Slashdot Mirror
Tennessee Bill Helps Teachers Challenge Evolution
sciencehabit writes "In a 70-28 vote yesterday, the Tennessee House of Representatives passed HB 368 (PDF), a bill that encourages science teachers to explore controversial topics without fear of reprisal. Critics say the measure will enable K-12 teachers to present intelligent design and creationism as acceptable alternatives to evolution in the classroom. If the bill passes, Tennessee would join Louisiana as the second state to have specific 'protection' for the teaching of evolution in the classroom."
I pray that the day after this law passes, a biology teacher somewhere in the state walks into his classroom and spends the entire day showing how the fossil record contradicts the silly Genesis story in the Bible--knowing he's now protected by a law that says his principal and angry parents can't do jackshit to stop him.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If it's a public school, you just might.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Now the students can write "God did it" on every question without the fear of getting a bad grade.
Fuck evolution, go with Scientology, really piss them off.
Because apparently, we're devolving into a nation of idiots.
Requoting a sentence :
"...a bill that encourages science teachers to explore controversial topics without fear of reprisal."
So the article went straight from that wonderfully enlightened bill and went for creationism? Not partner preference, abortion, unsafe health conditions, or stem cells?
You could write 100 articles from that bill.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
...and see how long it takes for this law gets amended.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
not observable or repeatable
In that case, it's just like your religion.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Hey there are teachers at universities that teach that the 9/11 attacks where a plot by the US government and they get defended on the grounds of Academic freedom.
http://media.www.smithsophian.com/media/storage/paper587/news/2007/09/20/News/Umass.Professor.Supports.911.Conspiracy.Theory-2984244.shtml
Where do you draw the line? I agree that Creation science isn't but then I have heard teachers spout all sorts of tripe over the years. I know of one child that actually had a teacher that when she found out that she was a member of a certain religion start teaching a course about the history of the religion from a very negative view point and full of miss information. The school defended her teachers right to teach history how she saw fit and that was in high school.
So do you want the government to tell teachers what they can and can not teach?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
But it *has* been observed. You've heard of antibiotic resistant bacteria, right?
It is both observable and has been repeated in many experiments.
Some of them are not even experiments per se: see antibiotics and bacteria.
a. a Sunday school is be definition not a public school.
b. that would depend on the church.
c. Are you a Sunday school teacher.
BTW I am and one of my lessons for the ages 12 to 14 was on the value of education including science, math, history, and literature.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
WHY, pray tell, does there have to be a conflict? And, by the way, evolution of simple organisms is observable and repeatable.
I am Spartacus
I pray that a teacher will actually question the so called science of evolution, as something not observable or repeatable.
Vaccine resistance.
In the interest of open dialog that truly allows learning and discovery, I pray the opposite of you. I pray that a teacher will actually question the so called science of evolution, as something not observable or repeatable.
Can't tell if trolling....
or just very stupid....
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
OK, let's suppose you're not trolling and you're not unwilling to challenge your own views. Not unreasonable assumptions, so watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUxLR9hdorI
And that's based on objective machines (DNA sequencers and computers comparing the sequences). The link is highly recommended for schools and teachers.
That means no Adam, no garden of eden, no eternal sin, no Jesus dying for our sins.
Bert
Not observable?
I guess that depends on your definition of "observable", since it was Darwin's observations that species that had left the mainland had evolved into new species that were better adapted to their new environment. We have observed hundreds of human and pre-human skeletons showing an evolution over a period of a million years from chimpanzees to modern humans. Countless other observations have been made. We have even recently observed that bacteria, when selective pressure (antibiotics) is applied, they tend to evolve (ie, "superbugs").
Not repeatable?
Again, lab experiments have shown this time and again. Take two bacterial colonies, start turning up the heat over a number of generations and you'll eventually have two separate colonies of thermophiles. In the wild, convergent evolution has been seen a number of times. The textbook example are birds and bats. They belong to different classes (mammalian vs avian) and from the fossil record, we know that the wings developed after the species split off, but both creatures have very similar wing structure.
