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Jewish School Removes Evolution Questions From Exams
Alain Williams writes "Religious sponsored ignorance is not just in the USA, a school in Hackney, England is trying to hide the idea of evolution from its pupils. Maybe they fear that their creation story will be seen for what it is if pupils get to learn ideas supported evidence. The girls are also disadvantaged since they can't answer the redacted questions, thus making it harder to get good marks."
Then don't send your kids to a Jewish school. Religious freedom is part of that whole "freedom" idea that some folks are pretty fond of.
"Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes." - Mahatma Gandhi
I'm pretty sure schools should get into some deep shit if it was found out they were tampering with the state exams.
The whole point of having a standardized state exam is so we can know that all the kids have the same knowledge base more or less.
Wait, so the school decides what questions they want on their exam, and people are complaining?
All the students are sitting exactly the same are they not?
"The examinations body, OCR, says it was satisfied that the girls did not have an unfair advantage. It now plans to allow the practice, saying it has come to an agreement with the school to protect the future integrity of the exams."
"The Department of Education meanwhile has asked for assurances that the children will be taught the full curriculum."
If they're still being taught the stuff, what's the problem. No exam that I've ever done has every single sentence that a teacher has ever said on the exam paper in question form.
It's a girl's school, there's no extra sexism angle as might be implied by the summary.
I dont udnerstand, why are these people so against evolution? Dna mutation happens becouse theres error in replicating them or some radiation particle hit it... Who is there to say that random particle is not act of God, that its right there, at right that time, to hit that gene and cause mutation into it...
Funny how overboard some religous people go... God gave us brain so we would use it to study this marvelous universe he created for us..
They just will tell them that "the liberals" or whatever boogieman they choose to pick, edits it to do the devil's work (gods... I wish I was kidding, or making this up, but I've heard baptist preachers say it, when I was trying to be nice to a girl I was seeing, and went with her to services, and let me tell you, it was almost funny how much misinformation they spew out.... almost...)
Also, they will just limit when/where they can visit online, and might even just block wiki(s) soon enough.
Because DNA is a digital storage medium and genes change in steps.
There's no in-between states when you start modifying DNA just as there's nothing in between 1 and 0 in binary numbers.
No sig today...
That's not mainstream Judaism. That's a Haredi institution. They're not just anti-evolution. They're anti-TV, anti-Internet, anti-movies, anti-newspaper reading, anti birth control, anti public library usage, anti knowing the language of the country they're in, anti wearing colors, anti female equality... The sect is set up to give kids no option other than to stay in the Haredi community and overdose on religion for their entire lives.
It's a lot like Shia Islam, down to the beards. There's even a Haredi group in Canada that wants to move to Iran because Canada won't let them abuse their kids.
The question: what makes evolution split the species into these two clearly distinctive species, instead of, say a hundred different species which are something between RockMonster ant and BigAss RockMonster ant?
Who says it doesn't split the ant into 100 different species? The term species is a human invention to help us classify the different forms of life on the planet. It doesn't define the forms of life on the planet, but instead is defined by the forms of life on the planet. This is a subtle but necessary distinction.
I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
...beyond the fact that someone wants to deny evolution.
What answers are being changed, on what test?
Why bother to give the test at all if you don't like the material on it? Is it a government-required test? For what purpose? Is the government really OK with these arbitrary changes by the school?
The summary is pretty horrible, in terms of journalism, and the original article not much better.
Not sure if your asking a serious question, but, even my poor knowledge seems to be able to answer this. There is actually lots of variation and I believe calling something a species is more like saying it's significantly different. So for instance there may be hundreds of different sub-categories of a species. Like if a monkey is a species there are hundreds of different sub-species. It's just an organizational thing in other words.
Don't they know wikipedia exists?
Maybe not - quoting said wikipedia:
The school primarily serves the Charedi Jewish community of Stamford Hill. The Charedi community do not have access to television, the internet or other media, and members of the community aim to lead modest lives governed by the codes of Torah observance.
Religious sponsored ignorance...
and that's where I stopped reading...
You are working with a tenuous hypothetical. Evolution wouldn't preclude those species so they could exist. They don't simply because they don't. It could be a environmental factor, genetic, or anything really. Staying alive is hard. Staying alive as a species even harder. That is why traits that promote reproduction, survival, or flexibility of a species are so dominate.
Inbreeding will at some point make potential offspring from the other group (if any ever happen to spawn) infertile. See mules.
This may take a very long time and it differs per starting condition. For example, Tigers and Lions can still mate with eachother to produce viable offspring. However, this never happens in nature due to geological differences. See seas.
So yea, if a jewish community who denied evolution would only breed within the jewish community they may eventually split off from the rest of humanity. See Irony.
Hi, mod here.
