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Now Any Florida Resident Can Challenge What Is Taught In Public Florida Schools (orlandosentinel.com)
New submitter zantafio shares a report from Orlando Sentinel: Any resident in Florida can now challenge what kids learn in public schools, thanks to a new law that science education advocates worry will make it harder to teach evolution and climate change. The legislation, which was signed by Gov. Rick Scott (R) last week and went into effect Saturday, requires school boards to hire an "unbiased hearing officer" who will handle complaints about instructional materials, such as movies, textbooks and novels, that are used in local schools. Any parent or county resident can file a complaint, regardless of whether they have a student in the school system. If the hearing officer deems the challenge justified, he or she can require schools to remove the material in question. The statute includes general guidelines about what counts as grounds for removal: belief that the material is "pornographic" or "is not suited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented, or is inappropriate for the grade level and age group."
Public education... having public input?! wow what a novel concept!
There's no one right answer.
1. Acquire Florida Residence and Textbooks
2. Challenge everything.
3. ?????
4. Profit!!!
Downsides include having to live in Florida, and the risk that Donald Trump will be your neighbor.
I mean, really, thank goodness for Florida... when something horribly embarrassing hits the news cycle, the statistically best chance it didn't happen here is you folks.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
If we want to win the war against liberalism, we need to fight it everywhere, particularly schools where liberals train kids to accept idiotic un-scientific bullshit like global warming and evolution as if they are facts and not (long) disproven theories. You may not think this kind of thing is important, but remember they will use these same techniques to come after our guns and our freedom of speach next. The only way to fight this is to continue to support the great work the Republican party is doing from schools right up to the federal government. Donate today to the NRA and the Trump 2020 campaign.
I loved banned book week, when my kids were encouraged to read books that had been banned at some time and discuss the reasons behind the ban. In florida they'll have to make it banned book month now.
Nullius in verba
My first thought was to cynically wonder if this were an argument for privatizing schools. Then it occurred to me that these would already be teaching what they wanted, and even if not, the private school has far more incentives to teach what the attendees' parents want. So I suppose the silver lining is that this was the result of the legislative process and can therefore be annulled by the courts. And if that's the best you can say about something, the phrase "damning with faint praise" springs to mind...
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Well the parents who ensure their kids study 'fake science' will get a nice lesson in darwinism when the only work their kids can do is flipping hamburgers.
Good for parents who do want their children to get a real well rounded education, will give them an advantage.
Though I feel bad for the children who get 'brain washed' who are being used as a tool.
They're going to deny the Holocaust. I just know it, they're going to use this opportunity to spread information about the documentary One Third of the Holocaust and other films which successfully show that the Holocaust is just one big lie. We need to get this law repealed before too many people are exposed to this.
Maykin Amerka grate agen!!
The schools should be safe. There's no such thing as an unbiased human, and dogs aren't likely to make too many demands on school curricula.
Once again showing themselves to be the Party of Stupid
This can get expensive as every loon and troll will come out of the woodwork to throw monkey wrenches into the process.
Table-ized A.I.
It may "make it harder to teach evolution and climate change". On the other hand, it could also make it harder to teach intellectual design, or if teaching religion the schools may have to broaden their teaching past a certain branch of Christianity, but to also include e.g. Islam and Taoism.
Helen 'Mama' Boucher her input!
If people want to live in denial, that's annoying but totally their right. When people want to live in denial and prevent anyone else from learning the truth, that's when I take issue with things. It's time for people to stand up for the right to a scientifically backed education!
How is it that so many people are living in denial about reality?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I was in the second grade in the 1970's when I found out that there was a one-dollar bill, a two-dollar bill and a five-dollar bill. But no three-dollar bill. I was shocked. Everyone said "queer as a three-dollar bill" in my neighborhood. How can you have a queer without a three-dollar bill?
Citizens should also gain the compensating right to require material to be ADDED to curriculums.
Then let's wait till 1st good guy steps in with pornhub printouts in hand (one hand).
Complain to get it removed. What is the reference supporting the claim that God created the Earth and creatures that live upon it? AFAIK, it's only one book.
