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New Mexico Drops Creationists, Decides to Evolve
Large Green Mallard writes "In a move sparked by Kansas's decision to stop the teaching of evolution, New Mexico has decided that teachers no longer have to teach Creationism, the view preffered by Kansas. The Story at CNN also mentions that Kentucky has erred on the side of political correctness and has decided to delete all references to the theory of evolution, instead referring to it as a 'change over time.'"
I would concede that your cat shows traits, but not emotions.
'science provides proofs without answers; religion provides answers without proofs'
grin
So does this mean that you are worth just as much/little as some animal out in a field somewhere? Does it mean that you are only worth as much as some animal? Humans are far superior to animals. If you feel that humans are only as signifigant as animals then why do we not put homeless people in cages as we do dogs? Why don't we give animals half the luxuries of humans? Because they are animals! Humans mean and are worth much more than any animal ever could be.
I'm definitely not convinced spirituality and
emotions are anything other than complex chemical
and electrical reactions in the body. Intellect
is probably controlled in large part by genetics
and how our brains are formed (along with our
environment). Morality is learned behavior.
And while those three or four things together are
probably not all present in animals to the same
degree, I do not feel the need to attribute them
to a god, when natural processes could explain
them just fine.
If the definition of soul is "that which separates
man from beast," then I can live with the above
definition. But if the definition is "that thing
that god gave us," then I obviously cannot.
-WW
The New Scientist has an article about how the earth is losing water much faster than thought possible - and 5x faster than it's being replenished. I thought this was an interesting discovery when I came upon it the other day. (For those that weren't properly educated, Genesis says the waters came from the "deep" within the earth.)
The fact that they appear to be going back there is enough to make one ponder a bit. I wonder what impact this has on our conjectures about the earth's history when the effect is projected back in time? Does the effect vary with time? Is there a good way to tell?
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
'Evolution' itself is very easy to observe, because all it implies is that the gene pool of a species will change over time. "Speciation" is when a new species is created that did not exist before.
The definition of a species is something that can breed with another of its kind and produce fertile offspring. That's why we don't have different species of dogs, just different breeds.
To observe evolution, all you have to do is that basic petri dish experiment where you grow some bacteria, put something in that kills most of it, and keep doing it until you have a strain that is immune to that chemical. That's evolution.
Evolution in and of itself is not only provable, but it is observed all the time. It is the origin of life that creates controversy, and many people mistake "Evolution" to mean that life came from absence of life (a completely separate but reated question). Using the phrase "change over time" in schools and ignoring the origin of species would allow something to actually get done. Anyone who has taken biology in high school knows that usually when a teacher utters the word "Evolution" he/she meets an immediate stone wall with any student that subscribes to Creation. Using different terms sends the message: "I'm not trying to challenge your beliefs here. If you want to believe in Creation I can't stop you, but I AM teaching you science, so I want you to realize that species today are observed to change over time, and diverge into new species."
And be realistic - we can't expect to do any better than that.
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
as Physics is today. It's what we observe...it's happening right now.
Try going to www.talkorigins.org for a better perspective.
That's not science at all.
There's a difference between a "scholar" and a "scientist". The whole earth/wind/fire/water bit wasn't based on anything remotely resembling scientific reasoning, whereas evolution is. The whole "theory" vs "law" debate is based on scientific descriptions and definitions, which has nothing at all to do with whatever scholarly observations made about the 4 elements.
Thus your argument is flawed.
I happen to be Jewish and out of reverence to the lord's name I don't write it out. Also when I said second I ment sec. as in a unit of time, I appologize for not being more concise.
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
"You really think that if they start putting creationists on school boards, it will all be the reasonable catholics or whoever you're talking about that actually cares about science? No, of course you're going to have a number of yahoos. "
Let's try looking at this another way --
"You really think that if they start putting evolutionists on school boards, it will all be the reasonable Darwinians or whoever you're talking aobut that actually care about science? No, of course you're going to have a number of lamarkians and lysenkoists."