I marked you as troll because this question is a goddamn textbook troll. You seem to be asking a trivial question in good faith in a tangentially related topic. You will get a trail of well intentioned but naif people trying to explain you something that is trivially understood on a wikipedia page. You will likely feign confusion, and derail the discussion which is/should be about a religious school denying evolution teaching.
This is no different from posting in a story about Ballmer: "I just don't understand why is Linux different from Windows?"
Thus the Troll mod, hoping that not many slashdotter will fall for it.
Nothing at all.
First, let's just cover the fact that it wouldn't quite work this way in the real world. You don't tend to have species A living at the same time as species B which evolved from it. What you usually get is the common ancestor, species A, which is by now extinct, and it's two descendant species, B and C. You occasionally get people scoffing that we couldn't have evolved from chimps; well, we didn't.
So, why do we only have LittleAss ants and BigAss ants, and no NiceAss ants? Well, in this simplistic example, it's probably because they've evolved to occupy two different ecological niches, and are no longer competing with each other. Any species too "close" to another would find itself competing, which hinders both species in the fight for survival - until one of them wins.
A real-world is the Neanderthals. We out-competed them, in our shared ecological niche, with our higher intelligence and smokin' bods. The chimps, meanwhile, were settled in the forests where we weren't, and thus didn't have to compete with us.
In actual fact, you sometimes do get lots of closely related, or even inter-breeding, species spread out geographically. There's an oft-cited examples involving geckos, I believe, where you have a species living, say, at the Southern point of a mountain range which then evolves as it spreads North, around both the Eastern and Western sides of the mountain range. What you end up with is two trails of closely related species, which may interbreed with their neighbours, but at the Northern end of the mountain range the two species which find themselves meeting up are so divergent that they can't interbreed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
You need to learn more, because it does indeed split the species(es) into hundreds (or more) of different "species" over time - however, we do not generally refer to such as species because they are very tiny changes, many of which will breed back out of the population. However, some mutations tends to accumulate because they provide an advantage (or possibly disadvantage, but there is a second mutation that provides a bigger advantage and so both are perpetuated - this is possible to see in some species today, eg: the peacock - its tail provides a disadvantage, but apparently the female peacocks dig those fancy tails so the ones with the best tails get the chicks to breed with - its an example of a runaway mutation).
If enough within the population receive the mutation and it becomes dominant, this is a step along the path to becoming a new species. Depending on the size of the mutation it may or may not get classified by brainy people as a new species or not, it may take many generations of the change becoming more profound or multiple mutations before it becomes recognized as being a new species.
For this to happen there often also has to be some element of isolation of the group so that the mutation doesn't spread to other populations, or other populations do not interbreed with the new variant and wipe out the new feature.
Anyway, you may then end up with two separate distinct species, or more. Most mutations though do not provide any advantage, so they simply die out. So unless you want to go down the road of classifying every change of DNA as a mutation - which would lead to every single human being classed as a separate species, since all our DNAs are unique - then usually it takes some noticeable difference.
The isolation aspect also comes in with hybrid vigour, which can happen both naturally and artificially.
After some time, we describe both populations as different species.
Some experiments of speciations were already performed. For instance, there was a long running experiment with E.coli (the wellknown bacterium from our indestines). As bacteria don't mate, there are other methods to difference between species, and one specificum of E.coli compared with similar bacteria is that E.coli doesn't metabolize Citric acid. But experimentators were putting some E.coli bacteria in an artificial environment which was rich with Citric acid. After many generations (about 40,000) they found that this strain of E.coli indeed had started to metabolize Citric acid. So from a classification point of view, this strain is no longer E.coli, but a new species of bacteria.
They were caught in October.
http://www.secularism.org.uk/n...
There are a number of different evolutionary forces that can drive speciation. You would need to provide more information about the environment of the two species of ant you're describing. Do they inhabit two separate geographic ranges? If so, then one of the types of allopatric speciation is most likely to be the driving force behind it. If they both inhabit the same geographic range then sympatric speciation is most likely what has happened. The events that lead to these two general types of speciation are different. You can read about the details of each here.
There are lots of whats that speciation could occur -- one obvious one is that the population gets split into two which then evolves away from each other. If you had 100 different high related species then they would likely compete with each other or interbred. The end result of either is that you end up with fewer populations -- one wipes out the other, or the two interbred till they become one.
I find it amusing that through the decades and centuries some fundamentalists, religious groups etc simply do everything they can no to not change.
Resisting change in new and interesting ways. They come up with new counter arguments, new legislation proposals, new interpretations of the same old texts.
That very same behaviour is evolutionary in nature. We need no other explanation to demonstrate that evolution as a fact is quite well grounded in fact.Sure there are gaps in our ability to explain everything but every time we have stepped forward and discovered something, solved what was thought to be impossible etc the arguments against evolution then evolved with the discovery. Much like the "Irreducibly complex" malarkey.