Sure, it's entirely possible that our current understanding of Evolution is wrong. That's not now, and has never been, an issue. What is, however, is the presumption that an explanation cobbled together from ideas in a 2000 year old book, primal mythology, and uninformed fear mongering, is the correct one. If that's the case, how about the Norse, Hindu, Buddhist, or Zoroastrianism, all of which are older and better documented than the Christian slapshot. The fact that one theory might be right doesn't mean that another kooky one is correct and must be accepted without the same scientific rigor that prove the first one wrong (or right, we're not there, yet).
Most Christians are pretty ignorant as to what the bible actually says, so let me offer what might be a different view than has been presented here before:
It would be pretty stupid for any Christian to say that the Earth is a meager 6000 years old, yet they do it anyway. However, there is pretty clear text that says that to God, time is of no consequence. "A day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day" and all that. Now, consider that in the "seven days" that he created the world, day and night didn't even exist until the 4th day (correct me if I got the "day" wrong), which means that the way that we're measuring this time is wrong. So, the entirety of the creation process that is documented in the Bible is not something that Christians should be using to try and disprove Evolution, because it makes no mention whatsoever about how the inhabitants of the planet were created, and why would it be so wrong to believe that a creator would use the biological laws of the world he'd created to achieve said end?
Just consider it.
Simple organisms like flowers, dogs, horses, etc. Mankind has been running evolution experiments at least for all of recorded history.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The issue is that evolution isn't controversial. Hell, even the Catholic Church recognizes it. What you've got is a large number of ill-educated hicks that refuse to accept reality. Suggesting it's controversial is giving credence to all manner of silly beliefs which are demonstrably false. It's one thing to believe that God kicked off the progress, that at least isn't known to be false.
Same goes for climate change, there's a lot of idiots out there that don't believe it, but in terms of the people who actually study it, there's very little actual argument going on about it being real. The real controversy at present is over what to do about it, precisely how bad will it be and how long do we have to do something about it.
Which would put them on equal footing, wouldn't it?
Well except for the volumes and volumes of data that show species changing over time from the fossil record. Religion just has 'a book that says so' for its evidence. So not exactly 'equal' footing.
Lets also take into account that the biblical scholars say the world is just a few thousand years old. Except that the volume of evidence for evolution clearly shows that the world is *billions* of years old.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
I find it quite sad to see so many jurisdictions enshrining an ignorance of basic science into law, and defending the right of people to be both incredibly wrong, and to have their heads up their asses at the expense of verifiable scientific facts and discourse.
If your god intended you to be a drooling idiot, he wouldn't have given you the capacity to think.
I don't have a problem with religion, but when it decides that stupidity is the best course, and that it's best to ignore what we actually know about the world around us, it's quite pathetic.
I fail to see why religion needs to be compatible with basic science ... I realize there's a lot of different variations on Christianity, but even the Vatican has accepted basic science. It seems like the more you demand the right to deny evolution and the like, the more likely you are to be a wacky, radicalized person who insists that only your interpretation of the bible is correct -- and that anybody who disagrees with you is evil.
The friggin' Scopes Trial was in 1925 -- but it seems like some people are still convinced that there is a need to live in the dark ages and pretend we haven't learned anything ... though, TV and Wal Mart don't seem to be a problem.
This is like not marking children wrong on anything factual because everybody is entitled to their own opinion, and maybe little Billy really felt that 2+2=5, and we don't want to hurt his feelings.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Of course it isn't.
But it IS "an either-or proposition" if you insist on a LITERAL interpretation of The Bible.
You can be religious and understand/accept evolution and understand that "The Garden of Eden" was a parable.
You CANNOT believe that The Garden of Eden was a physical location on Earth and understand/accept evolution.
Not without some serious mental gymnastics about a trickster god.
There are a few things that you need to understand about why this is an issue. Christianity collapses entirely without the Creation story. While under Judaism, it was just a parable to explain the creation of the world, Christianity gives this story teeth for the following reason: The basis for Jesus's sacrifice was that Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden. From the Instant that happened, with the exception of a few Jews that followed the laws of Moses, 99.999% of all Humans all born on Earth before or since were damned to Hell. Thats the only reason the evolution issue is an issue at all. If this myth isn't true (and it isn't.) Christianity collapses and Jesus died for absolutely no reason than being a cult leader the Romans wanted to execute. (make no mistake, Christianity IS a doomsday cult.)