And the bible is full of pornography. Easy to find examples.
I would think for sufficiently creative people with appropriate resources, this law could easily be turned around to cause all kinds of problems for it's proponents.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Public education... having public input?! wow what a novel concept!
Input is one thing, being able to challenge material in the curriculum when you may not know the material yourself is a different thing. Education is like health care or indeed any other profession: you want to be able to give input on the best course of action to a professional who can weigh that input along with what they know to devise the best course of action.
If your doctor's course of treatment for you could be challenged by random members of the public and judged by a random bureaucrat who likely has little to know medical knowledge you would get terrible health case. The same is true for education.
There are, however, lots of wrong ones and is what is going to cause some serious problems with a system like this.
Great, let's get all those imagined concepts out of schools:
* Money
* Nations
* Corporations
* Human rights
Schools should only teach facts, right? What could possibly go wrong?
Even if you did manage to get someone relatively free of bias what is especially troubling is the challenge based on their "ability to comprehend": that right there is going to limit education to what the thickest bureaucrat judging the complaint could cope with when s/he was a schoolkid.
Honestly, I'm tired of reading stupid news coming from the U.S. on slashdot. you want to be dumb? Be dumb? The world doesn't care anymore.
...this law could easily be turned around to cause all kinds of problems for it's proponents.
So you mean enforced fairly and equally for all? Sounds like a good idea.
This sounds like excellent news for Florida Man stories. Education is the nemesis of Florida Man so, an outright assault on it should let Florida Man thrive.
Here's to you, Florida Man!
Oh my goodness! Full of pornography! And it's easy to find! Shudder. Horrible, dirty, filthy, pornography. Bad. Evil. PORNOGRAPHY.
I grew up in Florida. My senior year, my English teacher let us watch "Full Metal Jacket" IN CLASS. And to think we went through almost the entire year without realizing how cool she secretly was.
The most twisted part is that if any member of the public had found out and complained, their primary objection would have probably been the film's antiwar sentiment and implied criticism of America and its military (that same year, my American History teacher admitted point blank that he was EXPLICITLY prohibited from saying anything about either Watergate or the Vietnam War because the Principal deemed both topics to be "too controversial").
This can work both ways. Somebody could challenge that Creationism is taught in science class, or they could challenge that climate change is not settled science. This might be a double-edged sword.
And WHO pays for all of this bullshit.
The Children.
What money is spent on arbiters and in fighting and continuous challenges is simply money not spent on education.
Lo, the Lord thy Flying Spaghetti Monster hath show'd us the error of our ways! No longer shall we suffer under the tyranny of mathematics. For it is only the Flying Spaghetti Monster who can add and subtract. For it is only the Flying Spaghetti Monster who can divide and multiply. These concepts are from the forbidden Pasta Bowl of Knowledge, and to eat of the PBoK would get us all thrown out of the Great Olive Garden and their endless supply of breadsticks.
From this day forth, the answer to all mathematical functions shall be one of the following: "some," "many," and, "not enough."
For example, old method: Jimmy has 3 beans and Terry has 2 beans. If Terry gives Jimmy his beans, how many beans does Jimmy have? Answer: 5 beans.
New method: Jimmy has some beans and Terry has some beans. If Terry gives Jimmy his beans, how many beans does Jimmy have?
Answer: Some beans.
Terry, of course, would have not enough beans.
Ok, I understand teaching evolution... but climate change? Who is denying that the climate constantly changes? No one in the history of man has denied that there were ice ages and will be again, why would this be take up as an example of teachings that would be denied? There is a bigger chance people will question teaching gravity!
Assuming the "unbiased" hearing officer agrees with you. Is there a way to submit bias complaints about the school's choice of hearing officers?
The money is gonna be wasted either way - better to avoid wasting students' brain cells on non-science.
> regardless of whether they have a student in the school system
There's such a thing as lowering the barrier to input too much.
We all pay for public schools because it benefits all of us to have an educated population. It matters to all of us that kids coming out of school are able to contribute to society, are smart enough to think critically, and are motivated enough to be good people who make their communities better for their presence.
