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Texas School Board Searching For Alternatives To Evolutionary Theory
An anonymous reader writes "[Ars Technica] recently reviewed the documentary The Revisionaries, which chronicles the actions of the Texas state school board as it attempted to rewrite the science and history standards that had been prepared by experts in education and the relevant subjects. For biology, the board's revisions meant that textbook publishers were instructed to help teachers and students 'analyze all sides of scientific information' about evolution. Given that ideas only reach the status of theory if they have overwhelming evidence supporting them, it isn't at all clear what 'all sides' would involve."
May we each be touched by his noodley appendage!
Ever notice that Cobra Commander sounds an awful lot like Star scream?
.. will make people think that things such as scientific evidence (as with laws of physics making the 'official explanation' of 9/11 impossible) nothing more than a 'matter of opinion' - which assists in hiding the crimes of government and business.
Fox News is always claiming people are moving to Texas to avoid taxes, but they don't mention that the majority of people there are idiots who want their children to grow up even dumber than themselves.
Why would anyone live in Texas unless they had to?
Sigh. There's just no cure for stupid. Full disclosure. I live in Texas and yes, this embarrasses me.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
...or maybe a theorem. Or a rumor.
Maybe a wacky folk story.
"Darwin's Wise Tale of Evolution"
Examining all sides of a scientific theory that are contrary to an established scientific theory means examining decidedly unscientific theories as if they were scientific... or, you could just say, "Teaching our students Not-Science"
If they don't want to teach evolution, and they're looking for another "theory", well... =^D
Meanwhile, I'm always amused that people usually end up choosing the religion that they're born with. Of the thousands or millions of religions available in this world, you think the One-True-Religion is the one you happened to be born under? WHAT A COINCIDENCE!
Never listen to a philosophical arguments from a person that follows the religion they were born under, because you know they came to it not through intellectual analysis, but through pure laziness.
Let's just call it Punctuated Equilibrium. They'll never catch on to it - too many fancy words and complex diagrams. Should keep the school board busy for a while.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
No there is a cure, this measure just actively fights it.
According to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory, there exist a bunch of universes where something close to creationism is true. Clearly we shouldn't be so closed-minded as to only teach our children how things work in this universe.
The Texas School Board will be happy to accept their prize for turning biology on its head.
When I visited Texas I noticed that half the people were really cool guys and the other half were assholes. Of course most other places were like that but Texas took it to extremes.
they practice de-evolution.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
101 Knock-Knock Mutations?
Gravity is a theory too, maybe they find that it doesn't exist and they all fly away from earth
OK, as long as history and science classes have to give arguments on both sides about the existence of God.
Textbook publishers take note, you'll sell Texas a ton of books if you pander to our religious beliefs in your science books.
Some of these ideas are as seductive as rationalism in the short term. That could backfire even more against fundamentalism, which essentially only supports one view of the world.
It is incorrect that ideas only reach the status of "theory" when there's overwhelming evidence. A theory is a theory because it makes a testable, falsifiable, hypothesis. We have theories that aren't well tested. We don't go teaching them in science class, but that doesn't mean they aren't theories. This idea that "theory" means "proven beyond any reasonable doubt" is silly. It doesn't.
For that matter, some things get called theories that aren't. Like String Theory. Not only is there no proof, there's no testable predictions. As such right now it is a hypothesis. It is a neat bit of math, internally consistent, but so far there are no testable predictions, no way to falsify, so it isn't really a theory. We don't want to go teaching it in high school science class yet, but we do want to keep looking at it.
The reason why all the god backed proposals aren't theories is they aren't testable, aren't falsifiable. They rely on an entity that by definition is outside of the observable universe. As such they can't be tested and thus are not scientific theories. They could be right, but they still aren't science. Science is concerned with the testable. A testable, falsifiable, hypothesis is a theory. Heck even after it is falsified it is still a theory, it is just wrong :).
Now that you mention it, I did too. This was especially so when it came to driving. Apparently, in Texas, turning on your turn signal on the interstate means "you better gun it so you can pass me before its too late."
Perhaps "all sides" means diligently pointing out flaws in the theory where behavior is observed but not adequately understood. Punctuated equilibrium, missing link, I'm looking at the two of you in particular.
Evolution is the only theory for how species came to be as they are which is both credible *and* scientific. But it isn't a very good theory. If it was a good theory then it would be *testable*. One could use it to make reliable predictions about generational change in short lived animals based on whatever the factors are that induce change.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
The Theory of Evolution is not so simple in practice, as we can see the world is a complex system. The school board itself actually needs far more education on the matter, followed by performance testing and screening, before their opinion can be considered authoritative and relevant.
I wish more people would accept the moral lessons of evolution! They'd be pro-life and anti-homosexual (because whatever else abortion and gay marriage are, they are most certainly not multi-generational survival traits).
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Next they will say the earth is flat and the sun revolves around us
Gravity is a very active area of theoretical study. We don't understand what it is very well, and there are strong indications that General Relativity is not complete, that we need a better theory to fully explain interactions, particularly on the quantum level.
You may be confusing the theory with the fact. The fact of gravity is that objects attract, or on a more human scale, that things fall down. That is something you can just observe, sometimes without meaning to. The theory of gravity is to explain how and why the interaction works. That one we don't have nailed.
Not trying to support Texas here in their unscientific bullshit, but gravity is not an open and shut case. What its method of action is, how it works on very small and large levels, and how it unifies with the other forces are still not well understood.
You can joke about it, but creationists in all seriousness describe evolution as "fairy tales" and "just-so stories."
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
Evolution has no moral lessons, you idiot.
That's a rather misogynistic statement!
It's very clear to me ...these people left the train sometime ago in the evolution....what else could we expect from them?
As I see it, the "two sides" are this:
1. The assertion "evolution occurs", which is testable and extensively tested, which science overwhelmingly supports and very few theists have any issue with. It allows inclusion of all of the specifics of evolutionary theory regarding plausible mechanisms for biological change, specifically and appropriately to the degree valid science calls for.
2. The assertion "only evolution occurs", which is untestable and unscientific, and seems to have as its only apparent benefit that it's seen as a necessary premise for atheism. Need causal exclusivity to be true, therefore it is, need it to be scientific, therefore it is, though it factually fails on both counts.
The only real questions are what one specifically means by "evolution" in a given presentation, and whether that usage bears scientific scrutiny--and managing to stick with that usage in the face of an opportunity to make a non-sequitur argument for atheism.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Depressingly true. I had *exactly* this experience driving home on I-10 just outside of Houston during rush hour. Veering out of the moron's way in the rain caused my truck to do a 180 in the middle of the freeway. Luck was with me. I ended up rear ending a retaining wall. My right turn signal was still on.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
You cant have the universe without G-d
You cant have G-d without people
You cant have people without the universe....
simple enough, no?
Hybrids exist for many things, why not this?
Teach kids that both are necessary for a balanced life,
evolution cant give you that hope you need to make it through each day....
and we cant live in ignorance thinking we are alone in the universe and god only visited earth....
so why not have both, cant we all just get along?
Seems like they need to start with the Theory of Texas English, wherein they can analyze all sides of the english language and learn the difference between the words "hypothesis" and "theory."
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
It saddens me that such religious fanaticism is allowed to even be in a position to integrate their beliefs into the public education system.
Doesn't help when your Governor is part of the same fanaticism. Keep praying for rain Perry. It's doing wonders!
Lots of homosexuals procreate, lots of people who have abortions have kids. Abortion and infanticide may actually preserve a generational line in times scarcity, in that resources can be concentrated on existing children. Homosexual people procreate in heterosexual relationships all the time, and use IVF or surrogacy to procreate in homosexual relationships. The world is a little more complicated than you think.
Hey, that's what we do here in Massachusetts. Let me guess, you have people there that think that it's ok to take a left from the right most lane on a 3 lane road. (I swear, people here would rather ram you than drive rationally.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
There's really only one side in this case -- there is no scientifically credible evidence to the contrary of evolution.
Everything else is wishful thinking.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
that we're all here because there were plenty of guns aboard Noah's Ark.