A few things about the Judeo-Christian God Yahweh:
- He started out as part of a War God along side two other gods, Ba'al, and Asherah. When their followers were eradicated Yahweh was given the title of 'Elohim'
- Jehovah is Yahweh in German
- He is a male God. Who advocates male supremacy and is VERY misogynistic
- He is very mean, cruel, and most Humans have a morality superior to Yahweh, in his original form. Yahweh has been watered down a whole bunch.
- Yahweh is often refered to as 'The Lord' due to Censorship in English copies of the Bible. It is considered a violation of the Ten commandments to call Yahweh, 'Yahweh'.
The issue is that for reasons of social control. US Christians do not believe their civilization will survive without Christianity. Yahweh is a tribal god that his followers keep extending and expanding his powers. Yahweh is not real, he is only as powerful as his followers say he is. As such, without an all powerful Yahweh to bind everyone, and keep the masses in line, A whole lot of people who make a whole lot of money, and have a whole lot of power stand to lose their power if belief in Yahweh fades.
Another thing is there are Humans in this world who believe the myth of Heaven and Hell. To those people, when the 'end' comes, they are supremely worried that Yahweh will let exactly zero Humans (or at least not them) into Heaven. The creation myth is a big part of the idea that Jesus died for the original sin of Man. The religion doesn't work if the Garden of Eden never happened.
Not to mention, simple fruit-fly experiments.
Or . . .simply observing the generations of one's own family.
It isn't proof. To be fair, there is very little that is absolutely provable. But at least it is testable and we have gathered evidence to support it. Simply saying "but the bible says" is not evidence, proof, testable, or in any way on earth even remotely addressable by the scientific method. Having religion in science class makes absolutely no sense. Do religious people attend church or theology classes to learn about physics?
There's no such thing as 'microevolution' and 'macroevolution' there's evolution.
What, precisely do you mean by 'gained information'. We're talking random chance coupled to fitness here. If someone throws a die and it lands on 6 five times in a row, has 'information been gained'? When a population of copper-tolerant grasses evolves that manages to live on mine spoil tips, is information gained? Antibiotic resistance in bacteria? The ability for a flu virus to mutate and survive in humans?
That's been tried. The corporations started cheap schools that only educated people just enough to work in the corporation's factories. (At a wage where the people couldn't afford to send their children to a better school.)
Countries that had public education then out-innovated the non-public education countries, and were better competitors in the global marketplace.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
The truth^W^WScience threatens the parents' faith.
Don't ask why their faith is so weak that it has to be protected by the government from conflicting ideas.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
This is a fallacy that keeps getting spouted off by ID proponents.
Genetic information CAN be gained... but even if it couldn't, it wouldn't matter. The amoeba... one of the "simplest" forms of life, has one of the largest observed genomes to date.
Simply through mutation of existing genetic information, the passing of it through sexual and non-sexual reproduction we can observe (yes OBSERVE) changes in genotype and phenotype.
thank you mr. free market fundamentalist. the free market is wonderful stuff, but only in an environment where everyone is given the same starting position. if you load a kid up with a bunch of bad ideas, he's not going to be able to compete with the kid who was given effective ideas. which is fine, of course, if you don't care about damning some kid just by the chance of where he was born. but if you enforce a standard of educational requirements, then you can begin to say everyone has the equal OPPORTUNITY (not equal outcome, this isn't communism) to succeed. so the problem with your approach is that you are happy to damn people with less resources. like most free market fundamentalists, you fail to see how your ideology just reinforces the rich and further damns the poor, and widens class divides. your way is not the way to freedom and equality, your way is the way to lack of freedom and lack of equality due to economic ability of your parent or grandparent. now, go read up on the french revolution, and see why and how your ideology fails in the real world
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In his TV show Cosmos, Carl Sagan showed how Japanese fishermen would throw crabs that had bumps on their shells that looked a bit like Samori back into the sea. He that because of this many more of those crabs would survive to reproduce (since they were not eaten by the Japanese) and they passed the genes onto their offspring that produced the bumps on their shells. Eventually the crabs shells started looking more and more like the face of a Samori as the fishermen would throw back the crabs that looked the most like a Samori face. This selective breeding did not take very long either.
Evolution follows the same process as selective breeding, the only difference is that the former takes place over a longer period of time and is not directed by man. Consider the dog. Over thousands of years we have created hundreds of new breeds of dogs in a process not unlike evolution. The dog is also proof of evolution.