Sounds pretty silly doesn't it? School boards are mostly elected AFAIK. Are you advocating a beliefs test for elective office in the US? I hope not.
TML
CRConrad seems to think that if he claims that science is anti-God and modern we should all turn our backs on God and our history. But the scientific method hasn't demonstrated either the existence or non-existence of God and frankly hasn't examined the subject much.
I wrote on this forum that it's the job of reasonable scientists to flush out and denounce anti-religious bigots like the fellow above and that the failure to do so has led to many religious people viewing scientists in general as similarly bigoted and anti-religious. I look forward to proof that true followers of the scientific method will point out CRConrad's errors.
TML
I think that you may wish to take a deeper look at the catholic position on abortion. It's sort of like the catholic position on euthanasia. You aren't allowed to euthanize somebody as a catholic. But it is no sin to morphine them to the point where they don't feel pain even if that point results in respiratory arrest and death.
Similarly, it is sinful from a catholic perspective to provide abortion services but if legitimate medical treatment ends up in the death of a fetus there is also no sin. I'm not an apologist or a theologian but you may wish to try Catholic Answers for a group of people who may be able to give you the full catholic position. You may still leave the church, but at least then you won't be doing it in angry ignorance of the facts.
TML
"I'm sorry I don't really have time to discuss this point with you properly, but I must mention that this is quite a bizarre conclusion you get here. Gödel himself was a mathematical platonist; for example, he believed that there were such objects as nautral and real numbers, and that some statements were true of them while others were false of them, even beyond what we can actually prove about them. Thus Gödel's theorems show us an unprovable statement of arithmetic which is actually true (the statement that encodes its own unprovability)."
:)
Yes, I'm aware Godel was a Platonist. However, thanks to his result, many mathematicians today aren't. And in fact there are competing theories of the reals (Robinson's infintesimal numbers e.g.) that suggest there may be more than one "correct" model of the reals. Though some mathematicians believe in a Platonic model for mathematics, it's just that -- philosophical belief. Religion enters here too, as religious mathematicians often prefer a God-created Platonic mathematics that humans discover. Others believe that mathematical systems are created by the mathemtician's choice of axioms, all consistent systems being just as "correct" as any other.
"I can't remember Tarksi's position regarding this, though."
What Tarski showed was that a mathematical system that defines truth internally (as Godel defined provability internally to number theory) must be inconsistent. Unlike Godel, I haven't read Tarski's actual paper, but that is my recollection of it from my foundations classes ages ago. What he believed, I don't know either, but I'm not sure it's relevant exactly.
I know nothing about the Bible, but in the Good News Bible it says that some people think that this is a description of a hippo, others think that it is a legendary creature.
Yep, most footnotes say something like that. If they're correct, then the leviathan is the only crocodile that breaths fire.
sklein
That wasnt really the point I was going for, I wanted to compare the worth of humans to animals.
I'll just mention that I have read Tarski's "The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages", and what he was trying to do is to put in more precise terms the good ole correspondence theory of truth; that a sentence is true iff it corresponds to a current state of affairs. Models are what he uses to formalize the notion of "states of affairs". (BTW, this is a very hurried exposition, so if anyone has to correct me, be kind).
However, I do remember from a Semantic Conception of Truth grad course I once took that it is posible to have a consistent language that includes its own truth predicate. Most of the languages that have been proposed with this feature, however, abandon bivalence (that is, they allow formulas to be something other than true or false) and have quite complicated semantics (involving successive interpretations of the self referential sentences, up into the infinite ordinals-- now that's esoteric). Also, somebody (sorry, don't have the reference here) proved that Tarski's conditions for a language to permit a self-referential construction has also been proved defective.
Let me be a bit more precise. What Tarski did was give list of criteria that a language had to meet in order to define its own bivalent truth predicate, and then show that any language that met that criteria was inconsistent.