Parents should absolutely be able to contribute input, but so should professional educators, so should professors and scientists and engineers and business leaders and so should everybody else. You filter the input by understanding why different input may be good or bad for accomplishing the goal, by selecting someone to figure that out. But you don't just block the input entirely.
Real lawyers write in C++
Florida was a blue state? Since 1952 Florida has voted for the Republican candidate 12 times in the last 17 elections.
However, if you are referring to the time frame from 1880 - 1948, then your argument might be valid.
http://www.270towin.com/states...
Well if you have a publicly funded school then the public decides what is thought.
You want a better school which provides better education? Then go along and open a private school. Then you will be judged on the education quality you will provide.
That would be a good idea, except who appoints the "unbiased hearing officer"? Exactly.
Both religious aversion to science, as we see in some, and also an equally worrying trend of memorizing what is needed for exams only as long as said exams are on the horizon, are symptoms of a common anti-pattern in education.
We should not spoon feed children facts, or purported facts, or disproved 'facts'. What should be taught are the generic skills required to problem-solve, research, fact check, and basically work stuff out for yourself. Importantly, the engineering-like idea that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and that weakest link is only as strong as its sternest test. And teach these ideas first in the context of practical engineering and problem solving. Let religious nuts drive 'genesis as literal' ideas all they want. With the above skills well trained, the religious ideas, free from the medieval risks of burning at the stake for heresy, will just seen too silly to too many. And the class time will be better spent than merely spoonfeeding a naive and simplistic picture of how evolution actually works in practice.
John_Chalisque
As a non American, I can can only shake my head in disbelief as I watch a once proud, strong, intelligent (but at times flawed in some areas) nation like yours, beginning to slip backwards in politics, civics and education. Its a shame that many decades of rightful strong progress are being chipped away and then torn down by a increasingly large base of profiteers, ignorant mobs, luddites, self-righteous religious groups and narrow minded bigots.
I believe that the US reached peak nation in the 1990s, when it won the cold war (not just by itself, but with the western structures it helped create, grow and maintain), and then, somehow, insufferably content with this, began squabbling with itself for the spoils, with the results we have today.
I don't, by far, believe it is too late to fix this. I hope you can fix this capsizing ship; but the clock is running. But I do find very disheartening and disturbing to see such a nation with a wealth or resources bring ITSELF slowly to its knees. I guess it will be up to historians to figure out what just happened in those last two decades.
Captcha: Liberty
my junior (high school.. over 30 years ago) literature course, which included, among other topics and genres, both classic and current science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels. we even screened films.... we watched and studied, in class (partial list): jaws, war of the worlds, poltergeist, the exorcist, and texas chainsaw massacre.
there were no protests by, or complaints from, students, teachers or community residents, of the curriculum, of the books and films used, or of the teachers. none.
religion and their various holy books were also covered some there, and in the junior history course. but the modern ultra-right wouldn't exactly have approved of the curriculum that was used.
this, in a public school, in a highly-regarded and award winning school district.. in a slightly more progressive and liberal jurisdiction than florida...
minnesota.
How do you want to motivate kids in such an environment to waste their time on learning anything? It's moot anyway. And I can't blame them, they're mostly even right.
And the next generation after that, will be Appy App Appers, that will try to get rich by writing the best and most successful Appy App on the AppStore, and become Appillionaires.
(Hey! Where's the "App" Troll when you need him ?)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
We should have scholarships for kids who disrupt and destroy any attempt to teach creationism in a science class.
The way it works it seems that material can be only removed. Little by little there will be nothing to learn.
It does not belong there.
I still remember the day I realized what sham religion is. Freshman year at college in a History class, and the teacher was talking about ancient civilizations. The topic was about how ancient man was worshiping everything under the Sun as a god, but the teacher was speaking in a manner to imply how ridiculous that was. Then it came to me; "how is that more ridiculous than worshiping one god?"
And even if it had been created (try to prove that first of all...), what makes you think it was this god? There's literally thousands others, all with their own creation myth. Why don't we get to hear them?