Oh... and I don't need to cite an experiment. I can point to a real world example.
Down's syndrome is caused by the presence of an extra chromosome. THAT is additional genetic information right there.
Just because YOU can't figure out how an organism can gain information (and likely this is because you don't know enough about biology) doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
That is the basis of intelligent design. "I can't figure out how it could happen, that means that it doesn't - And no... I refuse to learn more so that I might be able to figure it out". That's fundamentally the basis of irreducible complexity - I can't figure it out the evolutionary mechanism, therefore it must have been designed. It's sad because others DO... and every example of irreducible complexity offered up by the ID community has plausible processes by which they could have evolved.
You can be religious and think ID is a bunch of hooey. This isn't an either-or proposition.
True.
But what happens when someone moves from absolutely believing that the Bible is an infallible document that is absolutely the correct un-tainted word of God, to discovering that it's full of errors, omissions, inconsistencies, and has been changed in thousands of places over time.
Changes that are both accidental and intentional. Changes made for reasons both innocent and manipulative.
It's a big deal to discover that something you thought was infallible has errors.
Then what? If it has one big error , how many more are there?
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
And that is exactly why "Intelligent Design" or "Creationism" is NOT a science and should NEVER be taught in a science class.
Science requires that any hypothesis or theory be falsifiable. At least in theory. It may be impossible to perform the experiment to falsify it.
With non-science, there is no way to falsify it.
If the experiment shows A, then the creator wanted it to.
If the experiment shows B, then the creator wanted it to.
Since it is not science, it should not be taught (even as a "controversy") in a science class.
Leave it in the social sciences / philosophy classes.
Sure evolution isn't important except for studying diseases that can wipe out our race entirely from the planet. Other than that - not important at all.
No part of a story about the world being created some 6 thousand years ago by a magical sky wizard adds up to dinosaurs that were around millions and billions of years ago.
According to creationists, the large reptile/bird creatures we call "dinosaurs" were called taninim (sing. tanin) by the ancient Hebrews. Some dinosaurs, those too big to fit in a 450 by 75 by 45 foot barge built under the direction of Noah Lamechson, died in the great flood of 1656 Anno Mundi. Smaller ones, such as the velociraptor Deinonychus famous from Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, may have been hunted to death before the flood. Still other creatures were aquatic, such as the plesiosaur (one of the possibilities for Heb. leviathan), but could not adapt to the post-flood composition of seawater. As for fossil records and radioisotope dating, young-Earth creationists have their own theories on how the flood interferes with those.
Happy: Science teachers should most definitely explore controversial topics. All teachers should explore controversial topics. That is a fundamental part of teaching.
Sad: Does this mean that prior to this law, a teacher could not discuss a controversial topic? That is frightening!
I don't understand the criticism though:
Critics say the measure will enable K-12 teachers to present intelligent design and creationism as acceptable alternatives to evolution in the classroom.
How so? It seems like it would do the opposite by allowing good science without fear of political reprisal.
...protect teachers from discipline if they help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught..."biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning." The bill also says that its "shall not be construed to promote any religious or non-religious doctrine."
So you have stupid friends. All that tells me is that your friendships are unintelligently designed.
As for your inability to realize what a "theory is", please test your god by jumping off a goddam cliff. That'll show that theory of gravity (or, more exactly, *theories* of gravity. Be sure to deny all of them on your way down.) Oh, and be sure to take your Bible, so it can go thump one last time.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
Who mod'ed that up?
It makes the same old mistake that we see every time this topic comes up.
A scientific theory is NOT the same as a "theory".
A scientific theory is NEVER "proven".
A scientific theory can only be shown to be flawed.
You are 100% wrong.
From Dictionary.com
Evolution: Biology . change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift.
Honestly, what are you talking about? I think the bigger problem is that opponents don't know what it is. Case in point.
The guy you're responding to is wrong, but nowhere near as wrong as you. If you're stupid enough to say things like "evolution is a theory which has yet to be proven", you're probably not worth wasting time on, but what the hell:
First of all, evolution and intelligent design aren't mutually exclusive. It's quite possible that some type of "creator" - whether it be a guy with a beard, or a black monolith - created life on earth. However, that in no way contradicts the fact that all life on earth is related, and that both the geological and genetic record prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that all present-day species are descended from common ancestors. As long as your idea of "intelligent design" doesn't posit a magic-man who's constantly tweaking things, there's nothing contradictory between intelligent design and evolution.