So some sect/faction/aspect/cult of Judaism or some other belief want X removed or have removed it from their school. Good. Evolution at work, they are one step closer to removing themselves from the gene pool. While some religious groups may have 11 - 15 kids per family religion overall is in decline.
We can argue these points on slashdot, religious people can counter argue and millions will read and judge for themselves -all very evolved.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
In most religions its a womans "duty" to have as many kids as possible regardless of the effects upon her health. "Go forth and multiply" was one of the biggest pieces of social propaganda ever divised.
And seriously what the fuck up with the UK and this stupid policy? They could learn a thing or two from the French on this - education should be secular. There should be no religious dress, no segregation by sexes, no exemptions from subjects on religious grounds, no indoctrination into religion and no pandering to the sensibilities of religion in any way shape or form. In the long term this will mean far less religious whackaloons which can only be a good thing.
"So yea, if a jewish community who denied evolution would only breed within the jewish community they may eventually split off from the rest of humanity" - the orthodox jewish community are already suffering the consequences of breeding within a small community. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
The differentiation between species is still being defined, but within a species there are many variations and sub-species. It's only when those differences become significant enough do biologists consider it a separate species. Even then, yes, there may be hundreds of descendant species from a single ancestor species, and the more time that passes, the more diversify from their progenitors.
Of course, nature is a total bitch, and a lot of species go extinct for various reasons, including competition from their related species. Of the many species alive now, some have no closely related species that we know of, and others have tons of them.
Now if you're upset about not knowing about the intermediate ones, you're worried over nothing. The fossil record has shown a clear progression of those in many different animals, so it's not like it's some big mystery as the creationists claim, rather it's their ignorance of evolutionary and paleontological studies. In fast replication species, we have a lot more experience with this, and samples of the intermediate forms are stored. Mostly this is bacterial for the simple reason that those suckers multiply faster than Bugs Bunny locked in a room full of viagra with Jessica Rabbit. There are of course other studies with non microbial life, but those have far fewer generations to work with and so aren't as advanced.
Evolution has been observed, tracked, and even experimented with. It's existence is not in doubt among biologists, though they are constantly refining and testing it.
Isolation. Geographic, mate choice, breeding season. Lots of factors can cause two nearly-identical populations to stop interbreeding, and divergence follows from there. That's simplified, of course. Species is something of an artificial concept - there are things like ring species that show just how hard it can be to classify.
Don't they know wikipedia exists?
Do you know that conservapedia exists?
http://www.conservapedia.com/
Which one is correct? Teach the controversy!
No sig today...
The entire POINT of reproduction is to make little copies of our selves.
Sounds like a creepy goal.
In England this may be incidental, but in the Netherlands, it is institutional. Questions about evolution are up to this day not allowed in Dutch highschool exams, as ruled by law.
Can you elaborate please ?
Open your mind and keep looking, the ants are there man, keep looking, apply scientific methods.
The other option is to find all the answers in a book/oral tradition dictated by god to men thousands of years ago, over the years the orations/writings/books have been mutated/translated many times and spawned many different species of religions all fighting for survival.
...Not sure who you're replying too....
I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
People don't usually believe stuff like that from a careful consideration of the facts available, though. People believe it because it's socially expected that they believe it, because it's a group marker, because they're raised to consider 'belief', and these beliefs in particular, a moral good. And so parents strive to create an environment for their child in which the social expectations and moral requirements are ones they approve of. Many religious cultures essentially require this, and personally I think it's likely that this is the biggest means of transmission of religions and a big requirement for the success of a religion.
Of course, some people - like Darwin himself - will abandon their beliefs when presented with inescapable evidence that they're wrong. But not everyone is prepared to pay the social cost, and not everyone is really all that motivated by understanding the world better (rather than, say, by social status).
Is that still around? I remember reading a few articles there a couple years ago. Hilarious and depressing at the same time.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Indeed not. I've only had a little rather indirect contact with those sorts of communities in London, but as I understand it they also tend to shun proper education - university level especially because that's where a lot of people leave their communities - have low income levels and be dependent on state benefits in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Personally, I have no problem funding appropriately limited benefits for people who are unlucky, disabled, not educated properly by their parents and so on....but when a whole community is dependent on forced charity in a self-perpetuating cultural cycle but the problem is considered untouchable because 'religion' then I think it needs to be dealt with a little better. Requiring a proper education would be a good start (and being prepared to help children who want to go to university against their parents' wishes could be a good second thing).
Very good observation .. you hit ze nail on ze head. +1 from me
Nah, it's a classic strawman question used by creationists.
This one is a variant of "irreducible complexity": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
No sig today...
the orthodox jewish community are already suffering the consequences of breeding within a small community. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
Didn't know that. +1 Informative.
No sig today...
Don't understand all the excitement about this "event". I am surprised that a Jewish school would teach evolution anyway. As a matter of fact, I was taught that evolution was a theory, not a law. So, if it's not a law, why teach it as fact? Perhaps make reference to the theory, but don't get excited when institutions don't put a lot of credibility in long expouced non proven theories.
Not entirely true w/r Dutch exams.
http://www.examenblad.nl/exame..., page 13-14 for those who can read Dutch.
We did have a period in time where it was indeed entirely removed from exams and even in the above 2014 biology syllabus it uses weasel words to describe what a student needs to know about evolution for exams.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
... we've found some heresy - we the larger society, that is.
Let's hound them and shame them, because that shows how modern and tolerant we are.
And it makes us feel so deliciously superior ...
p.s. "period of time" where evolution was not on exams is roughly somewhere between mid 1990's and mid 2000's. It was in the news around 1995/1996 and I could find practice-exams with evolution in them starting 2004.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
In England this may be incidental, but in the Netherlands, it is institutional. Questions about evolution are up to this day not allowed in Dutch highschool exams, as ruled by law.
This is where a link is welcome
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
He was then, because of the way he was brought up and the time he was living in. I bet he wouldn't be now. These days, science and religion are mutually exclusive. Unless you want to be labelled a 'crack pot'. People didn't know any better then. They do now. Religion has had it's day..... time to grow up and move on.
School children should be taught *facts*.
If it's a religious owned/operated school, save the mythology for the theology class. Be fair, make it a honest comparative religions class, so they can see how their stories compare with the rest.
For public schools, leave the mythology out entirely, except in the historical context.
Teaching kids the mythology encourages them to grow up to be adults that believe the mythology. They fail to grow up and learn in the real world there is a cause and effect relationship.
The last thing I need is someone coming into my office asking for help, and then praying to their deity to solve it. When I fix their problem, they'll thank their deity, who didn't have a thing to do with it.
I swear, if one more person prays for a fix, I'm going to stop working. Let the deity of their choice fix it, and I'll go helping other people.
Ya buddy, your deity works in mysterious ways, that's why you still can't log into your email, and your application server is still down. Keep praying, maybe it will miraculously recover. Ha.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Are we the debtor or the creditor here?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Of course they're going to ignore the 500 madrassas in England which do precisely the same thing and seek out the only Jewish school they could find than shriek and moan and predict the Evil Jew Menace (tm, BBC) is going to destroy all of civilization. This is what they do every day.
It's not like they need to live in London.
Payments above national average should require proof that they're necessary.
It's spreading, Id rather hoped this kind of shit was going to stay on the other side of the pond :(
Lifesigns: Present Hair: Escaped Age: Increasing
Go figure.
Jews are not atheists and have a bible.
Who would have guessed that a nation wrought by God himself would deny Evolution.
Is the world coming to an end?
What's next? Will Christians believe Jesus rose again from the dead?
Will Jewish delis refuse to sell pork?
C'mon people. Get with it.
As long as all their examination pupils forfeit the marks from those questions, and if the school's reputation suffers as it slips down the league table, and if the government withdraws all public funding from the school for failing to follow the national curriculum.
The school is supported by a small religious community that is comfortable in its separation from the modern world ---
or more precisely, the modern world as the geek chooses to define it.
I am profoundly wary of using the power of the state bring everyone around to a uniform secularist world-view. In perfect confidence that world-view will be the same as your own world-view.
It has been tried before, after all.
OP: "Maybe they fear that their creation story will be seen for what it is "\
uh, yeah, the term is poetry. It's a poetic story, like a lot of the Old Testament (as Christians call it.)
That makes you ignorant.
You're stupid for adding cultural bias and bigotry which turns your comment into trollism.
Then again, this is Slashdot...image a Beowulf cluster of those!...
The good news is nature will select those with superior understanding of the natural world, so the problem self-corrects. It's a vain attempt by MAN to maintain power and control of weak minds. This process unfortunately has claimed many millions of lives and will claim many millions more, but it is in its last desperate attempts to remain viable as a governing entity. God will be pleased.
As science gets less clueless in time, further flaws are discovered to evolutionism, which still need to be answered before we can tell evolutionism is as widely accepted as 1+1=2.
So, creationism or evolutionism are still a matter of opinion. And yes, creationism is at the base of most religions. For centuries. Nothing new here.
Best would be that both, main theories are taught in schools. Unfortunately, at the moment, one is being forced to children and the other, just dismissed. Funny how one school leaning the other way generates so much outcry. One school which most of your children will not attend, too.
Some time ago, people fought to change school teachings that the world is flat. Is creationism or evolutionism our flat world ? Science has not yet been able to prove either way, even if it has its preference. Some scientific theories have proven to be useful, even before they could be proven. Is it the case of evolutionism ? Doubt it.