Might as well have in the books about how the earth was created as a super computer for an advance race of rats trying to figure out the Question to the answer of 42. (which is as we all know. what do you get when you multiply 6 x 9)
...that's from Jesus
Given that ideas only reach the status of theory if they have overwhelming evidence supporting them, it isn't at all clear what "all sides" would involve.
I don't think this is strictly true, even though I believe it should be. We have ideas like string-theory and m-theory which, while promising ideas in the field of science, currently clearly fall under the category of a scientific hypothesis or conjecture. There is not overwhelming evidence supporting them, there s some evidence supporting them.
If we are going to criticize creationists for calling things like evolution "just a theory" we should do our best to uphold our own standard of calling only scientific theories "theories". It might be hard to get everyone to start calling it "string hypotheses" until further notice, but if we want to be consistent, I feel this is necessary.
I also want to make it clear that I don't think string-hypothesis (I have already started) is on the same level as intelligent design. While maybe not a theory, it is still a scientific claim in that it is falsifiable. Depending on the specifics, in the best case, if intelligent design cam be considered falsifiable, I believe it has already been falsified, and in the worst case, I think it's unfalsifiable religion masquerading as falsifiable science.
Also I would like to point out that just because and idea has attained the status of a theory, does not mean that we shouldn't teach competing scientifically falsifiable hypotheses. This seems to be a good way to show science in action. For example, the theory of gravity has overwhelming evidence. There is some evidence that seems not to be consistent with the Newtonian theory of gravity. This has lead to some new hypothesis as explanations, the most widely accepted of which is the existence of Dark matter. Another is MOND (modified Newtonian Dynamics) which suggests that the equation described in the Newtonian theory of gravity is wrong and needs to be modified.
I don't have a problem with competing ideas being taught. This is a vital part of science, and a true example a good way to teach the controversy. The difference between MOND and intelligent design is either a unfalsifiable claim, or one that has already been trivially falsified.
One key component of intelligent design is the idea of irreducible complexity. A common example of an irreducibly complex item is the human eye. This is my opinion has already been shown to be false. There are numerous of examples of different photoreceptors at all stages of development in many different organisms clearly showing that even the simplest eyes are useful with incremental improvements all along the way adding utility, no single step of which seems "unsteppable" by evolution.
The idea that intelligent design must be correct if science can't prove how every single biological mechanism evolved is unfalsifiable.
I am open to competition to the Darwinian Theories of evolution by natural selection, but intelligent design just isn't good enough to warrant mention in a biology classroom.
Maybe you should understand evolution before you talk about it.
"Old man yells at systemd"
i see what you did there...
The theory of Devolution!
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
Depressingly true. I had *exactly* this experience driving home on I-10 just outside of Houston during rush hour. Veering out of the moron's way in the rain caused my truck to do a 180 in the middle of the freeway. Luck was with me. I ended up rear ending a retaining wall. My right turn signal was still on.
I have no doubt that you were dealing with a moron who couldn't drive, but the 180 indicates that you also cannot drive. It grinds my gears to hear driving horror stories where one claims that 1) "it wasn't my fault!" and 2) "my car did a 180." If your car did a 180 then that part, at least, was your fault (most likely you overcorrected, if you didn't have anti-lock brakes it could have been from not pumping the brakes). Please never drive in snowy weather.
As I understand it, the only reason the body of america cares that the Texas school board makes wacky decisions (apart from their concern for Texan children) is that it affects the books that are available for schools across the country, due to the quantities of books involved.
This basically means it boils down to money. Good accurate books will be more expensive. In an age of digital media, surely the cost of having accurate science texts can be accepted by those schools who actually want to teach children rather than brain-wash them?
I think a sticker saying "This text has been rejected by the Texas school board" should be a mark excellence that is worth paying extra for.
The grander problem is, and has always been of more concern, that the school board is only really reflecting the views of the wider Texan community. If Americans really want to change the facts to fit their own world view how do you get around that?
Does anyone out there know what the word "theory" means? Apparently not.
Texas has a very large influence because we are the most populated state in the region and therefore order the most schoolbooks. However, last i read, more recently the school board decided to not only reject creationism but to affirm there are no viable alternatives to evolution right there in the biology books. In ninth grade biology in early 2000s I was taught evolution by means of natural selection with not one objection by any students and no mention of anything else by my superb biology teacher. Of course I live in a city with a 120k+ population. The bible thumpers generally are concentrated in the boonies. Generalizing Texas by the few whackos who fight for a voice only to advance their hysterical views is unfair. My college biology professor had one of those Jesus fish with little feet with Darwin written in it on his car. =-)
Which is sad because while evolution has many, many hard facts pointing to it's existence (or at least getting close to proving it as you can prove anything else), creationism has very little of it's own peer-reviewed work. I would love for evolution to not be the answer, because it means that life is more complicated than that - and that's pretty neat.
Unfortunately I don't think there is much evidence on the contrary, or we'd probably have more than just a few religious-based entities producing some level of research on it.
This is not the case for EM though. Quantum Electrodynamics is the second most stringently tested scientific theory ever (only special relativity has been tested to a higher precision). I also highly doubt that their intended review will involve getting a group of particle physicists, cosmologists and string theorists together to discuss ways that they can make the latest ideas in gravity and the other fundamental forces accessible to school kids (it would be quite inspiring if it was though!).
At least with their effort to seek out and explore for alternatives to current-accepted-wisdom. If their efforts bring teaching students to recognize and think positively about alternatives [as in, "Assuming the proposed Is possible andhas merit, how and why does it, and in service to what end?"], instead of negatively [as in, "All other that is different from what I have learnt through adopting the catechism of its syllogism is false, fatuous and bullshit."], they will do science, history, the humanities and all education a service that they all badly need, not only in Texas. Especially my fellow scientists who are caught up in crusading for Evolution and don't know the difference between crusading and reasoning, exploring a theory and asserting a conviction they hold as if it was God's Word.
Who has done better work for science than Isaac Newton [without whose previous work Einstein would not have had a platform to jump to Relativity from], who was a theologian and was working to mathematically proof intelligent design? In real science theories are always theories, and always tentative possibilities, and always subject to be knocked down by some today unknown tommorrow's proofs. That's what differentiates it from religion [except in the minds of the religiously scientific].
There is a scientific alternative to Darwinism. It's called Lamarckism. And it's something that *should* be taught alongside Darwinism in biology classrooms.
Texas would like to think of it as a hypothesis or maybe a theorem. Or a rumor. Maybe a wacky folk story. "Darwin's Wise Tale of Evolution"
Perhaps we should repay the favour and think of Texas as a work of wacky fiction too (not a very good one though because it the story seems too unbelievable). In this case though I'd suggest "The Land that Time Forgot".
Textbook publishers have taken note and have pandered (AFAIK). This has been going on as long as I can remember:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/culture/texas-school-board-approves-controversial-textbook-changes/954/
However, I think publishers have more ability to cater different print runs nowadays, but it's still a huge problem for millions of Texas school children and possibly more.
Textbook publishers take note, you'll sell Texas a ton of books if you pander to our religious beliefs in your science books.
Perhaps but you are not going to be able to charge much if your text book on electromagnetism just contains the single sentence "Let there be light.".
You know why people like those in Texas keep getting elected? And here's a hint, it isn't because they are stupid.
If you start believing that they are dumb, the only fool here is you. They may be willfully ignorant, or stubborn, but they are anything but stupid. The minute you start believing that is the minute they run you over. Don't forget that or you are roadkill.
Believing in science is great and all, but you don't need to believe in science to be intelligent or, more appropriately, cunning. Cavemen didn't know shit about science, but they still made it around the world with tools made out of rocks while worshipping the Krom the Twelve-headed Monkey Thunder God.
One moral to evolution is that if you, through social pressure, effectively compel people who wouldn't normally be inclined to have children, due to genetic reasons, to do so, you make those genes more common.
Kind of ironic, eh?
You sir, are a motherfucking retard. Good Day.
While homosexuality certainly could be a natural state, or more accurately, bisexuality, it's unlikely that abortion was a particularly safe means of preserving energy, given that no one really considered it to be at all safe until we had the medical establishment involved. The usual response was to kill the child after birth by exposure. Or frankly, try and let it live and it would die anyway, because infant mortality was pretty horrendous anyway.