Where intelligent design fails is a whole different issue. For starters, it posits no testable hypothesis. It offers no evidence. It attempts to put an end to further discussion and discovery, rather than opening new avenues of exploration. The phrase "god dun it" is not an answer - it's an appeal to ignorance. The same 'answer' has been used for tens of thousands of years to explain anything that we as a species couldn't understand. Why do we have lightning? God dun it. Why does the earth shake? God dun it. Why is there a flood? God dun it. In EVERY SINGLE PAST CASE, it was scientific scrutiny and the curiosity of man which eventually gave us a real answer, while the religious troglodytes continued to pound their holy books and point at their invisible dude in the sky. In every single case, the religious 'answer' was wrong. What possible combination of neural misfiring could convince you that, in this case, your answer happens to be right? And why would you EVER be satisfied with an answer that doesn't lead you to new questions?
Horseshit. Evolution has been observed as new species happen, and the fossil record is pretty clear on how it has worked from the past. We don't know every detail for every species, but to say evolution has yet to be proven is at best disingenuous, and at worst an outright lie.
Except, there is no evidence to support intelligent design in any meaningful way other than to say "we have an alternate theory which should be listened to", and it's all predicated on the fact that something seems so complex to you that it couldn't have possibly evolved. There is however physical evidence and observations of evolution.
Because only someone with a vested interest in there being a 'who' is proposing ID. Science starts with a point of view which is inherently atheist, and absent any evidence to suggest any basis for theism, keeps it that way. Without evidence to suggest some "supernatural" force, we assume only natural forces have been at play. So, until we see some physical proof to suggest that a deity or other outside actor was in mucking about with the life-forms, it's an extraordinary claim with absolutely no proof or evidence to support it.
Seriously, what evidence is there to suggest intelligent design? I would say there is no credible, factual, physical evidence other than supposition by people who engage in wishful thinking.
Again, horseshit. You don't seem to know what the scientific definition for theory, or if you do, you're intentionally ignoring it to try to muddle the conversation with your mumbo-jumbo.
If gravity hadn't been deemed a "law" several hundred years ago, it would still be considered a "theory". While something could come along to invalidate what we think about gravity, an awful lot of stuff has been shown which is consistent with the notion of gravity.
Anybody who says they're an atheist who believes in ID is either lying, an agnostic, or a crack-pot.
Because the only explanations become: deity, space aliens, or some "unknowable actor", which for all intents and purposes gets us back to deity.
Show me one falsifiable experiment you could do to learn anything about Intelligent Design. If you can't, your entire position is a fairy tale, and cannot be construed as science. Science has testable, verifiable and falsifiable hypothesis ... if you don't have the ability to offer those, don't call yourself science, and don't try to put yourself on equal footing with it.
All you're doing is saying "well, it's possible that the bogey man came in and did something, and since you can't disprove it, my theory is as good as yours".
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
A) Mutation is part of evolution and
B) Speciation has been observed anyway
even evolutions supporters dont know what it is.
Neither do you.
The trouble is that those who believe in creationism greatly fear their kids hearing the other side of the story, because they might start believing in evolution.
Try to put yourself in the shoes of a fundamentalist Christian parent:
1. My son/daughter believes in creationism now, they've accepted Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior and have been saved, so they're going to Heaven when they die.
2. I have a few friends whose children heard of this evolution stuff from some fancy-pants schoolteacher, and no longer believes in creationism or even Jesus, and is thus a sinner doomed to Hell. My other friend's kids were fine, and still don't believe in evolution, but a few did, so that could be my kid.
3. Thus I should do everything in my power to prevent my kid from hearing about evolution, because the salvation of my child's soul, which to a True Believer is more important than their life, depends on it.
If you believe in that sort of Christianity, but don't believe that your child's faith is strong enough that they might get so easily tempted away, then this is a real fear. This is especially true if you also believe that the theory of evolution was created by Satan in order to tempt the faithful away from God. And if you can't afford a private school, and the kid in question is under the legal dropout age, then from your perspective the law is requiring your little saved child to be tempted by Satan.
