary. The energy-efficiency (for living systems) of forgiving and cooperating strategies accrues at the society super-organism level, and only indirectly trickles down to the individual. So the society develops teaching institutions to teach these principles, for society-as-a-whole's own sake. People grudgingly accept these institutionalized admonitions against selfishness because they intuitively (correctly) admit it is better in general for all if we live that way.
As humans, we are two things: system builders, and story makers. And God is one of our greatest stories that brings other stories together into a theme for living. We do need story-guidance to live well, because otherwise we are creative enough to invent many bad, unsuccessful
life paths and strategies that have been tried before and warned about in stories.
What I believe in is a careful reflection on how we should come to believe, and what it means to do so. I believe in other things too, but that is the over-arching meta-belief: "Think well, believe well, know well, and know when you don't know."
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I will keep an open mind to signs of God in my life
I can't tell you how glad I am of this. I pray that God will show himself to you in your life in a way that will let you believe. Forever is a long time, and God wants you to be happy during it, but he won't force you.