You (and I) concede that mathematical Platonism is belief. However, I take this to illustrate my earlier criticism, that Godel and Tarski did not prove anything with regard to the nature of truth itself (which is beyond mathematics). Anyway, before Godel came along, there were anti-Platonists. Think of Hilbert, or the Intuitionists. Even if many mathematicians today aren't Platonists thanks to Godel, it is not thanks to Godel that there are anti-Platonists at all :-).
You might want to check up the so-called "Revision Theory of Truth". I only remember by now the name of just one of its exponents, Herzberger, and the name of one of his articles, "Naive Semantics".
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if they can decide NOT to teach children about the truth, they can also decide to teach them a lie can't they. I say we nuke those idiots
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Killroy Woz Here
I have to say, I agree with New Mexico's decision. If the standard of separation of church and state is to be upheld in public schools, then either no creationism can be taught, or every major religion and/or ethnic group's creation story needs to be presented as a possibility.
human://billy.j.mabray/
human://billy.j.mabray/
"Every good system has a backup." -- Dale Hanchey
This story reminds me of a story about a Senator in an estimeed Bible -belt state who proposed defining PI as 3 because it was absurd that it might be 3.14...
IN any case, evolution != change over time
Here is the defn:
evolution \Ev`o*lu"tion\, n. [L. evolutio an unrolling: cf. F. ['e]volution evolution. See Evolve.] 1. The act of unfolding or unrolling; hence, in the process of growth; development; as, the evolution of a flower from a bud, or an animal from the egg.
2. A series of things unrolled or unfolded. ``The whole evolution of ages.'' --Dr. H. More.
3. (Geom.) The formation of an involute by unwrapping a thread from a curve as an evolute. --Hutton.
4. (Arith. & Alg.) The extraction of roots; -- the reverse of involution.
5. (Mil. & Naval) A prescribed movement of a body of troops, or a vessel or fleet; any movement designed to effect a new arrangement or disposition; a maneuver.
Those evolutions are best which can be executed with the greatest celerity, compatible with regularity. --Campbell.
6. (Biol.) (a) A general name for the history of the steps by which any living organism has acquired the morphological and physiological characters which distinguish it; a gradual unfolding of successive phases of growth or development. (b) That theory of generation which supposes the germ to pre["e]xist in the parent, and its parts to be developed, but not actually formed, by the procreative act; -- opposed to epigenesis.
7. (Metaph.) That series of changes under natural law which involves continuous progress from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous in structure, and from the single and simple to the diverse and manifold in quality or function. The pocess is by some limited to organic beings; by others it is applied to the inorganic and the psychical. It is also applied to explain the existence and growth of institutions, manners, language, civilization, and every product of human activity. The agencies and laws of the process are variously explained by different philosophrs.
The fact that controversial shouldn't stop it from being taught in schools! Frankly, I personally don't care about how I came into being other than knowing about my family's lineage for a few generations, but I find it offensive that the legislature would remove that word from the curriculum because some nuts find it offensive.
Wouldn't it be sufficient to teach both?
Really, how long can it take?!
just never move to kansas.
It's good to see that another state is taking a step forward towards science rather than a step forward toward creationism, in which there is no hard evidence that validates the matter.
emufreak
www.kontek.net/pp
maybe Kansas will join us the rest in the 20th while they still have a few months left...........
-he who laughs last, is a bit slow.
journal
The big issue is that it's never been proven. For instance, with Creation, where did God come from ? For Evolution/Big Bang, where did the chemicals come from ? No-one can authoritively say "this is right", because no-one really knows for sure ... so theoretically, neither should be taught !!
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I rather like cows.
Many creationistm activists argue that evolution is merely a theory, and not a fact. We must keep in mind that _gravity_ is also a theory.
"Reality is less than television."-Brian Oblivion
Evolution is not "as much a fact as Physics". Physics has observable and proven laws. Evolution is still a theory for a reason. No one can find any proof for it. There are no inbetween forms - which should permeate the fossil layer if evolution were true.