Teach the controversy! And let the students decide which bullshit story they like best.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Dude, a god that opens the mouth of an ass and is against buttfucking is a hypocrite.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why we have public schools? Because not everyone is rich enough to pay for private schools. What about those that can't afford it? Just send the kids to the mines when they're old enough, like in the good old days? We could keep the shafts and tunnels smaller that way too, and this saves money. Not to mention that we could do away with all those bullshit safety regulations, kids are easier to replace. Plus, without wasting money on their education, it's not that big a loss either.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If anyone in the county can object about anything, this whole system can be made unworkable if enough people complain about random things, basically DDos the whole bureaucracy.
Neither of them would have enough beans. There is no such thing as enough beans. What are you, a communist? Not wanting more is killing our economy!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
My kid finds maths really hard - all those times-tables, BODMAS, trig, not to mention long division. I put it to you that maths discriminates against good, honest, hard-working americans like my kid, Jonny. Look at his little face - you wouldn't want to upset a face like that, would you?
Oh I can't wait - Florida will soon the "stupider" of all the states and will (weirdly) lead the way for American education. Let the race to the bottom commence!
(oh, but I propose we also remove any sort of racing from the curriculum, as some kids aren't as gifted as others at racing, and it makes the losers feel bad)
The linked article doesn't make it clear if this is just science or not. Can I challenge history as well? Can we force them to teach what really happened in the US after the Civil War? Like interracial marriage wasn't made universally legal in the US until 1967! Or cover the internment of US citizens of Japanese decent during WWII? Or how our founding fathers benefited from slaves? Howard Zinn's "A Young People's History of the US" would make their heads explode.
Muslims are happy to hear this
Hyper-liberalism eventually elevates the individual so much above any sense of group or community obligation or standard that it is toxic to the continuing existence of any democratic state or community. Some may say what is going on in Florida is driven by conservative philosophy. But it is not. You can see democracies dying worldwide. They cannot even replace their own populations now. I've come to believe that hyper-liberalism is a core flaw of democracy and ultimately destroys democratic states. It destroys their ability to define themselves as entities composed of obligated individuals. It's leveling impulse demands lying about reality, and especially lying about the existence and survival utility of the differences between men and women.
E Proelio Veritas.
The part where they remove the material during the hearing process is a gaping loophole. I could challenge not just history and science, but could conceivably also challenge the way math is taught. Essentially I could shut down the entire education system in as few as a few hundred complaints of various topics. The only requirement seems to be a well constructed argument. With all the out of work lawyers out there, I could even see this as a mechanism to slow education until some 'incentive' was used to bribe a withdrawal of the complaint.
Im sure there's plenty of out of work lawyers celebrating this law. They're the only ones that are going to benefit. We graduate WAAAY to many lawyers every year; each with $200k - $300k in student loans. Each paying $3500+ a year in Bar dues to maintain their license. This could become an entire industry similar to lobbyists. Entire industries based on obstructionism.
remove all material. see where they go from there.
The very first time I saw Idiocracy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy) I thought to myself that THIS is a very prophetic movie, at least as far as the United States is concerned. Nothing I've seen since has convinced me that I was wrong. We are definitely going there if the religious nut jobs have their way.
--
Steve (AC because I haven't bothered to register in all these years)
p.s. CAPTCHA is latrines, how appropriate
I apologize for the pedantry but it wasn't perfected. Or even perfectly adapted. The huge search space of possible adaptations and shifting cost functions means that not everything gets tried even if it would be great, and that even if a perfectly adapted mutation occurs it just takes one small accident to erase it. 2 billion years is a long time but not enough to try everything.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Statistically, we've got fewer and fewer avid TV watchers. People, by and large, realize that there are other things more worthy of their time. The result is, you've got a larger percentage of low IQ and low motivation losers actually watching television for hours each day, so it's no surprise the programming is adjusted to suit them.
The people with any kind of clue are gravitating more towards programming on demand like Netflix, where you get to watch what YOU want to see, WHEN you want to see it. And they're spending more time online where things aren't just a 1 way passive digestion of media.
