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Scientists Take Charles Darwin On the Road
Hugh Pickens writes "A team of evolutionary scientists recently traveled to the heart of America, visiting rural schools and communities in Nebraska, Montana, and Virginia to share their excitement about science on the birthday of Charles Darwin, and were overwhelmed with the graciousness, enthusiasm and sincerity of the teachers, school administration and particularly the students that hosted them. 'Over the course of our visits, the questions we received from students were thoughtful and founded in sheer curiosity about the science we presented,' writes MacClain. 'Indeed, the questions were the most exciting part of our collective visits.' Another purpose of the trip was to introduce people to the diverse types of research scientists do, open students' minds to the possibilities of careers in science, and offer an alternative to stereotypes of science and scientists in general. Some criticize the Darwin Day Road Show for being nothing more than a 'Darwinist ministry,' others for it not being more explicit in its discussion of evolution and Darwin, but with this year's success, there will be a Darwin Day Road Show 2012 and the National Center for Science Education is planning to hit all 50 states by 2015. MacClain says the team has found a middle ground that allows scientists to stop communicating at and start communicating with the public. 'It reminds us all that interactions between science and society need not be contentious. At its heart, science is about questions, and we all naturally ask them.'"
Say what you want about religion, but Catholicism has helped shape young minds to be fit for the workplace far better than the exceptional, honest scientist. The fact is that deep in the scientific subtext is a dangerous idea -- that if you remove any assumptions about social order, and begin applying science to your own life, your own personality and your own standards, that you can blindside the least desirable bits of the established order with your own ideas.
That leaves us with how to keep the wheels greased. The key notion is that American culture is not worth rescuing. Why would a child eat or want to be a STEM or any other kind of vegetable when he or she can feast on sugar? Foreign students are doing the work of getting the proper education just fine on their own -- the only metric is that there are enough of these professionals to wind up as the necessary cogs of industry. Indoctrinated, of course, with necessary subtext -- limit your interests to your own field, and never consider the implications in a broader context. Also, contracts are binding and non-negotiable; of course your mindshare is of the company's benefit solely.
To think of the average American child, therefore, we need only appeal to economics. I will take for given the idea that public schools are inefficient. That granted, the Catholic Church has considerable infrastructure already in place to take over a large breadth of education. Coursework would be greatly simplified into the substance necessary: respect for authority. The price of a penis entering an anus in a normative corrective context could not possibly be lower, and this would be a critical part of education. Instead of a standardized test, we would get back to the individual teacher having discretion on which students pass; the metric would be solely if the child exhibits the necessary rate of submission.
In conclusion, we must affirm our societal values by applying them economically; these are corporate values at their best. Time-honored and conservative; easy to relate to and understand. Christian in every way.
So where are all the intermediate stages of evolution. I want to see the half man half monkeys that I evolved from (Que the jokes). Sure evolution is evident with bacteria, and other small creatures, but with larger organisms there is a gap in my knowledge of evolution. Could someone please fill me in. Were millions of tiny genetic mutations that selectively transformed me from a monkey to the pale sickly creature that I am today, and these intermediate stages of evolution were so unsuccessful that they did not leave a fossil record? Or was there one giant mutation that a that transformed people from apes. Unless the mutation took place in both male and female at the same time, It would seem that you have to have the ability of the mutated organisms to mate with the pure strains of the organisms if evolution were to work. That would seem to mean that you would have to have half men half apes mating with apes / people. Wouldn't that leave a record?
I think one reason people still believe in intelligent design, is due to questions like this that seem to get short thrift in the mainstream press.
-Also is the Shih Tzu (an animal much to stupid to have ever survived on it's own and in the wild) an example of evolution or intelligent design. Meaning is it evidence that evolution works because people are breeding dogs essentially for cuteness, and hence you have a really cute, but really stupid dog, or is it evidence of intelligent design? People essentially designed these white and black balls of fluffiness through a selective breeding program.