Been in Texas for more then half a century myself and have been told many times by assorted native born Texans that I am not a Texan. I have never argued with any of them over that. If they want to say that Texans have not evolved, well, won't argue with them about that either.
The Spanish called the tribes Texas got its name from as Tejas, or friendly, named so cause they would invite any visitors to dinner, as the main course. Something to remember when they reference Texas as "the friendly state".;P
On the eighth day Dog barfed up humanity and felt much better getting that out of its system.
I understand that certain religious groups have a strong stance against this being taught so it is only logical that they would do this in their schools. I do not understand the need to have this be the case across all the schools in Texas. Idealism vs. Realism.
We would prefer that so called scientists admit that science in general is a religion. Scientific study is a wonderful thing, but it is no less ridiculous to assume that we as a very young species understand anything about the universe than it is to assume that "The Great Green Arkleseizure" brought the universe into existence. What we do know(I use the term loosely) is insignificant. It is the pinnacle of arrogance to believe that we KNOW anything. For those of you that want evidence I point to the fact that even today we are still banging "rocks(subatomic particles)" together to see what happens. Scientists would lead us to believe that there is no God, Gaia, etc. because they cannot find evidence of such a being, group of beings, etc. Fine. That is faith. Their belief in almighty science is a wonderful thing. Everyday we find things we did not know. Who here is arrogant enough to say that they know everything? Saying that creationists are wrong because humans share DNA with plants is like saying that a programmer is wrong because he/she reuses code. Saying science is wrong because mammals cannot generate energy through photosynthesis is equally wrong. So why not let people believe what they want since you, outside your fanatical belief that your religion(science), cannot prove either to be correct.
Have you ever considered that, some, "Fairy Tales" may actually be factual in origin.
This is why everything closes when it snows in Houston once a decade. Not because it's such a rare event but because the drivers are so bad as it is, no one can imagine what they'd drive like on ice for the first time.
Well technically they're not taking the left from the right most lane, seeing as they have to cross all those other lanes first. At least, that's how a *Masshole* would see it.
Not pointing to its existence. PROVING its existence. But if your eyes are shut and you have your hands over your ears and you're shouting "lalalalala" it will always be hard for you to accept anything as proof.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I am tired of this evo and creat arguement. It's been going on long enough.
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
"because whatever else abortion and gay marriage are, they are most certainly not multi-generational survival traits" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080617204459.htm Proof you're wrong, at least on the gay part.
I don't think "theorem" means what you think it means. Of all the words you used, it is the only one that refers to an absolute, immutable, unquestionable truth.
I think you sound like an ass, but honestly I'm quite interested in hearing more about this Krom, he sounds awesome so please go on. Seriously.
I don't know if you ever heard this, but everything is bigger in Texas. I'm surprised that you are surprised.
Hey, quick question. Do you know how to tell if someone is from Texas? You don't have to, just let him talk long enough and he will tell you.
The more I read news stories like this one, the more I wonder whether or not there actually is something contaminating our water supply that's making people stupider and stupider.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Everything is just a big opinion. Even the trolls on Slashdot.
Homosexual existence is mostly considered evolutionary good because the people without children will be more charitable towards others and will help a whole village to raise all of their children better. This of course does not work in the West any longer, but this way of life is still quite strong in India I believe (and where most of the studies are conducted). The homosexual gene is passed on in the villages and societies who do better on a whole. As long as the homosexual gene never creates a whole generation of pure homosexuals then its continues to be passed on from the carriers who do procreate (the non-homosexuals).
You could also consider the case of a herd of herbivorous. If a homosexual bull was allowed to hang around the herd he would be a huge help in keeping off predators.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I'm sorry but you are completely wrong about what a theory is. Look it up in the dictionary: "A supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something". That's all a theory is. Scientific theories are ones which can explain how observed phenomena work and then use that explanation to predict behaviour of any system. The reason that religion is not a scientific theory is that it makes no predictions of future behaviour given a particular set of conditions. This is why scientific theories are generally falsifiable and religious ones are generally not: there is no predictive power. For example String Theory is a perfectly valid scientific theory in that it has the power to make predictions. However it does this about phenomena which we cannot (yet) observe. As the mathematical tools improve it may get to the point where we can test its predictions.
The theories that are taught at school (well outside Texas at least) are those scientific ones which have a strong history of making predictions which have been proven correct, sometimes to incredible precision. They are consistent with all known observations. This does not make them correct it just makes them the best explanation we have so far. If tomorrow some one does a new experiment which has never before been tried and the results differ from predictions based on those theories then we go back to the drawing board and try to come up with something better. This is now an extremely hard thing to do because any new theory has to explain all the previously observed phenomena correctly as well as the new observation.
The person you responded to was correct. People like you claim that evolution it's proven, but it's not proven. We have some great ideas, we have some models that kind of work given enough bogus data to tweak them. Your analogy was simply wrong since we don't know very much about gravity either. We know it's there, we can see it's action. We have some rough measurements that tend not to work on scale, but we have some data.
Creation vs. Evolution is not as nice of a boolean issue as you want it to be. This is because Theology works on the theory of a creator, where you have a theory that there is no creator. Both are theories, and neither can prove the other wrong.
What I find interesting is that most atheists are just like religious extremists. Their belief is right and no amount of facts will change their mind. Their way should be the only way taught to people. A primary difference is that atheists use science theory as their bible, but what ever fad theory is hot today is the bible. Atheists name call anyone that does not believe as they do just like the religious people, and use ad hominem attacks instead of facts to back their theory. Just like devout religious people, atheists use every rhetorical fallacy possible to justify their beliefs. Perhaps in a way atheists may be worse than religious people because most religious people will admits to having a belief, where an atheist will claim that their belief is factual.
With that out of the way, and to the meat of the article, I don't disagree with teaching evolution. If the education is structured so that we don't claim "why" it happens, and we teach that it's a "theory" everyone should be happy. The obvious problem is that everyone wants to teach the "why", and of course their belief is the only way we can operate. A secondary problem is that many atheists want to treat evolution as fact, when very little of the theory has actually been proven.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Yes it does. All philosophies have moral lessons. The rules that govern the survival and extinction of species can be derived from evolution.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Proving, yes. I always end up putting my foot in my mouth when discussing theory/hypothesis. And yes, cognitive dissonance kicks in pretty fast and hard in times like this. What really stinks is there still isn't much way of getting around that.
I really don't see why people are so against critical thinking. If evolution is so rock solid, won't it stand up to any scrutiny no matter what? I don't see people getting worked up that the creationists will disprove gravity or electricity but for some reason people seem to make it a life mission to eradicate creation while at the same time believing it has zero merit.
Wouldn't patience accomplish the same goal?
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Maybe you should understand sarcasm before you reply to it.
In all fairness, within the standards of the /. community, "god-tard" is a term of art, rather than a sign of bigotry and narrow-mindedness. The frustration level when dealing with people who do not seem to be arguing in good faith on teaching evolution is high, and gets higher the longer it continues and morphs.
I believe the core issue the Texas Board and their fellow travelers struggle with isn't with scientific evidence of a particular theory, but rather the conclusions that some choose to draw from that evidence. A child's perception of God and Nature is necessarily challenged as he matures. Some resolve that struggle by denying God, some by denying what is discovered during study of God's creation.
The majority of the Texas board seem to be the latter.
Luke, help me take this mask off
I have a feeling they only support a christian centered creation theory, like 6 days to implement, women created from Adams rib, etc.
There are thousands of creation theories outside christianity. Are they going to teach those too ? For example in hinduism it is Lord Brahma that created the worlds. The koran says people came from "slime".
I think you are confusing "is" with "ought."
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
do something about it
it's only like this because not enough texans like you are agitating about this
i would bet a majority of texans agree with you. the problem is a highly motivated, highly vocal minorty highjack the process and the majority is quiet and complacent about the whole nightmare
you need to get involved. you get the texas you deserve. so put some effort into it, kick these militantly ignorant morons off your school board, and restore texas to the modern world
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
All good points. I happen to find it interesting that homosexuality, in that context, did become a pariah situation as you would think that they would not be considered competition for the other males for reproduction, and they were generally helpful. After all, if I'm in a bar with an attractive, eligible woman, and all the other men are gay, I'm not going to be complaining.
Of course, euunchs in various courts were not competition for women either, and they became a huge problem in just about every court they ended up in control of. It could be that they eventually get a little too good at taking advantage of their inability to have offspring.
There are a lot of predictions.
DNA was predicted.
Drug resistant bacteria and virii were predicted.
Not to mention a thousand other little things.
No, because evolution isn't about what is. It is a logical deduction from *clues*, a model of what might have happened, not what actually happened.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Er did someone evolve an intelligent life-form in a lab from a lesser organism while I wasn't looking? I am all red in the face. I must have missed that monumental announcement.
That's very cute. And, you're not addressing what the parent said. In fact, you can go into a biology lab and watch evolution happen over the course of tens of thousands of generations of bacteria. Evolution at the level of virii and bacteria occurs quickly. The more complex the life form, the longer it takes for visually obvious symptoms of evolution. But, thanks to the fine focus provided by current genomic lab techniques, you can see signs of human evolution within historical times. No third arms or eleventh toes, sorry, but real change nevertheless.
Again, what we're dealing with isn't God-centric creation or not, but dogma and magic wand waving v. what is observed to be occurring. It may be that a Christian God caused the HIV to arise and target gays, or it may have been outhouse (bad) luck, but the observed mechanism was still evolution.
Luke, help me take this mask off
I fail to see how the sisters and mothers of homosexual men having more children, make that a survival trait for the *MEN*. In fact, that article actually agrees with me, saying the main strategy for spreading genetic homosexuality is to *sacrifice* the men, and make the women more likely to reproduce.
Having said that, I thank you greatly for giving me the evolutionary proof for feminism.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I have the theorem that 2+2=lambda for given universes. How is that an absolute, immutable, unquestionable truth?
A theorem is just a testable hypothesis.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Actually they'd fully support both in other people. The more people take themselves out of the gene pool the better for your genes.
I disapprove of this being marked troll. I am all for people to do as they please, yet the point remains. From merely an evolutionary perspective, if you accept the premise that morality is only an evolutionary mechanism to support the continuation of life then homosexuality (but not necessarily abortion) is an evolutionary dead end and therefore immoral.
Of course being a nerd, porn, high intelligence, bacon in times of abundance, and delicious cheese flavored snacks are all things that should be abolished in the name of healthy procreation. Screw that noise.
As TFA is about schools, let me offer this explanation:
It's not about critical thinking to test a false theory.
Within the school environment you have a certain amount of time to teach a subject. If you teach two 'versions' of it (one true, one false) to gain critical thinking, you halve the amount of time to teach the Quite Obviously True (TM) version.
If the answer comes around to God Did It, it should be taught in Church, not school
The world is a little more complicated than you think.
That's why all Religions want to return us to a simpler time; like about 900AD.*
* And yes, the irony of that "AD" is not lost (on me anyway).
I like this idea because I can change the cover and resell their textbook as a comedy book.
Table-ized A.I.
(*double take*) You think evolution is a philosophy?
That's pretty smurfed up.
I can explain. It is kind of like sickle cell anemia. While it is bad for the person who has it, the presence of the gene is a net benefit for populations in the tropics. Because if you only have one copy, you become highly resistant to malaria!
In fact, here is something you can take to the bank about “genetic diseases”. All of them have some benefit, even if the benefit is only to people who got a single copy of the gene. If you think about this it make perfect sense, why would a gene with only a down side ever spread in the first place? So pretty much ever genetic disease we have a name for has some benefit to humans, however bad it is for the person who has it.
The more serious the disease, probably the larger the benefit.
Agreed. It's because the voters are victims, or frauds.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
In a world of mindless plants and animals, I agree with you. Malthus described some of those rules - and in a world of 6 Billion people (or is it 7 this week?), I think we ought to carefully consider whether we wish to be controlled by mindless rules, or attempt to set new ones.
And, frankly, homosexuality thrives in the face of whatever rules you think apply to the "survival and extinction of species". I would guess that intolerance is a far greater threat to "survival and extinction" than what two people do behind closed doors.
And the worms ate into his brain.
There are more contributions to be made to the survival of the species than reproduction. This is why ant colonies have non-reproducing members. From a human POV, homosexuals have contributed to us many times, many ways, from sheltering the development of other people's children to breaking Nazi codes, contributing to charities, and bringing social acceptability to relationship modes other than man+woman.
Survival of the fittest is, obviously, affected by anything that changes who survives. Homosexuals have such effects, that is, they help others survive, therefore they are evolutionary players.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"evolution" (small 'e') is not a theory. It's a fact. I can demonstrate with a small program. Works every time. We use evolutionary techniques in technology (and in basic science) on a regular basis.
Big E Evolution -- the idea that humans arose from other animals -- is a theory. A high confidence one, in that there's lots of evidence for it, no evidence against it thus far, the process itself (evolution) is known to operate at many scales, and in that it is both testable (we do that all the time), makes predictions, and therefore can be falsified if indeed it is wrong.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Evolution does not have any morals or goals, let alone "moral lessons". It just is.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
I'm glad you asked because I have the answer. It's called the theory of devolution.
The idea that there is one winning party and many losers is obviously wrong. You can have cloud storage that focuses on security, one on speed of upload and on speed of download. If any of them would come first there will be room for others to "devolve" from them.
So if flying birds came first there still might be room in the market for non-flying chickens and vice versa. So far so cool.
Here's where it gets fun.
God created man first but we all think evolution is the answer. How can these two ideas possibly be consolidated?
Praise Darwin because devolution is the answer. God created man first and all the different species devolved from him.
You're welcome.
Blind belief in anything is not a good thing, be it God or evolution. Just because these people are trying to shove faith instead of theory into our children's minds does not mean our children will fall for it. How many people went to Catholic school when they were little and then never looked back? I think we need to give our children more credit as intelligent beings. This creationism in schools nonsense might end up making people understand scientific method better since they will have to come to their own conclusions. As an aside, the fact that creationists have to legislate reality rather than use evidence based logic simply shows that they don't have a leg to stand on.
That's not exactly how evolution works.
Homosexuality as an adaptation is not clearly understood by evolutionary biologists. One hypothesis sees (male) homosexuality as a mating strategy which is more successful when (male) homosexuality is rare and less successful when it is common, with an equilibrium of approx. 10%. To see why this could be, imagine a community of 100 people (50 men, 50 women). If all the men are homosexual, being a heterosexual male would confer a clear reproductive advantage, and thus genes "for" heterosexuality would spread fast in such a population. On the other hand, if all 50 men were heterosexual, being a single homosexual male might be advantageous from a reproductive fitness standpoint, as many women would find it easier to relate to you and you would not need to invest many resources towards raising your children. In such a population, genes "for" homosexuality would spread faster.
Or book publishers could just give up and concede the Texas biology textbook market to Bubba's Biology and Word of Christ edition Then the rest of us won't be held back by this nonsense. Unfortunately, the same forces that influence Texas will spread over the rest of the US and the Texas edition will become the backbone of American education.
Friends of mine moved from Texas to New Jersey, and nearly got killed a bunch of times before they learned local driving practices. In Texas, when a stoplight turns green, you want to hit the intersection at warp speed. In New Jersey, a light turning red means only three or four more cars can turn left. The two just don't mix very well.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This is why everything closes when it snows in Houston once a decade. Not because it's such a rare event but because the drivers are so bad as it is, no one can imagine what they'd drive like on ice for the first time.
I lived in Houston in the early '80s, for Kodak (from Rochester, NY), and we occasionally got engineers coming down. Once that happened during an ice storm, and they made fun of us for not driving in the ice. So one of them decided to show us "how it's done". Within five minutes, the car was back in the parking lot, the guy with a terrified look on his face, saying "Jesus! That's glare ice, slicker than snot - how do you drive on it?" My answer - "We don't". It's not like up North.