..and you won't listen to me. At least in the state of Florida, you could potentially have an entire generation of kids who are dumb, think 'creation' is a real thing, and that 'evolution' and science in general are satanic lies intended to 'sway the faithful away from God' or somesuch bullshit. Praytell, how is shit like this going to make anyone smarter? It's not. If crap like this continues we'll be in another Dark Age where science and scientists are mocked, ridiculed, and maybe even physically attacked. I hate all religion for bullshit like this and really really wish humans would finally evolve out of whatever flaw it is in their brains that makes them want this shit.
Parents, who invest $1M per child and blood, sweat, tears and sleepless nights having input on what their child learns?? This concept is anathema to the fascist progressives and alt-left who believe they know better what your child should learn than you do, never mind that at best most of them hold a BA in philosophy or education, while there are many parents that hold MS and PhDs in hard science fields.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
It is important to have independent review of what is going on in public schools. Parents have a right to know and a right to file a complaint. Quite frankly, climate change doesn't belong in schools. People can find out whatever they want to know on their own. It has no purpose, really, for helping students find employment. The only reason it is even there is for a political agenda. Climate change is heavily politicized and more about an agenda to reduce first world countries to third world countries and global wealth redistribution. Maybe climate change is contributed to by industrial activity. But, that doesnt change the fact that climate change treaties are wealth redistribution schemes designed to make the US uncompetitive and wreck the US economy and are exploiting the issue to push a clearly political social agenda .
I can more empathize with Evolution. But, this too is politicized, and often used to attack Christianity. The fact is, the Catholic Church has issued encyclicals that individual catholics can accept Evolution. Young earth creationism is not universal in Christianity in any way. Creation can be in the framework of the big bang having a divine origination and then evolution happening afterwards after the initial first cause. But this won't stop atheists from trying to lie and exploit it to push their atheistic ideologies.
These chuckleheads deserve to be flooded by demands to "teach the controversy" of Time Cube, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Discordianism, Gorean philosophy, Ebolism, and even Baneposting. How dare anyone make a value judgement that contradicts anyone else's? Feels, not facts!
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
And can we challenge it's not a micro-agression to say 'meh, that homework was easy' ?
Also, on the other 'side' can I challenge the doctrine of 'teach the debate'?
I can't believe I read through this shit. There are a whole bunch of dopes shouting their opinions to the world, sure that they're right, and really not interested in anything else.
Well, lets see, on the Creationist side, we have:
- The fact that spontaneous generation was disproven scientifically several hundred years ago.
- The fact that many structures in human and animal physiology contain irreduceable complexity, where you need 10, 20 or even more different structures to come into being all at once to have a functional system. This also holds true for many symbiotic reationships between animals, plants bacteria, etc.
- The fact that evolution has never been observed or replicated in a lab (life from non life)
- The fact that evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics and how it specifically applies to chemistry and biology
I could go on, but you get the gist.
There are actually 66 books of the Bible. Some are historical, some are poetry, some are laws, some are letters to others. There were, however, thousands to millions of witnesses to many of the events in the Bible. Those same witneses were willing to die rather than recant the events that they witnessed. That is a pretty solid testimony of the veracity contained in the Bible. The books of the Bible were not secret history, but rather the commonly known history of millions of people. Furthermore, we have archaeological evidence to support many of the stories as well:
- Hundreds of global flood legends, over 60 of which describe a boat with a single family of survivors supports the global flood.
- Literally the entire planet covered in fossils and sedimentary rock, including fossilized shells at the top of Mt. Everest. Flash frozen mammoths and palm trees buried in ice in Antarctica and Siberia, respectively, also supporting the global flood.
- The discovery of Sodom, where all life in the city was destroyed for 700 years around 2000BC http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015...
- Thousands of fossilized chariots at the bottom of the Red Sea to support the parting of the Red Sea story.
- The city of Jericho, with it's walls collapsed outward (unique in all of archaeology, besieged cities walls are collapsed inward when they are assaulted).
How much evidence staring you in the face do you need before you accept the truth?