I don't believe any of this, but if you try to get into that mindset where these ideas are accepted as the most fundamental truths of existence, it makes perfect sense.
I am officially gone from
Evolution is a theory which has yet to be proven
Congratulations on not knowing anything at all about science. Theories are never proven, only disproven.
Intelligent design does not predicate a deity.
Wait, what? What is the designer then, if not a deity?
What is funny, is that people really believe that evolution is a sole indicator of intelligence. As if in the course of one's life, that evolution is such a profound influence that if you cannot or do not believe in it, you cannot ever be a productive member of society.
I doubt that to be the case at all. However people could rightly question a person's critical thinking or judgement skills if they discount an overwhelmingly supported scientific theory for a faith based assertion.
I'm 30 years old and from the South. When I was a child evolution was the only acceptable subject that could be taught in science class. We discussed the religions of the world, including Christianity, in social studies. They were discussed and evaluated through an academic lens. In freshman Biology a girl raised her hand and asked the teacher: "Do you really believe in evolution?" with an astonished look on her face. The rest of the class snickered and the teacher said that of course she did. It was truly funny to the rest of us that she would be that sheltered. Fundies where a lot less common back then. There were one or two in each class but most people were only passively religious if at all. We weren't exactly in the boonies but we were in a small city bordered on all sides by about fifty miles of rural farmland. It frightens me how much and how fast things have changed. On Slashdot the European readers love to scoff at the backwards Americans but just ten years ago this sort of thing would be laughable. My great-grandmother was devoutly religious, my grandmother is religious, my mother was barely religious, and I am not religious at all. This is the trend that I grew up with and what I saw in most of my friends' lives. Somewhere along the line things shifted and that trend reversed.
To teach evolution in fourth grade is stupid
Why? I quite clearly remember the science course I took over the summer in 4th grade. Not because I had to, but because my parents thought it was important that I had a good education. Most of our class time involved going out to a local pond to learn about the life that inhabits it. On the applied side, it was demonstrated to us how the discovery of the microscope led to an upending of the accepted beliefs at the time. To do this, we were all given glass slides and vials to collect various selected organisms from the water, that could only be seen under a microscope. A biological scavenger hunt, so to speak.
Since Darwin came after Leeuwenhoek, our next lesson was about evolution, and it had similar applications and demonstrations that we had to carry out. All this learning was going on as lowly(in your eyes) fourth graders.
There is no age that is too young for anyone to learn. Just because you were incapable of understanding something at a certain age, does not mean everyone is.
To answer your question about the last time it was critical that I understood evolution. That would be last month when I decided it was time to get my TDaP booster vaccine shot. Because I understand the concepts involved in the bigger picture, I was able to make a critical choice as to how to handle my health. And here lies the problem with your line of thinking, that because there is not an immediate cause-effect relationship, it does not seem critical to you. But life is a sequence of events, with some of them very dependent on previous choices that are separated by large distances in time. An inability to correctly asses how to deal with events that happen over different times, leads to possible(and probable) DEATH over another amount of measured time and clearly defined circumstances.
I think you do not understand what "literal" means in this context.
Believing that The Garden of Eden was a place on Earth inhabited by Adam and Eve who were tempted blah blah blah is a literal interpretation of The Bible.
Then you do NOT subscribe to a literal interpretation. It's that easy.
Go buy a dictionary. Or use one of the on-line versions. You don't know what "literal" means nor do you grasp "straw man".
Who cares? This isn't about your personal interpretation (being non-literal) of anything.
Which is why your beliefs should NOT be taught in a science class.
Um... see... this is where your lack of knowledge keeps you from seeing the possibilities...
A duplicate of the same information allows you to have additional information through mutation IN ADDITION to the current existing genotype.
So you have one copy of a book... the original book remains the same, but then mutations occur in the copy... which lead to favorable or unfavorable traits IN ADDITION to the traits of the original book. This is the very essence of evolution.
I also want to point out a major reason why it's difficult for people who don't actually study evolution to understand it and I think it might "head off at the pass" your argument against my previous post.