In the meantime, its just a faith versus non-faith struggle.
And many slashdotters commenting here are just denying the most basic right in democracies to agree to disagree.
PS: sorry for bad english, not native langage
Perhaps the religious critiques and criticisms could be left to Us making comments in order to not piss of Those of Us Who interpret Genesis differently than the stereotype?
This rather stupid answer assumes that the difference between RockMonster ant and BigAss RockMonster ant is a single base-pair, which is astronomically unlikely - a single base pair mutation is not going to create a new species that can't interbreed with the old species.
Ah, you say, but in a sequence of base pair mutations beginning with species A and ending with species B, logically *some* single mutation caused A to turn into B. This is also wrong, though. Between A and B may be animals that can interbreed with both A and B; there is no sharp cutoff between species. At the cusp of turning into B, an animal may mate with A successfully 50% of the time. Even the ability of two *animals* to interbreed is not a binary proposition.
DNA may be based on digital information but it creates a fuzzy analog system of phenotypes.
Obviously more than one religion have sects that just can't handle facing facts. It seems to start with an inability to read. The notion that a scripture is inspired somehow gets twisted into the idea that a scripture is perfect. Poor readers can not sort out the difference. Dwayne Wade may play an inspired game of basketball but no man has ever played a perfect game of basketball. Congregations turn this into a real problem by claiming that the perfect scripture is the word of God and can have no flaws or alternate interpretations. What makes more sense is to believe that God has no limits and therefore God can use evolution to create worlds and creatures that inhabit those worlds. And then realize that scriptures could only be handed to people in a manner in which they could be received and understood. Imagine going back 2,000 years or more and handing people texts about creatures changing over time and having past relatives that were not even human. The effect would not have been instructive and no faith could have been built. Whether it is a Bible or a Torah, either can be used to guide one through a good life. Yet both will fail miserably if used as a manual to try and repair a TV set. Primitive ministers make the error of trying to imply that a scripture is the perfect answer for all problems.
Yes, although many of the writers seem to be there just to make fun of the concept. I would not be surprised if the majority of the editors there are trolls.
Different species can often interbreed:
Horses/donkeys
Lions/Tigers
etc.
The offspring aren't always sterile, either. Mules are usually sterile but ligers can often be fertile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Bengal cats are an artificially created crossbreed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The original ("rather stupid") answer assumed the parent was simply a troll who was trying a variant of the creationist's "Irreducible complexity" argument.
No sig today...
There's a difference between spouting utter nonsense like you did, and reality, which we live in. Just because you believe in fairy tales doesn't mean you should.
... learn ideas supported evidence.
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Wait, so the school decides what questions they want on their exam, and people are complaining?
Yes because in the UK the exams are not written by the schools but written by a central exam board so that the standard is consistent across the country. The same happens here in Alberta, Canada. By redacting the questions the school is preventing the students from being able to get any marks for those questions. I the exam board produced a paper where sufficient questions were "objectionable" then every pupil at that school would automatically fail the exam.
While the exam board might be ok with it because it offers zero advantage to the students the school inspectors ought to be all over this since it is grossly unfair to the students and may prevent them getting into university. We already have laws which limit religious freedom when it comes to refusing medical treatment for children because it harms them and frankly we should have similar ones when it comes to science education for exactly the same reason.
That *maybe* just maybe religious/evolutionary teaching should be done at home and not in schools???
No. We interbred with them till there were none left. You clearly have no idea how hot Neanderthal women were!
"Religious sponsored ignorance..."
Really? Biased much? True Darwinian evolution is true change of kinds. One form to another. Not a dog changing into another dog. Or a bacterium changing into a variant bacterium.
Show the world all the intermediary forms between kinds, then there's a valid debate.
And even when that does happen, it doesn't negate that the whole Evolution theory can still be divine-based. I mean, Big Bang theorists STILL can't tell us where all that matter came from at the Big Bang...but they can say that matter doesn't create out of nowhere (scientifically).
Darwin even believed in divinity.
Think about it.
A people with no science, no math, only rudimentary educations wanted to know how we came to be.
The creation story is as good as any as it ascribes the instant the universe began as a moment of light from darkness (big bang).
Then the heavens and earths were separated (cosmic dust swirling together to form the first planets).
so on
Creation of man - from dust (carbon is our #1 atomic element in our makeup, water is the primary molecule).
Creation of woman - borrowed a rib (really a partial piece of dna from a hermaphroditic Adam, to separate the sexes into male / female)
Tree of knowledge - free will and the reasoning to question everything.
Cain and Able went out into the world to take their wives from the people that existed (earlier form of home-erectus that were not as evolved as Adam and Eve and their sons).