Regarding pornography in the Bible, please cite examples. The Song of Solomon is the closest you will get, and it is a collection of love poems from husband to wife that are the opposite of explicit. Outside of that book, the Bible is pretty straight forward about sex and child birth, which happens to be a biological and historical fact. It does not go into lurid details which is the hallmark of pornography. I am afraid you are misinformed.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Who cares about evolution, there was too much time spent on that subject when I went to school.
Climate change should not be taught as a science in the first place. I doubt they teach both sides of the argument that it exists or not. Or climate change should be in a political class where it belongs.
Most jobs don't require a well rounded education, even high paying jobs like brain surgeon don't require a well rounded education. In fact you can be delusional and batshit crazy and still be a brain surgeon.
Sadly from what I've seen most people with a "well rounded education", better known as liberal arts, seem to have wasted that education and are pretty fucking ignorant.
You want to talk to someone with a well rounded education, talk to someone with a PhD in physics, with few exceptions, their breadth and depth of knowledge about areas outside of physics is astounding. That seems to be because once one gets that deeply into the nature of reality one realizes how fucking ignorant people are and how superficial human senses really are.
How about instead of having public input, Flordia just teaches scientific evidence, and scientific fact when possible, rejects all forms of religious education and stays up to date on all other courses, with what the world expert communities support?
Is it too much to ask, that schools teach established fact and evidence, along with a solid grounding in other areas, well rejecting nonsense?
What creationist / flat earther wanted this insanity, to allow the public to override education progress?
Anyone submitting a complaint should be required to pass a basic intelligence test before the complaint is registered. That will keep a majority of Floridians from using the new legislation.
https://www.venganza.org/about...
Those same witneses were willing to die rather than recant the events that they witnessed
That is a pretty solid testimony
While it's obvious you have been drinking the koolaid, you might want to check your programming because the nonsense you're spouting makes less sense than the usual religious nonsense.
Those same witneses were willing to die rather than recant the events that they witnessed
That is a pretty solid testimony
While it's obvious you have been drinking the koolaid, you might want to check your programming because the nonsense you're spouting makes less sense than the usual religious nonsense.
To someone ignorant (either incidentally or intentionally) of historical facts.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Notably absent from your post is ANY evidence of a divine intervention in any of that. Any shortcomings in current science (real, or just perceived by you) is NOT proof that your belief is in fact true. Even if all your statements are true (and they are not) that does NOT mean that your claim that there is a magic power in the sky has any validity. Of course you will never admit to this, I understand that. Your faith is blinding you from accepting any actual reasoning.
1) how is this "unbiased hearing officer" going to be selected? How are they going to test is "unbiasedness"? 2) what's his salary going to be? 3) This law is just bait for trolling. Trolls will come out on both side to drown those hearing officers under a pile of frivolous claims.
Parents, who invest $1M per child and blood, sweat, tears and sleepless nights having input on what their child learns?? This concept is anathema to the fascist progressives and alt-left who believe they know better what your child should learn than you do, never mind that at best most of them hold a BA in philosophy or education, while there are many parents that hold MS and PhDs in hard science fields.
I get what you are saying.. but for every educated person who has a child in school there is an uneducated one... for everyone who sheds money, blood, sweat and tears, there is one who sheds meth or bigotry or hatred or bible-thumping. Your argument has to apply to them as well - that they get a say into what is taught.
Initially I feel really bad for whoever gets the job of "unbiased hearing officer" because I can't imagine a worse position to be in.
Then I feel really bad for the kids, who no matter what are not going to get good direction on learning.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
- Thousands of fossilized chariots at the bottom of the Red Sea to support the parting of the Red Sea story.
This is of course complete nonsense and just more proof that your entire argument is BS. http://www.snopes.com/religion/redsea.asp
Spontaneous generation was a theory to explain some observations. It made predictions that were found to be wrong, and was dropped. There was never any evidence that life couldn't form on its own, just that it didn't do it as often as predicted. You are also confusing evolution and the appearance of life. Evolution is what happened when life existed.
There are no cases of irreducible complexity, only dumb and unimaginative critics. Complicated relationships can develop spontaneously over millions of years. Bear in mind that a biological structure doesn't necessarily serve the same function it does now. Wings apparently started as radiators, and started to be useful for some form of flight.