Instead, we hear about archaeological evidence that supports stories in the Bible. But no one wants to believe the Bible because it's tied to Christianity and Christianity claims exclusivity to the Truth (capital T). The world doesn't believe in Truth anymore - everything is relative and subjective and there is no such thing as an absolute. However, the statement "There are no absolutes" is an absolute itself. because it absolutely denies the possibility of absolutes.
Try a website with real information. Take a look at www.x-nilo.org/creation or www.rae.org for a scientifically supported view on Creation. (And follow their links, too - there's alot of proof out there for intelligent creation. It takes more faith to believe in evolution without proof than to believe in creation with proof.
no, i'm advocating beliefs tests being avoided.. i'm saying people shouldn't be chosen on the basis of their opinions on creationism, they should be chosen on the basis of their ability to teach/run a school system.
most of the people pushing creationism are doing so for religious reasons and not scientific reasons. since science is the point of a science class.. well, science ought to be more imporant than religion.
whatever. this is a kind of a dumb argument anyway and i'm sorry i started it.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
As someone who escaped from Kansas, I can report first hand that not "changing their curriculum" means basically ignoring evolution, which is also true of most midwestern & southern states. Everyone I know from the midwest that knows the theory learned it on their own time.
Evolution is given a cursory one or two days, and not exactly talked about in great detail.
One doesn't have to look far to see how the Board of Education got its odd ideas.
There is an article in Education Week (www.edweek.org, I believe) that talks about this trend a bit.
As many evolutionists have pointed out, there are many different creation stories. Of course, I think that the biblical one is closest to the events as they happened but that doesn't mean that I or many others are blinded by the fact that not everybody believes in the bible.
Most people who worked on the constitution and approved it were religious of one faith or another. It is this very diversity of their individual faiths that ended up in the creation of the first amendment and the religion clause. Unfortunately, some people are promoting irreligion above religion and are using evolution as a way to brainwash. You can see this on some of the posts in this thread.
TML
By every objective measure we have of the performance of public schools (granted, the tools are fairly crude standardized tests: ICTM, etc), they are doing a better job than they ever have. These test results are widely available.
This is particularly amusing when conservatives keep moaning about how we need more standardized tests. All the results contradict what they say about the public schools.
You must not think much of biochemist professors. If you would have followed the link you would have found out that he has a doctorate in biochemistry and teaches at Lehigh University. By your rights his doctorate in a relevant specialty science doesn't earn him the right to have his arguments seriously discussed. He opposes the orthodoxy therefore he must be a kook.
His points on the difficulties that evolution encounters on the biochemical level deserve more than a dismissive wave. He may be wrong, but he's no kook.
When we dismiss challenges to an orthodox scientific idea then we aren't doing science anymore but power politics. You demonstrate the point admirably.
TML
I did read a number of the critiques from talk.origins and also Behe's response. Frankly, I found Behe fairly good at responding to his critics, more than enough for me to label this challenge to the evolutionary models of today as not adequately answered.
One of the typical tactics that I found disturbing in the talk.origins archive was the use of straw men. Behe never claims that the Krebs cycle is an irreducibly complex system but Keith Robinson spends much space demonstrating that the Krebs cycle isn't and tries to claim that this refutes Behe.
Another tactic was to claim that a large number of papers actually answered Behe's criticisms but wait! If you look at another link critical of Behe, you find a critic admitting that there isn't actually much in the literature discussing the areas that Behe raises. Behe himself addresses some of these papers and complains that some are guilty of spinning stories and not providing any chemistry or math to back them up. He calls this wishful thinking "Calvinism" from Calvin and Hobbes (not the protestant reformer). He complains about the lack of rigor in evolutionary thinkers when they examine blood clotting and several other elementary biochemical systems.