So, go ahead and teach evolution - it certainly falls in perfect alignment with the creation story, if it were updated for a modern people.
It's not their fault they were born to crazy parents.
Don't they know wikipedia exists?
Do you know that conservapedia exists?
http://www.conservapedia.com/
Which one is correct? Teach the controversy!
Do you know uncyclopedia exists? http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/...
There is no creationism in government public schools in Israel (hasidic schools are a different matter). Biblical stories are taught in bible studies and nowhere else. ... 20+ years ago) I did not hear a whisper of evolutionary biology as well. All I know about it is self taught.
However... In 18 years of basic and high school (in my day at school
What you fail to appreciate is that "species" is an abstraction - a useful tool when you classify living creatures and a great aid when you communicate with your fellow biologists, but there is nothing stopping you from classifying your ant species according to the shape of their left foot or whatever.
So, the split into distinct species is more a question of what we can agree on; the common criterion is that they are distinct species when they can not produce fertile hybrids, although this is not always strictly applied. The question of why two populations of the same species drift apart, this is something has been the subject of much scientific treatment - I think the consensus is that it starts off when the two groups stop interbreeding for whatever reason, and the natural changes that accumulate over time make them "drift apart" until they can be considered separate species.
Umm not. Nice link but what you are hiding from the community is the extensive pre-engagement genetic testing that is done in the community. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
form the article " a New York neurologist who credits the near-total disappearance of the condition (Tay-Sachs disease) from the ultra-orthodox community due to Dor Yeshorim's involvement"
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
An obligatory disclaimer as an observant Jew, I can think of no one in my social or academic circles who would support or condone such a move. Sadly, the extremists ruin things for everyone.
Keep the faith, share the code
Really?
The one that was used for thousands of years? The simplest form of the story that could actually be understood by a simpler people?
Yes we've evolved, yes we've advanced in our understanding, that doesn't invalidate the creation story at all. You just need to broaden your senses and fill in the gaps that were left because of the simpler times and people without the knowledge we have today.
Jewish teaching is all about asking questions. The entire religion is asking questions and challenging the answers. What this school is doing is wrong.
No one has seen what you have seen, and until that happens, we're all going to think that you're nuts. - Jack O'Neil
All you need to do is relocate some Jews. Good luck with that.
I especially like that "Conservapedia proven right" is one of the most popular articles.
Who ordered that?
Actually, it's not even restricted to religion
There's 7 billion of us. No matter how stupid the idea, chances are there's at least a few tens of thousands that fervently believe it.
They think its some kind of beneficial substance. Only a percentage actually believe it enough to come in contact with it though. Who knows, maybe it is some kind of naturopathic treatment for something.
E=mc^2 is liberal claptrap!!!
A few things,
1. ideas should not support evidence, evidence should support ideas, I think the grammar in the main post is goofed, or there is a word or two missing.
2. There is not a single place in the Bible that says that God did not create man through evolution. It says that God created man in His Image. God is infinite, so he has infinite images. So evolution is totally possible. However, Macro evolution has much less evidence than micro evolution, and since no one can explain what happened in the Cambrian explosion, than macro evolution is much less credible as a result of that.
Seriously, only Sith deal in absolutes. God is not a Sith so He can have evolution and creation too. beats me why no one else can.
The papers are being deliberately mishandled by the teachers. It doesn't matter that the effect of the mishandling does not increase the marks *. The exam board should refuse to mark every one of these papers and blacklist the teachers from ever administering exams again.
* Note: as far as they know. How can they be sure that there is no cheating going on?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Evolution is a theory and has so many missing links or holes in it.
Teach it. Teach everything.....no one says the kids have to believe it. While your at it teach the weaknesses of Empiricism in a Philosophy class.
For most people, knowledge of evolution is not something that helps them get through their daily lives. Is it useful for society as a whole? Sure. Do we need to keep having stupid flame wars about it every time some people some where else decide not to teach it? Probably not.
I'm guessing close to 100% of the 'evolution facists' (facist as in trying to control other people's thoughts) have never done anything useful with their knowledge of evolution.
Maybe they fear that their creation story will be seen for what it is if pupils get to learn ideas supported evidence.
Maybe the headmaster had a stroke or psychiatric condition that caused him to do it. Maybe it happened because you touch yourself at night. Way to fight ignorance with ignorance, you stupid fuck!
If kids had a say in their education, my nephew would want a teacher who knows whether The Flash could beat Superman in a fight, and I strongly suspect that he'd want a teacher that sees things the way he does. But eventually he'd require someone with the complete line on every possible superhero matchup.
Evolution would be discussed, but only with regards to Bruce Banner becoming The Incredible Hulk, and then only with a very detailed list of things that Hulk could conceivably smash. He'd probably want Spiderman in there, too, but not happenin if I have anything to say about it.