Evolution (in the sense of the formation of new species) has been observed in the lab. The formation of life from non-living materials has not, AFAIK, but that's not the same thing. Evolution has happened in small pieces all over the world for a long time, while all we know of the formation of life is that it happened somewhere on the planet at some point in a very long period, so there's no reason to think it would be easy to reproduce in a lab.
The development of life, as it happened, was due to certain energy sources, which generated entropy. Most of this is from the Sun, which is creating entropy at a ferocious rate. The Laws of Thermodynamics apply only to closed systems, and allow for local variations.
There is no general agreement on the number of books in the Bible (consider the Apocrypha). Much of the Bible is accounts of people's observations and interpretations, but the formation of life is not one of them. According to the Bible, Adam and Eve were created in a world already going strong, and therefore had no observations of anything that happened before them.
Lots of legends of floods suggest a lot of local floods, not one big one. A global flood like Noah's would require that lots and lots of water mysteriously appear and then mysteriously disappear, and we would have noticed the effects.
You appear to be unaware of plate tectonics. Where land is now is not where it always was, and there are mechanisms that take ocean bottom and push it into mountains. And how the heck would a forty-day rainfall flash-freeze anything?
We find ancient cities now and then. The existence of an old city does not show that it was destroyed by God for being selfish and uncharitable and basically modern Republican.
I'll give the pointer here, to Snopes.com, to show that you've been swallowing some really dubious kool-aid.
If you want me to believe anything weird about Jericho, you're going to have to provide some sort of cite. I don't see any reason why walls would always fall in, and I haven't seen evidence that Jericho's walls fell outwards. I do know that, in some sieges, people pulled on ropes attached to grapnels at the top of the wall, although I don't know if that was ever done with stone walls.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I don't have time to respond to all of this, but:
"Spontaneous generation was a theory to explain some observations. It made predictions that were found to be wrong, and was dropped. There was never any evidence that life couldn't form on its own, just that it didn't do it as often as predicted. You are also confusing evolution and the appearance of life. Evolution is what happened when life existed."
There is no evidence or scientific tests that have demonstrated life can come from non life (spontaneous generation). You must have proof that it can happen before your theory of evolution has any science behind it. There are many kinds of evolution, all collectively fall into the broad umbrella of evolution. Chemical evolution is the attempt to explain how non-life became living organisms. Biological evolution doesn't happen and has never been observed either (a banana becoming a dog).
"There are no cases of irreducible complexity, only dumb and unimaginative critics. Complicated relationships can develop spontaneously over millions of years. Bear in mind that a biological structure doesn't necessarily serve the same function it does now. Wings apparently started as radiators, and started to be useful for some form of flight."
Based on what, exactly? Were you there over millions of years to observe the development of those complicated relationships? When did radiators become wings? When dumbo the cartoon elephant in the Disney movie first aired? Do you realize how many fallacious built in assumptions you have in that single paragraph? Your grasp of science is very weak if you think that imagination is a substitute for evidence, testing, and results.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
You know, a teacher with a BA in education is a much better teacher than an engineer with a master's or doctorate degree in the hard sciences. ...
Like an engineer with a BS in "hard science" is a better engineer than a headmaster, university rector or teacher with a master's in education.
Even the professional engineer and teacher will agree with that - so what's with people giving you "insightful" - I weep for the public's critical thinking skills.
Your claim is absurd at first light, and you're praised for it
Which means nothing. We're talking about an event that may happen once per planet in half a billion years, involving things we do not fully understand. There is nothing to suggest that it didn't happen. And, of course, the Theory of Evolution assumes that we have life and examines what happens to it over the eons.
Creating a new species in life-forms that advanced typically takes a few million years, so you're going to have to be patient. We have observed a new species of bacterium evolving in a lab.
You're claiming that what you can't imagine is impossible. We're talking about what's possible here, not what's completely nailed down. If you want to talk about irreducible complexity, name something and I'll see about finding how it might have happened. Fuzzy spots in a scientific theory are completely normal, although obvious spots for further investigation and refinement and possible flaws in the theory.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes