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Fundamentalist Schools Using "Nessie" To Disprove Evolution
The debate between creationists and proponents of evolution isn't ending any time soon, but now some creationists have a secret weapon, "Nessie!"
Certain fundamentalist schools in Louisiana plan to teach children that the Loch Ness monster is real in a bid to disprove Darwin's theory of evolution. From the article: "One ACE textbook – Biology 1099, Accelerated Christian Education Inc – reads: 'Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the "Loch Ness Monster" in Scotland? "Nessie" for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.' Another claim taught is that a Japanese whaling boat once caught a dinosaur. It's unclear if the movie Godzilla was the inspiration for this lesson."
There are many examples of "living fossils" -- living things that are essentially unchanged from dinosaur era fossil records including some varieties of crocodiles, fish, turtles, etc. A live 'dinosaur' would just be a bonus for these people.
What I find most telling is that these 'schools' choose the most ridiculous possible example rather than look for the obvious ones. The argument still wouldn't stand up to the vast number of samples of extinct and changing fossils over time, but it would at least be based on scientific observations that are reliable and readily confirmed.
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don't lump all christians in with this lot. the way I see it, scientists cannot disprove the existence of God and christians cannot disprove evolution, or even natural selection.
We kind of are dumb, though. Especially some of us. I don't see how this is in any way impossible... we have a contingent of creationists who believe humans and dinosaurs coexisted. If anything, this is the logical conclusion of that line of thinking.
Don't let hominems blind you to the fact there really is a lot of stupidity running wild in this country.
Great Intellect...
From 2nd grade to 12th grade, my primary curriculum was based on the "PACE" system. The way PACE works is, each subject (math, science, etc) is broken down into individual sub-subjects called a "PACE." Each PACE has reading sections, exercises, and a final test, all of which cover a very specific topic. I clearly remember that my one of my PACE physics books (devoted to gases) used the second law of thermodynamics to "disprove" evolution. The "evidence against evolution" was even on the test at the end of the PACE. I also remember one of my early science PACE books covering the "hydrosphere" -- a sphere of frozen hydrogen which covered the Earth in ancient times -- which supposedly collapsed during Noah's flood. Despite some of these quirks, the PACE system was actually pretty solid. The explanations, questions, etc, were all very well structured. Honestly, looking at some of my niece's/nephew's course work in my local public school system, the PACE system was bread-and-butter by comparison.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
Normal Christians (Ie not American) believe evolution is evidence that God is alive, and still creating. We also believe that Jesus taught that fundamentalism was wrong. American Christians appear to be confused by the teachings of Islam.
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> If you can tell me the difference between religion and mythology, I'd be interested to know.
True religion (little r) is living the lifestyle necessary to prove your beliefs, aka, faith is putting your beliefs into practice. (If you never do anything with your beliefs, they are just that, beliefs.)
Fake Religion (big R) is the crap that passes for religion today. God _always_ needs more money somehow (with apologies to George Carlen). Oh, and you're not worthy. You need this special parent to kill their own son so that you can live. And "our path" is the only path.
Mythology is another man's religion long since dead.
The problem is Theism and Atheism are both based on ignorance (a belief or lack of belief, not Truth nor facts.) Agnosticism is a step in the right direction -- wisdom _begins_ when you realize you know nothing. Only the mystic has Truth (due to experience.)
In general, these groups rely upon the fact that most of their members won't bother checking citations. In my long-ago youth, I was a Jehovah's Witness (though I stopped disbelieving in evolution when I was about nine years old), and they had anti-evolution books chalked full of out of context quotes and various other dodgy references. They even claimed that Richard Dawkins thought evolution was science fiction (quote mining his introduction to Selfish Gene). They could do these sorts of things because they knew that virtually no JW was going to check those references. In fact, they were basically warned against doing so, lest Satan enter their hearts.
It was all pretty pathetic, and, as I said, by the time I was nine, I had already started to doubt it all, mainly by reading a book on human evolution in the school library. By the time I was sixteen and had read some literature on comparative religious studies and mythology, I was well on the road to atheism. When I made my break, I told them exactly why; their religion was nonsense, their Biblical interpretation was nonsensical by Augustine standards and that they were making their own holy book into a ridiculous mockery by their own dishonesty and ludicrous interpretations.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Evolution is a process that can exist with or without creationism or abiogenesis. Of course, nobody cares about this distinction, but I believe that is the distinction that GP is trying to make.
Lots of people care about this distinction and dual meaning to the common term "evolution". They've just mostly given up trying to educate those who view evolution as one concept, because anyone who dares to question the unproven "how life began" part of evolution as unprovable is shouted down by those who wave about the fossil record as proof -- of the "change over time" meaning of evolution.