There are lots of different evolutionary hypotheses. Some propose that it's more gradual, some are more about punctuated equilibrium. There's even one that said evolution happened really really fast one week in 4004 BC, and then stopped, with a glitch a thousand or so years later destroying most individuals of most species.
If you were a high school teacher teaching kids about critical thinking, how would you compare the different theories, what kinds of facts would you line them up against, what kind of predictions would they make about the fossil records and radiocarbon dating? What would it say about the spread of DNA markers to people on different continents, or the commonality of organ structures and biological processes between different kinds of mammals and reptiles?
If you were a politician trying to use education policy to get religious people to vote for you by promoting their religions, would you want high school teachers to actually "Teach the Controversy"?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
No, a theorem is a mathematically proven fact. You can say you "have" that theorem all you want. That doesn't make it a theorem, unless you have a mathematical proof.
There, I think I've exhausted the major variants.
Interesting theory. Is there any evidence of these propositions?
Homosexual existence is mostly considered evolutionary good - by whom?
the people without children will be more charitable towards others - is there any evidence to support this assertion?
and will help a whole village to raise all of their children better. - is there any evidence to support this assertion?
The homosexual gene is passed on in the villages and societies who do better on a whole - is there any evidence to support this assertion?
Both abortion and homosexuality are reproductive strategies that under certain conditions(*) increase reproductive fitness.
(*) left as exercise for the reader
Agreed. I've screwed up behind the wheel. I've scared myself shitless a couple of times. I've never blamed it on other people though. I know that I screwed up, I knew it immediately. Self examination and honesty helped me to LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES, and I became a better driver.
Chumps who blame other fools for their own inadequacies never learn, and they can't improve their performance.
Such people will probably become a statistic some day. The only bad side is, they may well cause someone else to become another statistic, at the same time.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I've driven everywhere in the US. The one place that has an insane practice that really pisses me off, is Virginia. Those people simply do not understand what a yield sign means. They want to STOP! What's really crazy is, the same people will do a rolling stop at a stop sign in a school zone, but they think they need to stop at a yield sign on the interstate. I damned near ran a couple of those dummies over before I adjusted to it.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Never ask a man if he's from Texas. If he is, he'll tell you soon enough. If he's not, there's no need to embarrass him.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Bingo.
Need Mercedes parts ?
" If evolution is so rock solid, won't it stand up to any scrutiny no matter what? "
That's the thing. It does. To deny this is to display a profound ignorance of the subject.
Need Mercedes parts ?
False.
We can see evolution in action today. Pick a scale, 5, 10, 20, 100 years and I can give you an example.
We know from the fossil record what animals (and plants) evolve into others. If you assert there's some other mechanism at work there then you have two problems:
1) what is it?
2) when did things change from that to the current method?
I would urge all evolutionists to learn about religion: it's genesis and creation. It's well documented and the easiest way to prove evolution is real is to point out all religions (and there are thousands of them) are made up by man.
I would urge all creationists to study evolutionary biology. It would help if you knew what you were talking about.
Need Mercedes parts ?
And where do you get the premise that optimizing survival of the species takes precedence over all other considerations? That's a moral principle you're starting with, and the theory of evolution is at most telling you about possible means of achieving that end. It doesn't tell you you should; you imported that from elsewhere yourself.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Yes but Malthus was proved wrong.
Need Mercedes parts ?
"All of them have some benefit"
Oh no. Not at all. Look at any good endocrinology test.
Hint: don't look at the pictures too soon before bed. They will haunt you for years. Decades.
Need Mercedes parts ?
No, there is nothing so sacred in science that new evidence can't refute it. The challenge then becomes how to revise the theory (or replace it) to account for the new evidence.
The point of critical thinking in science is to come up with a better theory, not to thumb your nose and say "evolution can't account for xyz, therefore it's all false. Nyah!"
So what? That's like your plumber saying tensor calculus is a bunch of hokum. It's the logical fallacy of the argument from ignorance.
That is, they don't know enough to know they're wrong or why.
Need Mercedes parts ?
It's a logical deduction from clues modelling what maybe did happen, as opposed to something about what maybe should have happened. The first of those is a descriptive issue, a tentative answer about what is; the latter is a prescriptive issue, about what ought to be. The "maybe" isn't the point; the "did" vs "should have" is.
Someone died yesterday who shouldn't have. Evolution might give us clues as to why he did die, but it is silent on the question of whether or not he should have.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Not quite. A theorem is some premises, which are true, and some logic that is self-consistant, and a conclusion which is by definition true. This is formal logic 101.
A hypothesis is unproven. It's a guess, often a good guess, but is not always true, like a theorem is.
Need Mercedes parts ?
1) Natural evolution (ie. Darwin)
2) Out side intervention but still non-god stuff (Zecheria Sitchin type aliens genetically modded us)
3) Universe is a simulation (see recent articles and yes they are serious)
4) God (yours of course, all the others are fakes and their followers should be killed)
5) None of the above
While #1 is clearly in the lead it has some unanswered questions but still most likely. Number 2 could be it as there were several jumps in evolution that don't line up with #1 but that could be due to other factors (high fish diet for thousands of years etc). Number 3 is not as nutty as it sounds and sort of relates to #4 but in a more general way. #4 is your version from your man made holy stories which has to be true because it just is. #5 ? Well we are a pretty ignorant lot and there might be another idea or twelve that we've missed.
I'll go with #3 just to piss off all the #1, 2, 4 people because that is the way I am :)
Jesus these jumped up apes are chattery!
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Virginians are the worst drivers in the US. That's the problem.
Slashdot, the great cesspool of youthful ignorance...
Intelligent Design, contrary to your statement does NOT posit any form of God of gods. Intelligent Design the science of detecting patterns in nature. Some in the Intelligent Design community believe in full-blown neo-darwinian evolution, other don't. Either way, your comment is factually wrong.
Further, Intelligent Design does make testable predictions. For example, it predicts that you cannot evolve a bacterial flagellum using step-by-tiny-step processes as hypothesizes by Darwin. Again, your comment is factually wrong.
I should point out that NOBODY has any idea how life started. As far as I am aware, the situation around OOL research has only gone from bad to worse of recent.
I should remind you of a very recent book by prominent atheist USA philosopher Thomas Nagel. Look it up on Amazon, and especially look up the subtitle. Remember, he is a card-carrying atheist. Or what about Bradley Monton -- atheist -- philosopher / scientist -- Intelligent Design advocate. Even wrote a book about how Intelligent Design could be improved.
Ideas do not reach the status of "theory" by evidence. Any idea can be a theory. Theories reach the status of Scientifically Accepted Theory by reproducible evidence and lack of contrary evidence and eventually reach the status of Law of Nature by being accepted theory over a long period of time (how long depends on the topic and the audience - Gravity is accepted by most everyone, Evolution, not for all, no matter how overwhelming, and most people just don't "get" quantum theory).
So what is your excuse for ignorance if not youth?
Development of flagella has been gone over again and again, it is basic evolution re-using existing structures and processes to build cellular structures:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Flagellum
And further, abiogenesis, what you seem to call OOL, has nothing to do with evolution and natural selection.
And then some lame appeal to philosophers, not biologists or scientists, making arguments from ignorance. For a reasonable refutation of the first work of dreck, see what an actual biologist has to say about it:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/feb/07/awaiting-new-darwin/?pagination=false
Wax on, wax off baby!
The problem is that you can't teach a complete enough version of evolution to someone in high school or heck even most college students because they don't have the math background for it. It is pretty easy to poke holes in the version that is dumbed down to be taught to people without a hard science background.
Heck you can pretty easily poke holes in a lot of the science people are taught in school and it is not because the science is that poor, it is because it is dumbed down to be taught.
So a high school student being able to poke holes in evolution is not something I consider a real challenge since any biologist or engineer can poke holes in the biology they had to learn in high school or most had to learn in college. However that is not an actual attack against modern evolution as a theory.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
How big are things in Alaska?
Intelligent Design, contrary to your statement does NOT posit any form of God of gods.
You are a liar.
