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Evolution Battle Brews In Texas

oxide7 writes "In Texas, a battle is brewing over the teaching of evolutionary theory as the Board of Education considers a new set of instructional materials to be used in science classrooms. [Two sections of the new material] deal with the origin of life. Those sections say the 'null hypothesis' is that there had to be some intelligent agency behind the appearance of living things. It is up to the scientists proposing a naturalistic explanation to prove their case."

10 of 916 comments (clear)

  1. sad isn't it ? by cats-paw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    that we have to spend time and effort keeping creationism from being taught as "science" in the
    21st century.

    Do people in this country really understand that the right wing religious nut-cases are out to make this
    country a theocracy ? American taliban indeed.

    --
    Absolute statements are never true
    1. Re:sad isn't it ? by JWSmythe · · Score: 5, Insightful

          You seem to fail to see the real problem.

          The majority of citizens have taken the word of their respective cults as reality, and fail to recognize anything factual. Factual evidence is passed off as garbage, and ancient fairy tales are the truth. Worse, they don't even cite their own fairy tales properly, and continue to spew more recent urban legends that have been adopted by the cult majority as fact.

          It is an amazingly sad state of affairs, that the majority of the population have become so complacent in following the lies, that they no longer think for themselves.

          I am now a resident of the certifiably most insane nation in the world, which unfortunately also possesses the largest quantity and most dangerous weapons in the world.

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    2. Re:sad isn't it ? by houghi · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because apparently making up your own mind is not something that many people want.

      And from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution
      In addition, while he was the Vatican's chief astronomer, Fr. George Coyne, issued a statement on 18 November 2005 saying that "Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be. If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science."

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    3. Re:sad isn't it ? by interkin3tic · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They can. Religious schools are free to do whatever the fuck they want on their own dime.

      Taking tax money meant for public education and using it to proselytize? No. Absolutely not. Taxes should not be used for religious purposes. Believe what you want, but pay for it yourself and keep it to yourself.

      Teaching Adam and Eve along side of Darwin, implying they're equally credible or even the same subject? No. Absolutely not. That's absurd. Creationism and intelligent design are fundamentally anti-scientific. "The only way to understand any of this is to believe what we tell you" is as far from science as you can get. You may as well teach "intelligent math" in math class and teach kids that 2+2=4, but some people believe that addition is not true, and 2 and 2 will always be 2 and 2, never 4.

      Already most students will never consider the evidence for and against evolution on their own, so for them, evolution is already more faith than science. There are a variety of reasons for that. I sincerely think that teaching science and religion in the same breath will confuse them even further. We'll take a giant step back from being a scientific culture, and a giant step toward ignorance.

    4. Re:sad isn't it ? by JambisJubilee · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The Adam and Eve/Genesis creation account does have a place in the classroom. It's called mythology.

    5. Re:sad isn't it ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I can't believe people don't get this. Science isn't where you go "we have no fucking clue how _____ happened, so we're going to say God did it", it's "we have no fucking clue how _____ happened, so let's apply the scientific method to this phenomenon and see if we can come up with an explanation for it". The theory of evolution crosses over into biology, paleontology, and many other bona fide scientific fields. Intelligent design challenges you to watch a sunrise and claim with a straight face that some force other than God could have made that possible.

      Whether you're religious or not - intelligent design has no business being in a science classroom.

    6. Re:sad isn't it ? by turbidostato · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "I find it curious that for all the backwards stuff the Catholic Church does, evolution doesn't seem to bother them in the slightest."

      You shouldn't. A basis of all (thocratic) religions is that it explains a lot of things but demonstrates nothing.

      Now, a "clever" religion (and the Catholic one has evolutioned itself in this regard as a mean to survive -as a civil corporation) can explain everything while still demostrating nothing.

      Some examples:
      * Some religion guru comes with the idea that his god woke up some day and decided that his almigtyness would create life, intelligence and everything; so the guru writes the Genesis and so be it.
      * After a lot of years the modern gurus of that religion see that they are losing ground because science made obvious the Genesis can't be nothing but a child's tale. No problem.

      What do evidences support? Well, it seems that there were a big bang. What can't science demonstrate, at least today? How it was that the big bang happened. No problem: there were a big bang and God made it happen.

      What do evidences support? Well, it seems that living beings evolution by means of selective pressure on random mutations. No problem: living beings evolution by means of pressure on mutations but there are not really random but directed by God almightiness so they only seem to be random but working in accord to His plan.

      What can't science demonstrate? That there's a soul that survives after death. No problem: that's God's realm: there *is* an indetectable soul that lifes eternally.

      You see, if you are intelligent enough and work on a hypothese unfalsable and that doesn't demonstrate anything you can rework your model without resigning to your main tenets all you want.

  2. This is not ok by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Democracy can only work with good education. The people voting are supposed to be able to make intelligent decisions.

    This kind of thing is going to undermine our ability to govern ourselves and I cannot imagine something more insidious than corrupting children toward that end.

    This must be stopped.

  3. Re:You Gotta Be Kidding Me by JWSmythe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From the article: "In 2009 the Texas Board of Education said that students should be taught "all sides" of current scientific theories."

    but creationism isn't allowed because it's religious. I'm so confused.

        That would imply that all theories, regardless of any evidence or factual basis, should be taught.

        Use of a book, commonly referenced to as "The Bible", which there are currently 190 modern versions of that I'm aware of, which all rooted from various oral traditions handed down over years, noted down, translated, re-translated (repeat ad nauseum), to which ever of the 190 modern versions you may have read an ancient fairy tale in.

        If it's truly necessary to discuss every unsubstantiated creation theory, all sides of the story should be taught. Not just all 190 versions from the "bible", but all creation legends according to all religions and cultures.

        Or we could stick with teaching substantiated facts. Nah, that would make way too much sense.

    --
    Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
  4. Re:Evolution is no more proven than Creationism. by bmo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >UNKNOWN REASON,

    It's not unknown. It's errors. DNA does not copy exactly every time. And sex is merely a way of being able to get more variation in DNA. More variation = more chances to survive (up to a point).

    And if you want to get down to the actual reason why DNA copies are not always true, it's because of physics. Physics and probability. Nothing more and nothing less. We've been testing the probability part of the physics for nearly 100 years.

    And since your argument fails on its premise - that we don't know where the randomness comes from, all that shit you typed was for naught. The attempt to pull science down to "we just don't know" failed. Indeed, your entire argument is "Argument from incredulity" which isn't an argument at all, but simply a lack of imagination on your part.

    Your argument is typical of creationst screeds. It tries to paint scientific arguments as "we just don't know either" when in fact that's not true. Science has done a pretty good job of explaining how the universe operates and we've created some nifty technology based on those rules, which in itself is a test of those rules.

    Creationist arguments are not testable. They are not science. Evolution is testable. In fact, we run experiments on evolution all the time with antibiotics. Such experimentation by society nearly killed me with MRSA.

    Keep religion out of the classroom unless you want to teach it as a cultural studies course. But then you have to teach other cultures to put things in perspective, and I don't think that the christian taliban behind this bullshit are quite prepared to have the Quran, Mahabharata, Tibetan book of the dead, the writings of Zoroaster, et alia to young minds. They might find their kids might learn something.

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    BMO