Yes, your fossils may show change over time that you call "evolution". They do nothing to prove that life evolved from a primordial soup of random chemicals, which is what you'd need to disprove a belief in a creator that created the life originally.
I have no problem believing that species change over time, and that this was part of the original design of the system. I have lots of problems with scientists who claim to have proof of how life began. How it might have begun, no problem. "This is a fact"? Right.
The best possible outcome of all this would be an event to REALLY fuck up EVERYBODY. Specifically, it turns out God IS real, and, out of sheer frustration, comes down to Louisiana, and explains: "No, you stupid, stupid dipshits! What part of that makes ANY sense? I swear, I thought I made you morons with some amount of intelligence, but THAT?!? Look, it's evolution! The answer is evolution! Seriously, it is! I know you idiots can't see it from your perspective, but from where I am, it's really, really fuckin' awesome. I mean, I pick a planet from the random number generator, toss in a bit of genetic material, and in billions of years, civilization happens without me having to hand-hold you little dingbats every step of the way! Seriously, how can you tell me THAT isn't awesome?"
scientists cannot disprove the existence of God and christians cannot disprove evolution, or even natural selection.
But science can show evidence of evolution while christians cannot show evidence of god.
You can spin it until you're dizzy but evolution is fact that can be tested where as religion is something you believe because you choose/want/need to.
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Oh, and regarding the mythology and religion distinction: I'd put it this way - mythology is the narrative body, religion is a way to interpret it and act upon it. Greek mythology is the story about the Gods, the Cosmogony and so on. Greek religion is going to the temple and sacrificing to those Gods.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
As someone who actually does believe in Creationism, even I am holding my head in shame at these claims.
The problem is that "literal" is not always clear. For example, if I say someone is "dumb as a rock", I intend the words metaphorically, and thus the actual literal meaning is figurative, not the literal meaning of the individual words. The Bible is full of metaphors, which aren't intended to be taken word for word literally. Classic example in the creation story is that it takes place over six "days", yet the sun wasn't created until several "days" into the story, which means the literal meaning of "day" couldn't apply. And therefore what is meant by "day" is a figure and not a period of sunlight and darkness. Same with light and darkness being created before the sun or stars: most Christian theologians interpret that as the creation of the angels, and separation of the angels from the demons.
Finding the literal meaning of a text at the figurative level is quite common in classic literature, but a lot of people don't realize this.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Because Genesis 1:21 says that God created the sea-monsters tannin, and everyone translator since Luther has tried to translate that word as whale/fish/dragon/waterspout/crocodile/greatSeaCreature or anything else other than the plain meaning of sea monster. Obviously now they have decided to embrace the sea monster and equate it with plesiosaur, instead of reading the text as it plainly is - a polemic against all foreign gods whether they are the sun, moon, stars, monsters, darkness, chaos, weather, fertility.
If god is real, I am pretty sure I don't want to meet him, given all the crap that happened over the course of history in his name. He must be either evil or incompetent.
Religion is a huge prank played on humans by space aliens.
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I think you do not know much about science. When trying to find an explanation, no serious scientist invokes god. That's what I meant. The scientific perspective is indeed that no, there is no god. And nobody can forbid me from drawing my own conclusions about the universe from that, and from the incredible success science has had in making our lifes better. In particular when compared whith what religion has done and continuous to do to us.
Also, it is easy to formulate a hypothesis like "is it true that there is a benevolent god that loves everyone and wont let you down if you believe in him and pray?" and test it against data (well, alas).
The question is, should I believe in god? Is he/she/it necessary as a concept? Observation suggests it isn't, and for many people, that is as much religion as they need: emprically, there is no god around to help us nor to worry about . We are here by ourselves, and we better care well for each other, because nobody else will. I can also tell you that living without religion is possible and quite enjoyable.
Empirically, those reasonable believers look to me a lot like closet atheists.
I still haven't figured out why people believe. What's the point?
Here's a "60 minutes" episode where they compare chickens with dinosaurs (stand, arms, and feet are similar). http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5658449n
As a young kid, I always wondered how people could NOT notice this. Look at dinosaur feet in cheesy old movies, and look at the feet of most birds. They're so ridiculously similar.
Of course, as a young kid, I kind of had it backwards and thought that the dinosaur puppet makers in the old movies were being lazy and using chicken (or other bird) feet for their puppets and that maybe dinosaurs had totally different feet. When someone explained to me the evolutionary link (and that of course, those old movies were basing the feet off known fossils), I basically just said, "Well yeah, that makes more sense then."
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