Slashdot Mirror
Alabama Will Require Students To Learn About Evolution, Climate Change
An anonymous reader writes: For the first time, public school students in Alabama will be required to understand evolution, thanks to new curriculum rules behind implemented next year. Teachers in the state will also be required to discuss climate change. Not only did the 40-person, Republican-controlled Board of Education pass the standards unanimously, but nobody even spoke out against them at a board meeting. The new rules say, "The theory of evolution has a role in explaining unity and diversity of life on earth. This theory is substantiated with much direct and indirect evidence. Therefore, this course of study requires our students to understand the principles of the theory of evolution from the perspective of established scientific knowledge. The committee recognizes and appreciates the diverse views associated with the theory of evolution."
Lived in Alabama for four years. This represents major progress. However, there's still a long way to go.
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
Maybe the church should get on board
Many churches have done so, or at least have asserted that religion and evolution are not in conflict.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
This is about the town of Alabama, Massachusetts.
Did you even look at TFA?
.
From the About al.com section:
Alabama Media Group is a digitally-focused news and information company that combines the quality journalism from The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times, Mobile’s Press-Register and The Mississippi Press with the up-to-the-minute access of AL.com and gulflive.com.
.
Of course, there's still this from TFA:
...Textbooks used in Alabama science classes have carried a disclaimer sticker for years stating that evolution is a "controversial theory," not fact, and the new course of study doesn't change the warnings, which were advocated by Christian conservatives....
Indeed. Let's make sure to encourage people to think that the Earth is flat and at the center of the universe, and about the theory of phlogiston as a viable physical theory. For diversity of ideas' sake.
According to who? Blanket statements that go against a consensus of scientific opinion should really be supported by some citations if you want to be taken remotely seriously.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Gravity is 'only a theory', as well. Is it ok with you if I push you off a cliff, because it's 'only a theory'?
Hint: The word 'theory' is a term of art in science, it does not have the same meaning in that venue as it does in conversational English.
Even better, in English, would be to describe it as the the survival of the species that fit best in their environment.
In English the word 'fit' can also be used to describe a level of strength, as in 'I work out to stay fit.'. Darwinian 'fitness' has to do with fitting into the environment better than others you compete with. Sometimes you can be fittest by being weaker, slower and less aggressive than others.
That's not what TFS says.
And you came to this conclusion due to the fact the word "theory" was used no less than four times in reference to evolution in TFS.
I have a theory about that conclusion...
No, you have a hypothesis about that conclusion.
If you don't understand what a scientific theory is, you need to learn before you criticize it too deeply.
Let's tak an example that even fundies are likely to accept.
Gravity
Gravity is real. Hard to deny that if you jump off the Golden gate bridge, you'll fall.
But we don't understand every single thing about gravity, so we have a theory for it. The theory is a framework to work within, not some wild-ass guess, not some thought of "Maybe the world just sucks". The theory is the body of work - and if testing proves the theory wrong, changes need to be made.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You make great points about some of the missing pieces in our understanding of evolution. You should consider applying your own approach to the alleged merits of Libertarianism which has far less empirical evidence backing it up than evolution.
The missing pieces are the exact reason why I'm a libertarian. I personally am not even 100% sure what is best for myself, let alone everybody else. Hence I believe that not myself, nor anybody else, should be allowed to dictate how everybody else lives. That ranges in all subjects, from gay marriage to owning firearms.
I do believe in the rule of law, but mainly for the purposes of making sure that people don't interfere with other people's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit.
Do tell me however, why you're so sure that being authoritarian on certain matters is the best approach? Because if you don't identify as libertarian, then surely you have a lot of beliefs in that how you live your life surely should work best for everybody, and therefore they must obey your rules.
Untrue: evolution certainly purports to explain the creation of life. The evidence there is quite lacking, unlike the evidence for "how it changes", but still it's a consistent explanation for life arising that doesn't require the invention of additional entities.