The Rabbinical Assembly decided in 2006 that evolution is a thing and that it should be taught (http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/resolution-intelligent-design-and-freedom-scientific-inquiry). It seems odd that the resolution is so focused on what look like American institutions when, according to their about page, they're an "international association of Conservative rabbis".
What's really odd is that the biggest religions in the U.S. are all based on a single book that says that evolution did happen.
In the Eden narrative, the humans consume something that changes their structure such that the lifespan of all their offspring are shortened. It's a mutation, it's not natural selection, but it might as well be speciation because it is passed down to offspring 100% of the time.
If on the other hand you want your youngster educated in science, send them to a school which promises to teach science. You can even send your kids to both and try to help them resolve the contradictions. Gee, what a novel idea - I oughtta patent it.
Oops - wrong thread.
Go back to the dark ages, de-evolve into less intelligent people and re-vitalize your beliefs in sky bully.
"religious ignorance" = you are the ignorant one: the first to use the insults loses. Fact is, there is no evidence of life-by-incremental-changes. Darwin RAILED against jumps but there it is: life with neither the time nor the ability to exist. Instead of insulting those who choose to not repeat unproven theories (i.e., lies), commend them for thinking for themselves instead of believing what everyone else says.
Cranky educator.
If you are wondering why Christians, Muslims and Jewdaists hate evolution so much, it's because it breaks their belief that humans are pefrect (made after the image of god). So, the belief that humans are not capable of evil and that it's some devil doing it is shattered.
They don't allow the girls the same rights as the boys? What is this, 1930?
"Maybe they fear that their creation story will be seen for what it is if pupils get to learn ideas supported evidence."
What would that be? I see nothing wrong with accepting the creation story in a theological context and evolution in a scientific context. I totally agree evolution should be taught in school over creationism since the context is science. But I also detest snide comments such as this.
Yes, but it's a very strange thing. Wikipedia tries to be a source of information; secondarily trying to be neutral (whether is succeeds or not is beside the point). Conservapedia does neither. It is almost purely an editorial site. It also seems like it was written by just a tiny handful of people as the style and tone of language in each article seem so similar to each other.
In some ways this is like Fox News, where it explicitly took a stance that since other media is biased, it will intentionally be even more biased in the other direction. Except that conservapedia makes Fox News look fair and balanced.
Too bad there arent things like books or the internet where people can learn alternative explanations of things.
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
Amongst other news, Amish children are not taught Ohm's Law, nor are they allowed access to the internet. Shouldn't there be some sort of cap on this thing called "Freedom"? Isn't it better that the STATE choose how kids are raised? Far better than letting their religious zealot parents indoctrinate them into some fairy-tale superstition, we should take the children away and teach them all to be statists and nihilists, like every well-adjusted westerner should be.
You have the freedom do anything you want to do, as long as what you want to do is what I want you to do.
That the school did this is old news: it broke back in June 2013 (http://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2013/06/evolution-problematic-for-orthodox-jewish-faith-schools). What's news is that the government has said it was OK to do this.
for over 60 years we've been fed BS regarding 20th century history, why stop there?
If these Jewish kids are being "indoctrinated", and that upsets you, you should be cutting your wrists at the thought of America's public education system. If you believe in a big bang KABOOM shit appeared explosion, you my friend have been indoctrinated.
I'm sorry to burst your over inflated bubble, but we have no clue where we came from, even science can't explain it. We have theories, and more theories, and more theories, all stacked neatly on top of each other. These theories are constantly being disproven, readjusted, and re-tweaked.
Ever heard of Alexander Vilenkin? The biggest problem with the education system isn't what's being taught, it's what isn't being taught. Children should be exposed to a multitude of theories and explanations so they can make their own mind up. We need to stop trying to control what people think just because we think it's right.
Instead of "well my theory explains it better than your theory so we should just pass a law so only my theory gets taught." We should go to "well everyone has an opinion, I guess the best thing to do is teach both sides so people can decide for themselves."
It'll never happen though. People that think they know best are just the worst.
students in public schools were taught to sing tha praises of president Obama? Remember the song "mmm, mmm, mmm Barak Hussein Obama"? I'm pretty sure a significant number of parents in America are not big fans of that... or how about the schools indoctrinating kids into "going green" supporting "renewable energy" or "gay pride" or anti-gun attitudes ANY other thing the left is pushing in the schools? If you think it's a shame kids are indoctrinated, that's fine... but be equally ashamed when it's from another direction, or else you are actually not against indoctrination at all... you are just against traditional/historical/religious/etc views.
You might think it's sad to see some parents raise their kids to belive humans have dignity and purpose, but I see it as child abuse to teach kids to support socialism and "gun control"... those kids will pay higher taxes and have less freedom for the rest of their lives based on the crap they are being spoon-fed in those government-run schools.