Evolution does NOT happen within a single organism during its lifetime. A fish isn't born a fish and then some time while it's alive, become another species. It happens progressively through generations. So while (in my Down's Syndrome example) the first person may have an exact copy of chromosome 21, that trait will likely be inherited by any offspring that person may have. Due to the way gametes are produced (via crossing and whatnot) in diploid organism, and how gametes combine to form a single organism, there will be SIGNIFICANT differences not only in the original parent with Down's Syndrome and the child. Thus creating "new information" that is not an exact copy.
I believe the original challenge was to point to how an organism can gain new genetic information. I think I have done that handily.
Also, this example only deals with Down's syndrome and only humans and only across one generation... there are countless other ways that genetic information can erroneously replicate to give a "canvas" to create new information.
Unfortunately those proofs were not evolutionary but crossbreeding chuckles.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
Yeah I always wondered that. Like what kind of education and careers to these people have?
Kind of hard to be a Geologist if you think the world is 5000 years old. Astrophysics would be right out the door also... etc...
Anyway there will always be idiots, I think the bigger concern should be teaching better teachers, as apparently that is one job that you can do and having wacko ideas like the world being 5000 years old isn't going to be an impediment...
An elementary or high school science teacher generally does not need a science degree. A degree in Education is fine. There are also creationists who have gotten degrees in Geology, Biology, etc. These are the ones cited by groups like Answers in Genesis and The Discovery Institute as "Scientific authorities who refute Evolution". Some of them are even kept on the payroll to deliver lectures and publish (books not scientific papers) "defending" the Creationist views.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
By the way, back to evolution, shouldn't there be dozens... maybe hundreds... maybe thousands of fossils of creatures somewhere between monkeys and humans? Or did that evolution happen in one generation?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Homo
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I can not *prove* God exists any more than you can *prove* that God does not exist.
Actually, no, I don't have to prove he doesn't exist. He simply doesn't until you prove he does. There's no impasse here other than your (or anyone's) inability to prove what they believe.
If you don't see the connection between blind faith in something that can't be proven in any fashion, and Charles Manson's delusional followers, well I think we're done here. You can't have one without the other no matter how much you protest.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
if I'm wrong and have deluded myself into belief in a lie for my life, there's no consequence to my belief other than I've followed a lie. I am doing no harm to my fellow man.
You may not be, but plenty of other 'religious' folk seem quite hell bent on imposing their views on the rest of the world. So yes I attribute that to anyone who supports that idea. You can't have one without the other.
TO you it is the same as believing in Santa...to me it is a part of who I am.
I assert that to a 5 yr old it is quite definitely part of who they are as well.
I'm willing to revise my opinions based on evidence, and to date I have found no evidence that God does not exist.
This is the very definition of 'science' that I am in favor of. Having 'evidence' drive things, not fantastical belief systems with no supporting evidence. You seem to agree with me on this point.
And I stand by the concept that as a general rule, athiests seem to have a serious problem accepting that religious people have their beliefs, and feel the need to mock and belittle those with faith for their faith.
I heartily disagree with you. The whole point of the article was about the religious pushing their views onto others. Religious history is literally rife with them pushing their beliefs onto others. Atheists and my ilk object heartily to being forced to accommodate in our lives the beliefs of others that are clearly not based on factual evidence. Again something you say you agree with.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Evolution is a change in allele frequencies in a population over time.
If a mutation survives and spreads through the population, that's evolution by definition.
I don't know what you think evolution is. A chimpanzee giving birth to a human? Pikachu evolving into Raichu?
And I agree that it isn't worth wasting much time on it, but alas, when I see idiots using religions or anti religious rants to support or deconstruct another, I feel compelled to call out the biggest idiot of the bunch.
I think you must have been reading a different set of comments then. Regardless, I can waste a couple minutes on you.
There is no genetic record that include genetic evidence only that points to this. There is however, a record that included non-genetic evidence to lead people to believe this.
Speak English, please.
Short and simple, what if God or a god dun it?
Then provide some evidence to support that hypothesis. What if Santa Claus dun it? What if Bigfoot dun it? What if Yo Mama dun it? The time to believe a claim is when it is sufficiently supported by evidence. Until that time it's all bullshit, and what-if scenarios don't make it any more credible. If your "explanation" is indistinguishable from something I just made up, then it's fucking useless.
You do not know at all if the religious answer was right or wrong.
Yes, I do. But if you want to keep believing that lightning happens because god is angry, and that lightning-rods are the tool of the devil, you go right ahead.