No, you're conflating evolution and abiogenesis. Most scientists would agree that a natural process exists for the origin of life, but that process is not strictly evolution. There are various theories being worked on, but it's not as well understood and proven as evolution is. Evolution is what happens once you have slightly imperfect replicators and environmental pressure on those replicators. How the replicators came to be is a different matter.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
What does abiogenesis have to do with evolution? Those are 2 different questions. One is how life came from non-life, the other is how living things formed different species.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
No, you're thinking of Abiogenesis - a hypothesis built upon evolutionary theory, and widely accepted as "probable, but as yet sorely lacking in detail" among the scientific community, but it is in no way integral to evolution.
Evolutionary Theory is specifically concerned with the manner and mechanism by which living organisms adapt and change over time. It's not directly applicable to non-living systems, and thus can't address the initial formation of life, only what happened from that moment onward. Perhaps God waved her magic wand and created the first organism(s) - evolutionary theory has nothing to say about that. It only explains how those simple organisms adapted to become the vast array of life that now populates the Earth.
Abiogenesis is the result of extrapolating Evolutionary theory backward from the earliest living organisms, and assuming that similar processes were at work among the non-living complex chemistry that eventually "evolved" into something we'd recognize as "life" through purely natural phenomena without resorting to any supernatural agency. It is a complementary theory, explaining how life began in a manner consistent with how it has adapted since then, and it does depend on Evolutionary Theory to give it plausibility, but that dependency is unilateral. Evolutionary theory is perfectly capable of standing on it's own, it simply completely ignores the subject of how life originally began as outside it's scope. Just as, say, Database Theory completely ignores the subjects of vacuum tubes and mechanical computation engines - they're simply not relevant to the subject at hand, despite the fact that modern computer science would not exist without them.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Nobody is talking about "kill all the zygotes" except you, you logic-impaired . The same chain of so-called "logic" you use there could equally be applied to men's sperm or women's ova; destroy all of them and you won't have any more children either. Yet, mysteriously enough, nobody seems to be calling denunciations down on every girl who ever has her period (wasting an ovum, unfertilized) or every boy who ever has a nocturnal emission (or "wet dream").
Yeah, try again. This time, consider actually thinking a little bit first.
Oh, and yes, we would continue to have oak trees; they live a long time, and they produce acorns many, many times. You'd have to destroy them all *continuously* for the entire fertile lifetime of all the currently-living trees. You could, of course, kill off all the oak trees *much* faster by eliminating all the *water* in the world... but that doesn't mean that water is an oak tree either.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
" The formal scientific definition of "theory" is quite different from the everyday meaning of the word. It refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence. " - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Neurosurgeon is as close as any candidates come to scientist this round.
Certainly closer than any shyster.
No, he's not. Here is what Ben Carson believes:
“Carbon dating, all these things,” he said “really doesn’t mean anything to a God who has the ability to create anything at any point in time. “Dealing with the complexity of the human brain,” Carson continued, “and somebody says that came from a slime pit full of promiscuous biochemicals? I don’t think so.” Curiously, Carson did not reject natural selection – the engine that drives evolution – saying he “totally believe[s]” that useful genetic traits are more often passed on than less useful traits. But he could not draw the connection between that process acting over millennia and the human eye: “Give me a break. According to their scheme – boom, it had to occur overnight.”
So he doesn't believe evolution nor does he even know enough about it to understand that the evolution of the eye happened over time and does not have to happen overnight. The fact that he can be a doctor and hold these views just shows how extreme cognitive dissonance can be.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
You seem to think abiogenesis is somehow part of evolution. They are two separate things. This is my point.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
No, it doesn't. Again, with a minimum of words:
Evolutionary Theory has nothing to say about the origins of life
Abiogenesis purports to explain the origin of life
Abiogenesis uses the principles of evolution as a starting point, but pushes them well beyond the limit of the claims stated within Evolutionary Theory. You can be 100% confident in Evolutionary Theory, and still believe that Abiogenesis is complete hogwash.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.