See? It's a matter of perspective. I think the single most abusive thing you can do to a human being is to teach him or her that human beings are just evolved animals... with the automatic and obvious implication that some of us are more-evolved than others... the obvious implication that we can make people better through selective breeding... and the further obvious implications that we can treat each other as animals, and that when we die all we face is nothingness (and therefore "anything we can get away with" in this life is something we've "gotten away with" - so if you think you can get away with it, DO IT).
Of course evolution should no longer be taught. It is a very bad theory.
wwed?
That's a hackneyed belief.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Absolutely. As pointed out to me once, the fact that most people remain in the religion into which they were born is good evidence that none of them confer any tangible advantage in life.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Well the definition of divergent species is they can't breed with each other, although there's often a stretch; like species that don't interbreed because they live on opposite sides of a river, or even dogs and wolves, that generally don't interbreed because they just don't.
However the fact that species diverging takes time is a factor. I was having the usual discussion with a particularly intelligent creationist, and he asked the usual "where are the intermediate steps in evolution? " And I replied with the usual "well the fossil record is incomplete, but look at horses, where we do have a good fossil record of the steps from eohippus to now", but he had a good counter: "what makes you call all those steps different species, rather than one species evolving over time but still remaining one species? " And I didn't have a good counterexample.
So, unless we have a fossil record of two species diverging from a single one with ask the intermediate steps, resulting in two existing separate species, we don't really have solid QED evidence. And that's a lot to ask of fossils.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
First, ot seems to me that Jews are somewhat more tolerant of different views on things than others of the Abrahanic tradition, Christians and Moslms; there seems to be a dialectical approach to dogna in the training of young Jews. Still because Jews, Christians and Moslms share the same roots, they can make the same sort of mistakes when their faith is a source of power. I call that mistake "The Sin of Abraham". It is the myth that any one tribe or ethnicity or group of mankind is more select than another, spiritually, or in the eyes of God. It is an idea that should be expunged from religion and why it is so important to western religion is a matter of historical empire and ethnocentrism that should be discouraged. It is surely the unassailable basis of all of the friction between the world religions that share it, and it is a myth as bad as Creationism.
It does not surprise me that some Conservative Jews would deny evolution, just as Christians and others might deny it. Creationism is a rehtorical position whose sole role is to protect dogma based on an authoritarian use of Scripture. It is based on using faith as a argument by force and is a testiment to the weakness of a faith that does not rest on morality by deed rather than moral authority in which an elite gets to abuse others. It is better to do right by deed than by prescription or order.
Any quiz questions on the New Testament?
Ah, you say, but in a sequence of base pair mutations beginning with species A and ending with species B
logically *some* single mutation caused A to turn into B.
The second part is where you jumped to a conclusion. Nobody in science says the second part.
A single point mutation in a functional area of hemoglobin is what makes non-sickle cell people and sickle cell carriers differ.
A single point mutation in large amounts of non-functional areas of proteins have no impact at all.
A single point mutation in large amounts of DNA has no impact on generated proteins.
You are not 100% a combination of your Mom's DNA and your Dad's DNA. DNA replicating machinery is very high fidelity, but it still makes a few errors, so your child will have (on average) 2 different base pairs than either of it's parents.
This 2 base pair difference means that it is highly unlikely that anyone really has the same DNA as anyone else. Yet we still maintain an identity as a single species. That's because a species is defined as a group that can reproduce it's own kind.
Now what separates the RockMonster ant from it's previous lesser ants is that a population of non RockMonster ants likely got separated from their group. Eventually the two groups differ more and more until they cannot interbreed. That's because a single error is unlikely to stop you from interacting with your group, but eventually if there are too many errors, the DNA from the different groups produce sets of progressively less compatible proteins.
Donkeys are an excellent example of this, as they are just compatible enough to not die, but not compatible enough to have functioning reproductive capability. Donkeys are not considered a species, as they lack the ability to produce donkeys.
Teaching kids nonsense like this is detrimental to their development in many areas. Sadly, when US parents murder their children for religious reasons, the courts have basically said: "shame on you, try not to kill them the next time". When they do kill them the next time the courts have again said: "Shucks, that wasn't nice of you. Give us your wrist so we can slap it, and don't do it again".
Religious fruit-cakes in the US have far too much liberty in abusing their children. Bastardizing their education should not be one of them, neither should killing them, but apparently that is almost OK.
>> Which one is correct? Teach the controversy!
There is no controversy to teach. If there was, schools should teach it. So far though, only one theory has ever been proposed, so schools have to teach that. If another one ever comes along, of course they should teach that too.
yes, but if the genetic testing to stop the unlucky couples reproducing was not there, the community would eventually be wiped out because of the small gene pool which is the point being made
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)