Every single ID advocate believes that the "intelligent designer" is God, specifically the God of the Abrahamic religions. Every. Single. One. And if they claim otherwise, they're lying.
Go tell yourself some more comforting lies. Just remember that we're onto you, liar.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVmdCAT7Rc8
Table-ized A.I.
It means looking at evolution from both Old and New Testaments.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Cavemen didn't know shit about science, but they still made it around the world with tools made out of rocks while worshipping the Krom the Twelve-headed Monkey Thunder God.
Please do not mock mighty Krom, the Twelve-headed Monkey Thunder God.
Some of us true believers have not been swayed from the true faith of Krom by these "Johnny-come-lately" religions like Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism (and it's two minor offshoots), Taoism, etc.
Praise Krom!
You're goddamned right I want a fucking theory of ID. I also want a goddamn test of ID which you yet again have completely failed to provide, along with a motherfucking mechanism by which whatever fucking undefined as-of-yet agent of ID acts. Unlike my kiddos whose last puke was a half hour ago your arguments haven't improved, in fact they've somehow managed to get worse. Kudos, I guess. Anyway I'm beyond caring so you do whatever you like...unless of course you actually provide a meaningful definition of ID and meaningful test of ID, which of course you can't as proven by your posts.
Evolution came about through critical thinking. Creationism/religion has Nothing to due with critical thinking. Patience would not accomplish any goal other than more moronic creationists getting into more positions of influence as its their life work to push religion.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Are you drunk? Seriously. Your posts are almost entirely incoherent, and everything you have claimed I have not provided has been provided multiple times, each, now. If you can't effectively reason, at least show some ability to read.
Maybe you're distracted by being covered in the vomit of your animal-spawn. I don't know, but try back tomorrow and see if you're capable of more than incoherent insults and blatant falsehoods regarding the content of the thread.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
It's pretty simple really: Evolution is a theory based on some very big assumptions - assumptions that are the realm of philosophy and religion, not science. The Texas board is, I presume, made up of people who reject those assumptions, and therefore reject the notion that Evolution is the only valid explanation.
It sounds to me like they're having to pull their punches. They'd like to be able to say 'we don't want Evolution taught as fact', but instead are using statements like 'we want to teach all sides of scientific explanation' which is much more politically correct and palatable, but also vague and ineffective.
even the ignorance
-A Texan trying to get one of them higher learning pieces of paper with my name on it
You see it in your day to day life, when something happens that has no explanation we as humans need one, so we often invent one. If someone took a strange action we quite often justify it in our own heads - sometimes with a very convoluted and most likely improbable reason. When our forbearers had no explanation of why the sun rises because they didn't have the tools (nor the prior learning required) to understand it. So they invent a billygoat kicking the sun around the sky creating day and night. Religion is a side-effect of having an imagination and our need to explain the world around us. Literature, art, poetry and music are the good things we get from imagination. Science, engineering and math are the benefits of our need to measure and explain the world around us. So while your holy text might contain morals (some of which are great, others, i struggle to fit the world "moral" around) the bit about creation come from cavemen/hunter-gatherers that had yet to workout how to work metal or polish optics to build the tools that would have given them evidence to the contrary.
Ha! And I come from a county where only two states are smaller than Texas.
Ron White: You Can't Fix Stupid
Yeah? They have nothing on the terrapins in Maryland. On the feeder roads to the beltway, I think they get extra points in Vehicle Heaven if they can move from behind you into that two-car length space you were keeping in front of you so as not to rear end the car in front. Then there are the red lights. Apparently, it is great fun to jack rabbit start from one red light and speed as fast as you can to the next red light clusterfuck up the road. Going through red lights just after they turn red is a moral imperative with these people, no matter how many accidents they've seen caused by it. The traffic light cameras in some intersections has stopped some of them, but I think that only adds to their excitement. Driving is a just like racing, only more obstacles here.
I'm a Christian, and I despise these charlatans who spread their crack-pot anti-science
agenda. They do more damage than good. At best they are woefully ignorant. As worst
they are Satan's stooges working to bring shame on the Christian faith. The Biblical
word "Abomination" means in the Hebrew - to make one really sick to one's stomach.
Dealing with them makes me sick to my stomach.
Fact: The universe looks old. There's only one plausible explanation unless
you think that God made it look old as joke on us. The Bible teaches
us that God is not a liar.
Fact: Humans are made of the same stuff as other animals and even plants.
This is, in fact, what the Bible says if you care to read it carefully.
Fact: The only definitive, unbiased, and OBJECTIVE statement regarding
when life begins is that it begins upon conception. "Viable" is a totally
nebulous word used to justify peoples' murder of their *own* offspring.
(This is where the conservatives get it right, and the liberals are wrong.)
Which is sad because while evolution has many, many hard facts pointing to it's existence (or at least getting close to proving it as you can prove anything else),
LOL, No its doesn't silly monkey.
---- GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Or polytheist.
But the monotheistic ones cannot be investigated with "does this unverse require a god?" because their god DOES STUFF in this universe, according to their definition of god.
There you HAVE to ask "is there evidence for a god" because each god act is claim of evidence.
And so far, the answer is "No, no event that has been put forward for being proof of god has required a god to do it".
Given that ideas only reach the status of theory if they have overwhelming evidence supporting them
Unfortunately, nobody fucking knows that, it seems. Nobody on the school board, certainly, and a whole lot of college graduates don't know that either. It's quite sad, really. People don't grok the simple fact that in reality, as opposed to common man's fantasy, science's ultimate goal is to produce theories, and making a scientific theory is a crowning achievment. I'd be pretty extra damn proud of myself if I was a scientist and had produced an accepted theory.
The common man's fantasy about what theory means is the exact opposite of the true meaning as it applies when talking about science. I'm OK with common uses of the word "theory", but one has to understand that it all changes when the subject is science, including science education. I'm thinking I'd be all for getting a sledgehammer out and pounding into some people's thick skulls until they get it :(
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
There are athiestic theories of creation
That everything is part of a computer simulation.
That the universe is on a cycle of big bangs and each cycle seeds the system so life developes in the next system (so intelligent design but NO omnipotent creator)
50% of the genes in those MEN are being promulgated by their nephews and nieces.
And, since the average length of the family line from the male side is less than 4 generations, after which their genetic material is 50-50 likely to have been removed from the human gene pool, this is nowhere near the problem you think it is for genetic survival.
Frankly, I don't care. The more stupid people there are in the world, the fewer people the rest of us have to compete with for meaningful employment.
You, Ms. Cargill, are insulting Professors, Doctorate Students, research labs, great scientific minds. You, Ms. Cargill, tell me what kind of competence do you THINK you have to go against the most important tool of humanity: The Scientific Method ?
Ah but this is the reassuring side. Deep down people are not idiots. When their safety and livelihoods are threatened any rejection of science goes out of the window. For example during the recent bird and swine flu epidemics there was nobody running around saying "but bird flu was created to infect birds it cannot evolve to infect humans". The only sad thing is that some 21st century kids may end up with a medieval education before these idiots come to their senses.
If evolution had done as little for me as it has for Texans, I'd hate it too.
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
Religious superstition fills in the gaps of our knowledge, like plaster filling holes in a wall. But when knowledge expands, the spackle isn't needed any more.
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
That's the thing about both mouth-breathers and careless drivers: no one place has a monopoly on either, not that they're mutually exclusive. Nothing chaps my ass like another driver who isn't operating his/her self-propelled internal combustion engine properly, you know, like I do.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
In fact neither do the Anglicans, Orthadox, Copts, Lutherans & Nestorians for that matter. It's really just nutjob Yank Baptists that think the world's only 6k years old now.
I actually worked on a curriculum project for the new Texas science standards adoption. You should have seen the inane comments the reviewers gave us for our lessons that addressed the "all sides" of evolution "theory". crazy. texas is an odd, and sadly backward, state in terms of science. this project drove my team bonkers trying to make the state school board happy. in fact, i don't know if we ever did completely satisfy their "needs". basically, they just wanted to leave the door open for creationism. wide open, with a big ol' welcome mat in front. i feel sorry for intelligent parents trying to educate their children in TX. (sorry for not using caps, but don't judge me on my lack thereof).
