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.
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 :-)
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!
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.
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
OK, I'll bite. First of all, evolutionary theory should always be taught as the best theory that fits the available evidence. And it is the best theory. But as a good biology grad, I'm always interested in hearing about holes - so what, in your opinion are the biggest problems and holes?
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?
You seem to be under the impression that modern evolutionary theory is in some way largely dependent on the raw data collected by Darwin. He was an excellent naturalist and an amazing observer/investigator - but this is simply not true.
It is not bad to provoke thought and questions regarding evolution. But starting with the axiom that life was created and shaped through some unseen intelligence is bad.
To what "problems" or "holes" are you referring? Can you name one?
No. Intelligent design creationism allows for no falsification; evolutionary theory on the other hand most certainly does. That is indeed a part of the point; ID is not science because it makes no testable predictions and is for a lack of a better term: worthless. Evolutionary theory by contrast is as has been described by many others to be the very foundation on which one can understand biology.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Telling kids true things is not indoctrination. I suppose your wishy-washy factual relativism would have us teach math students that SOME people believe that 2+2=4, and SOME believe that 2+2=5, and we must NOT SAY that the fivers are wrong, because their god hates to be contradicted. Idiocy.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
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
First off, Darwin is only marginally close to what current evolutionary theory holds. Really. Darwin didn't even know about genetics and the work that Mendel was doing while he was busy observing finches. Equating "evolution" with "Darwin" is just plain ignorance.
We don't want this enshrined in sanctioned science curriculum because "the cell is too complex to have evolved!" is not an evidence-based, scientific argument. Using that as curriculum will simply encourage kids to have sloppy thinking patterns and be unable to actually tell good science from bad.
Feel free to re-evaluate all the observations you want. The data and experiments are out there. The problem is that when people HONESTLY look at all the data, evolution is really the only answer. And teaching anything other than that is a disservice to our children.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Well, sure, and it also gave us Molly Ivins.
Still, I wonder.
Think about the places that have lots of oil. Nigeria. Saudi Arabia. Venezuela.
Now, think about how enlightened those places are in comparisons to place that built their economy mostly on the industry and ingenuity of their people. Would you rather live in Switzerland or Nigeria? Denmark or Venezuela?
The thing is, if you want to make a lot of money by digging it out of the ground, once you have enough engineers and accountants and such to fill your needs, an intelligent, educated populace doesn't contribute much to the corporate bottom line. They're a pain in the ass, to be frank. They'll complain about environmental costs you foist on them. They'll ask inconvenient questions about the financial aspects of the government's relationship to the extracting companies, like the details of leases for public lands, waivers, permits and the like.
If you're one of the major benefactors of an extraction based economy, you want your average neighbor to be as idiotic as possible. Since making this happen costs money like anything else in this world, you also want them to stay that way. What's the cheapest way of doing this?
You make them proud. You fill their heads with glorious myths and very few hard facts, until they'll fight like hell to stay ignorant.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Science has nothing to do with "using our own minds". I can't determine the existance or non-existance of the Higgins Bossom and my opinion about it is completely worthless, as well as any conclusions I might reach on my own using my studies, judgement, rational thought, whatever... ... because I'm not a physicist, nor do I work, investigate or experiment in the field.
That's the crux of the problem when creationists say "we want both theories to be taught, so the kid can choose for himself". The kid doesn't have the tools to prove or disprove any theory on scientific grounds, and nor should he... ... ultimately, to the common joe, science requires faith. So what's the difference between science and religion then? Science constantly delivers tangible results (as shown by the existence of cloned sheep and the Nintendo Wii) transparently, and is willing to unfold it's full body of knowledge and possibilities to anyone willing to dedicate to it.
As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
Of course, the obvious answer to that is that the creator carefully placed all the oil where it would be as if it were the product of ancient plants and dinosaurs; and the same goes with all the rest of the Earth's geological strata, all observable astronomical events, etc. Anything older than 4000BC (or whereever else you put the crucial date) is planted evidence.
In other words: if you believe in Creationism, you believe that God is lying to you.
There's no other conclusion to come to. Everything in the universe hangs together too well for it to be a coincidence. Either it all actually happened the way it looks like it happened, or else Someone has spent a great deal of effort arranging things to make it look that way.
There are a number of interesting aspects to this, not least of which is the idea that if the universe has been carefully faked to look the way it does, would it not be against God's will to reject all that and believe something completely different? Might Creationism actually be blasphemous?
This is, by the way, one reason why most scientists reject Creationism (both young-Earth and old-Earth; the only difference between them is philosphical hair-splitting, anyway). Contrary to popular belief, a lot of scientists are deeply spiritual people who believe strongly in their quest to explore the universe. I can easily imagine whole idea that anyone wants to simply dismiss such a wonderful, exotic, complicated thing as being a lie would be deeply distasteful to them --- it certainly is to me.
You can not take every word in the Bible literally. It was not meant to be a literal factual scientific document. It was written to teach people the Word of God.
If you take every word literally, you will run into a great many problems. Not the least of which is Mark 4:31 which states "It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground." Again, this was written to be understood by the common man.
I am not inconsistent in my beliefs. It is the one who does not understand the purpose of the Bible and takes every word literally who will find himself faced with inconsistencies.
The reason the Bible does not go into detail about the creation of the Earth is obvious once you consider the purpose of the Bible: How the Earth was created simply is not important. All that is important is that the Earth is God's creation. This the Bible says clearly, explicitly, and repetitively.
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
Most Catholics, if they look to the Church for guidance, are fully aware that evolution is acknowledged by the Church.
I'd actually prefer if the Church didn't weigh in on the subject at all, and admitted it's the provenance of science, not faith.
Asking the Church to promote an anti-creationist viewpoint is one step closer to having the Church's opinion taken seriously on other scientific matters.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Math: given these axioms we can prove "2+2=4".
Physics/biology/etc: We think nature follows these rules and as long as we don't see evidence to falsify these rules we assume they are correct. Else you need to search for a new rule that does match all your observations.
Would you say that "the sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees" is an absolute truth? How about in non-Euclydian geometry?
Jesus Christ people, you don't use an apostrophe to pluralize a noun. Fucking cut that shit out.
Screw evolution, I'd like to see basic literacy skills make a comeback.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
The origin of life is NOT part of evolutionary theory. And those teaching that it is just plain wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution#Origin_of_life
I don't understand why textbook publishers would look to Texas as being the standard vs. going to california. How does area of a state have anything to do with how many text books they're going to purchase? Especially when california has almost 50% more people than Texas? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population
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
I really wanted to use my mod-points here, but this is the second comment to make the erroneous statement that "evolution" is about the start of life on Earth.
In very stern, irrefutable terms I would like to say WRONG!
"Evil-ution" makes no claims as to the origin of LIFE. "EVA-lution" is about the change in an organism over a period of time.
Oh, and while I'm at it, please don't make the mistake of assuming evolution has anything to do with humans descending from monkeys or apes. This is another common fallacy. Humans and apes share a common ancestor. Apes are not going to evolve into humans at some point in the future. Humans are not going to become GODS!
One last nit-pik: Evolution is not a path. We are not going to some higher order in the future. Evolution only says your ancestors were strong enough to get you here. Your children are not necessarily going to be around after you pass. We are here because we are strong enough to exist in the current environment. If global warming is real and the Earth changes so that humans cannot exist, too damn bad.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
"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.
Would you rather live in:
Norway or Uganda?
Venezuela or Bangladesh?
Saudi Arabia or Sierra Leone?
Russia or Afghanistan?
See, I can play this game too!
caritj.org