"And atheists are different? Big bang was the atheist answer to God for nearly a century."
Some of the basis for the big bang theopry came frpm a priest : "n 1927, the Belgian Catholic priest Georges Lemaître proposed an expanding model for the universe to explain the observed redshifts of spiral nebulae, and forecast the Hubble law. He based his theory on the work of Einstein and De Sitter, and independently derived Friedmann's equations for an expanding universe. Also, the red shifts themselves were not constant, but varied in such manner as to lead to the conclusion that there was a definite relationship between amount of red-shift of nebulae, and their distance from observers." Hoyle an opponent of the theory coined the term big bang. That makes you fully wrong.
But more importantely atheist need no big bang, no evolution to say "god dont exists" simply again point to absence of evidence of god. Theist NEVER provide non-personal , verifiable, evidence of god existence. That's why there is atheist, because if there was evidence it would not be called "faith", but rather "theory of chrisitanism". So. Yeah.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Many of the part of the ancient testament get stuff out of order, or even downright wrong (like the the "slave" in egypt), and the new testament is the same.
As for the "skeptic bible" I agree with you it is somewhat shrill, but a lot of point are valid even if not given politely. Like for example somebody getting cursed and bear mauling 40 children, or the amount of incest, drunken rape, massacre and terrible things happenning, or even the fact that *nothing* said in the bible be it scientifically or morally was new at the time (code of amurabi is older, golden rule too).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
That sounds like driving in Massachusetts, which is full of asshole drivers but at least they get there fast. Go spend some time in Virginia away from DC if you want to see people who simply can't drive.
Evolution isn't about good, just good enough. Homosexuality is part of something that was good enough so it didn't die out. Is red hair beneficial, or being left handed? That being said Christians are admonished to be in the world, not part of it. Trying to control the secular world is against Biblical teaching.
Up until the imposition of "modern" medicine abortion was actually fairly safe. It was generally done using herbs very early in pregnancy or even a suspected pregnancy, and may well have been safer than childbirth in many cultures. Unfortunately today anyone doing that gets thrown in jail for 'practicing medicine without a license'. Remember, it wasn't until about a century ago that having a doctor present actually improved a patient's survival rate for a pregnancy or any serious disease/injury.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
There us a need for non-breeding people in a complex society, or even a simple one. Regardless of age or sexual orientation. You need those grandparents, childless uncles and aunts, and non-breeding friends to help raise the kids. It makes for a richer experience for the children, and takes some of the load off the, usually, overloaded parents.
Unless you're rich. Then you can buy little Billy and Susie all the family love and support they'll ever need.
God and even the devil exist......inside everyones' mind. It can also be refered to as good and evil. Everyone struggles with this. It's easy to be bad. It's harder to be good. That is the basis of all religion. I, for one, have no problem with this. What I have a problem with is the existance of organized superstition and its' drive to relieve people of their hard earned cash just so that they can feel better about themselves. People do not need to be prodded with threats of "eternal damnation" or else. Since I was a young child, I figured out there was something bogus with the world of organized superstition. The main problem is that the leaders of organized superstion wield their power over people to increase their wealth and political gain. If the U.S. was really true to the constitutions edict of separation of church and state, they would take away the tax exempt status of religion.
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!
The reason for this is because VDOT doesn't seem to be able to make proper merges at yield signs that actually allow a safe 'merge' at normal speed.
Also from page 6 of the Virginia DMV drivers manual. Emphasis mine.
Triangle (Yield): You must slow down as you come to the intersection. Be prepared to stop. Let any vehicles, pedestrians or bicyclists safely pass before you proceed.
It is often necessary to stop because of the aforementioned lack of safe merges.
It's got what Texas craves.
When I visited Texas I noticed that half the people were really cool guys and the other half were assholes. Of course most other places were like that but Texas took it to extremes.
Everywhere you go, half the people are cool and half are a-holes, and one or the other takes it to extremes. The cool places where they go to extremes to be cool are the places where the cool people are admired, and the a-hole places where they go to extremes to be a-holes are the places where the a-holes are admired. Thus the overall society defines the level of coolness or a-holery, even though the number of cool people is exactly equal to the number of a-holes.
This is why Texas has so many extreme a-holes, and why California has so many cool people, despite still having about the same number of cool people and a-holes.
I guess that justification works almost anywhere. Yes, I have had to stop. In Texarkana, there used to be a terribly unsafe junction at State Line Avenue. I'm a bold driver, some might say aggressive, but getting onto the interstate from north bound State Line onto east bound I-30 was almost suicidal. I did indeed stop there, twice. Then I decided to avoid that intersection, and drove to the Airport exit to get on the interstate.
Recently, that junction has been rebuilt, and it is much safer.
All the same, I've seen a large number of Virginians come to a stop at a yield sign when there was absolutely no reason to stop. The only reason to HAVE a 1/4 mile of acceleration ramp, is to accelerate up to highway speed BEFORE you need to merge into traffic. A driver SHOULD BE studying his mirrors and turning his head from the moment he gets on the acceleration lane, and adjusting speed to fit into his chosen hole in traffic.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Sad to see religious nutjobs getting their hands on yet another state in us. Strange things is those same nutjobs dont seem to have any problem with one of the comandmends of god, the one that says Shall not kill. But somehow they find evolution theory that dosent even contradict bossibility of god takeing effect also in process as such dangerous thing... After all those cosmic particles that cause dna mutations, has to come somewhere and hit just righ spot at right time to create something usefull...
But then agains if everything is god created, then these nutjobs really dont speak highly of great creators quality controll.
Please keep science as science and religion as religion... Want to add yoour favorite theory of creation of world that has no evidence? Add it under religion. After all thats what religion is, faith to god, without physical evicende.
And just in case, yes i am in faith and pray god almost daily. To me science and faith are not such opposing forces. Science studies what we can observe with out limited senses, faith handless the rest.
I have no love of the political arm of religion, but give credit where it's due: throughout the history of western civilization pretty much everyone could be classified as a farmer(most people), craftsman, soldier (probably also a farmer), or clergyman. Exactly one of those occupations was likely to appeal to individuals with a scholarly disposition. The rift between the church and the well-educated didn't really begin to form until philosophers figured out how to rigorously tackle physical questions (i.e. science), and some of the answers were found to contradict scripture. As I understand it to this day there is a large scholarly contingent within the Church, and even if they are somewhat hobbled by the need to remain consistent with certain preconceptions that doesn't automatically undermine their insights.
Now admittedly many of the most provocative insights were swept under the rug as best as possible, to the point that that I doubt any serious scholar, even a dedicated theologian, would be permitted to speak openly to a congregation (or that the congregation would be interested if he did, it doesn't seem most churchgoers actually have any interest in trying to understand the god they worship), but that happens to some degree pretty much any time an organization has both scholarly and political ambitions, and you can't get much more political than the Catholic church of old - a trait it sadly seems most other sects also aspire to.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Using logic alone can give you a pretty solid hypothesis, but it can only actually *prove* other logical constructs within the same framework, not anything about the physical world. For the simple reason that there is *always* one more logical tenet you failed to mention:
0. Assuming there are no other mechanism in play which have not been considered.
And out in the physical world that is never a safe assumption - the entire basis of science is to seek out the places where logical expectations depart from reality and either revise the rules or add new ones until the anomalies can be explained.
In the case of natural selection versus evolution it could be that some bored god is actually watching over the world with nothing better to do than make sure genetic drift never exceeds certain limits and all species remain essentially unchanged in perpetuity. Lots of ways it could be done, you could probably even come up with some that don't require a god if you really wanted to. The point is though that until we've tested a hypothesis against reality it's just that, a hypothesis. Not a theory, and certainly not a proof. In fact "proof" is a concept that as very little place in science - science is in the business of offering rigorous explanations - the only "proof" involved in the process is proving that your explanation is consistent with experimental results to within the accuracy of your measurements.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
For that matter even a completely homosexual population isn't necessarily a dead end - it simply means that there are no *accidental* pregnancies. From what I've heard it's rare for homosexuals to find heterosexual coupling disgusting, it just doesn't do anything for them. In a pure homosexual population I'm willing to bet plenty of women would still want children enough to arrange an exchange of favors and endure a few boring encounters with a suitable gene donor. Probably some men as well, though the generally lower nurturing instincts and substantially larger favor exchange would likely be a limiting factor - I suspect such a society would instead revert to "uncle" being the primary male-child bonding path (a common situation in societies where paternity is often uncertain), potentially with the role extended to optionally include gene-donors.
Of course that would only work in a species that consciously recognizes the link between sex and children, probably limiting it's potential to sentient species(whatever that means), and admittedly eliminating accidental pregnancies would likely drastically limit a population's genetic competitiveness - it certainly seems to have drastically reduced birthrates in every nation where the population has cheap (by local standards) and convenient access to reliable birth control.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Where did you get that idea. If that were true the only life on earth would be a single celled green goo flouting in the seas. Evolution is absolutely not about "good enough", but instead about "better".
If you have a population with a slight range of genetics, evolution will push the population over the generations to better genetics or to stability if they have already reached relative perfection. If something can be changed for the better, it will be.
Because it is not about good enough, it is about are there any societies/individuals that are genetically better than the average. Therefore there is potential for improvement, therefore evolution will see it happen, given enough time.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Nice personal attack, have anything of substance to say or..?
Yeah, it's kind of like raising sea monkeys - you need a big jar and some patience for anything actually interesting to happen. And sometimes you really do just get a dud. Try getting a planet-sized jar next time and just check in on it every million years or so, mine went absolutely nuts a few hundred million years ago, even throwing a bunch of radioactive rocks at it barely slowed things down! It's been dying out in the last couple centuries though, as bad as the last time I forgot it in the freezer and covered most of the surface in ice. I think it might have something to do with the little bipedal things swarming all over the surface. Kinda hard to tell what exactly they're doing, but almost everything else dies out where they get established in large numbers - sort of like the penicillin of the muticellular world.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Just because you can see something that looks like your model, neither means that your model or your eyes are correct.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
All of science is philosophy.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
the program said, "programmers don't exist!".
and a pentium also said, "Intel doesn't exist!".
> All of science is philosophy.
True, but it's natural philosophy about things like evolution. The theory of evolution is philosophy... evolution itself is not.
Not all philosophy is moral philosophy. Epistemology, for example, has nothing to say about morals.
No, not all philosophies have moral lessons. A philosophy has epistemology, metaphysics, and an optional morality component. For example the ancient Indian Charvaka philosophy has no ethics / morality.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Everything has something to say about morals, if you understand the concept of rational objective morality. It always amazes me that people who can understand the concept of objective science, think that morality can possibly be subjective in an objective universe.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
But that, in and of itself, IS an ethics/morality- it is the statement that ethics and morality in that system is subjective. Personally, I can't understand why anybody would think morality should be subjective in an objective universe.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Not sure what you mean by "that". Take science as another philosophy which has no morality. By its very definition, philosophy needs to have only epistemology and metaphysics. Only one ignorant of this would assume ALL philosophies have morality.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
The claim to "no morality" is in and of itself a morality: a draconian freedom of subjectivity.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I'm not sure evolution exists outside of as a philosophy. I know of no human beings who have lived for more than 2 million years, nor do we have historical record before the beginning of our species.
It's a pretty good model though. But one should not confuse model with reality.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Well, maybe you ought to study it then. And I mean peer-reviewed science journals, not creationist popular books that "disprove" evolution.
Peer reviewed journals are what makes it a philosophy.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
All right then, give in to ignorance on the topic... just don't pretend you know what you're talking about. There's no point arguing with a closed mind. You make a mockery of critical thinking.
I'm not the one with the closed mind, if you think peer reviewed journals are anything close to data.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
At least I'm willing to fucking read them to find out...
Philosophy having no morality doesn't mean its adherents are expected to have no morality. Just that morality is outside of the scope of the particular philosophy.
E.g. Psychology having nothing to do with astrophysics doesn't mean it gives freedom to commit Astrophysical mistakes.
Anyway you stick to ignorance of the definition of philosophy.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
I have read them, that's how I know they're as biased as any other invention of mankind.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
"Philosophy having no morality doesn't mean its adherents are expected to have no morality."
I didn't say that. I said that a philosophy that claims to have no morality, is teaching that morality is subjective rather than objective.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I said that a philosophy that claims to have no morality, is teaching that morality is subjective rather than objective.
No, it is simply not teaching morality.
Psychology does not have universal gravitational constant as a topic of discussion, this does not mean it is teaching the constant is subjective.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Forgive me for thinking you're full of shit. I doubt you've given evolution a day of study in your life.
Oh, I have. I actually believe in Theistic Evolution. And Catholicism created the scientific method.
But I know it is just a model, and I know that there were no human beings around to witness, say, the rise of the mammals (which by definition, happened long before our species evolved).
Which makes *any* creation story- mythical. What is curious is when you look at the similarities rather than the differences. Apparently even the ancient Hebrews could see fish were less highly evolved than pigs.
We have more data points than they did, is all. And can fill in some of the other gaps, beyond which they had no racial memory. But it is still just a story, still just a model that fits the data points we know. Could be entirely wrong for all we know; we are, after all, finite and biased beings.
It is always important to remember that what you don't know, is a larger set of the universe, space, and time, than what you do know.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Back in 1986 I was coming back down from Ayers Rock in Central Australia when I heard a Texan guy and his wife coming up the path. I heard him say "I have a rock bigger than this in my yard back in Texas". As a proud Australian, I was a little annoyed by what I heard. As we passed the guy (he was going up and we were going down) he asked me how far to the top. It was only another 200-300 feet but you could not see that from where we were. I told him that he was only halfway to the top and still had a couple of thousand feet to go. We kept going down and after a minute I looked back up and saw the guy and his wife coming back down. They could not handle the extra distance they had to go to reach the top. They only had to go another 200 feet but they did not know this. He traveled all the way from Texas to get to the top of Ayers Rock and he missed out by a couple hundred feet. I should have felt guilty, but stuff him! He should not have bragged about Texas.
Sigh. There's just no cure for stupid. Full disclosure. I live in Texas and yes, this embarrasses me.
Of course, stupidity has no cure. We also have a lot of trolls in Spain, trying to impose stupid ideas based on religion and superstition.
But don't be afraid, reason and knowledge at the end will win, it's a historical fact.
Don't leave the fight, still pushing upon them.
Regards ;-)
Sorry, gotta disagree. I used to live in Maryland and in Virginia. Every time I traveled, when I came home across the border into Maryland, someone would nearly kill me with their driving. Virginia is bad where the Maryland drivers are thick: around D.C.. I've gone back to Maryland after several years at a stretch, and same thing still happens. Last time, I was in a big red diesel truck, and some ditz tried to run into me from an on-ramp. The meanest are in Baltimore: never use a turn signal: you're giving them an advantage.
You do have to make a distinction between the theory and the phenomenon it models. However, not all theories are equal before the evidence, and while science can never provide 100% certainty or answer every question, there are some things that are for all practical purposes beyond doubt.
For example, the electron. Nobody has ever seen one, but we have a lot of high-quality evidence that they exist - and the model further explains why they can't be seen (wavelength shorter than visible light). But so far we can't answer the duality question. How can an electron be both a wave and a particle.
It's the same with evolution. We have huge amounts of high-quality evidence that it occurs largely as Darwin posited (though he couldn't answer how the genetic information was transmitted). It goes on all around us, observable and to all observation unguided. We also know that its prediction of a branching tree of descent is supported by everything we see in the world. The paleontological history of species, the taxonomic grouping of phyla, orders, families, etc. by geography and habitat. The genetic evidence of similarly spliced introns between related species... of course, there may be another explanation, but it would have to be the biggest kludge in the history of the universe to avoid being subject to evolution as we see and describe it.
For all practical purposes, the question is settled. The theory may be refined, but a better one will not come along to replace it. That is 99% certain.
The actual quote came from Red Skelton ages ago. "Do you know how to tell a Texan? No, but you can't tell him much" I live in Texas and these people embarass me too.