The point I'm trying to make is that evolution, while clearly explaining some things, isn't very helpful in others. It certainly doesn't explain everything yet and may yet be refuted by an intelligent design argument.
I don't think that it is kooky or even particularly imprudent to be reluctant to use the coercive power of the state to mandate the teaching of evolution without at least including the serious critics like Behe.
Instead of admitting the incompleteness of evolutionary theory and taking Behe and other challengers seriously there is fury and jihad from many supposedly dispassionate scientists. The sad storyy of Forest Mims and Scientific American in 1990 is a decent example. Mims was never going to write about evolution but about amateur science projects. His belief in creationism doomed his chances for permanent hire even though everybody agreed that his actual work was quite good. What was Scientific American asking Mims opinion on a subject that had nothing to do with his prospective job?
TML
Actually he does address the point of prior function. If you are spending energy producing chemicals that don't do anything, you are evolutionarily disadvantaged and the trait would tend to disappear. He doesn't have a problem with microevolution but you seem to ignore it in your idea that there need be no prior function.
Part of the argument of Behe is that the shuffling necessary to produce these basic systems doesn't allow for enough time to randomly create all these things and that some things like intracellular transport are so easy to get wrong with disasterous consequences that a guiding intelligence is an appropriate inference to make from the irreducible complexity of the biochemical systems of the cell.
TML
Unfortunately, as other posters on this thread have demonstrated, there are atheists who try to convince others that only their beliefs are scientific and if you believe in the value of science you must abandon God. The worst part about this is that people who actually take a neutral scientific attitude don't go after the atheists with the same relish as they go after creationists who misuse science the other way.
TML
I think that both of us are saying that people shouldn't be hired or fired based on their view of evolution. But mandating evolution or creationism in the curriculum is going to lead to just that sort of result. "I won't teach that" followed by "you're fired" is a logical progression whenever you put something prematurely into the curriculum.
TML
You're not familiar with creationism are you? It does not claim that new species were created any time after the initial creation. After the
initial creation, there were no claims of new species being dropped in. Your characterization of creationism is incorrect. You're arguing against your own characterization, not the Biblical account.
Sorry, I was farther along in the argument than you were.
Allow me to reiterate: The fossil record is as valid as the historical record, as the method of extracting data and the nature of that data are both quite similar. George Washington didn't exist for thousands of years of human history, and then he did for a while, and now he doesn't. Eohippus did not exist for billions of years of natural history, and then they did for a while, and now they don't. The evidence supporting these two statements is very similar, one written on paper, the other on rock.
I have never seen an argument against the fossil record that didn't have a parallel against the historical. The basic creationist argument boils down to an assertion that information cannot be extracted from the past. It's as valid as any other philosophical argument, but should be applied evenly across the liberal arts and sciences, not just to evolutionary biology.
A change in species requires essentially that a generation be born that can breed with itself, but not with prior generations that are capable of breeding with themselves. So somewhere along the line, a change must occur that makes a generation incompatible. If that's not akin to spontaneous change after the appearance of the parent species, I don't know what is.
If evolution (Darwinian or otherwise) actually required such an occurance, I'd be the first new convert to creationism. But what usually occurs is a seperation of a species into two groups that can but don't. Geographical isolation is a prime candidate. If subspecies A is on one island and B is on another, and they can't interbreed, then given microevolution and enough time, the two groups will drift into seperate species. Natural selection and evironmental pressures will speed the process, but they're not even necessary.
Biology works in continuums, not discrete quanta. You will never be able to point at a particular newborn and declare that speciation has occured.
dbrutus (TML?) writes:
"By your rights his doctorate in a relevant specialty science doesn't earn him the right to have his arguments seriously discussed. He opposes the orthodoxy therefore he must be a kook."
No, you're misrepresenting my argument. In your terms, what I am saying is:
First, his doctorate in a relevant specialty science earns him the right to have his arguments seriously discussed, but then, those arguments being in favour of unscientific superstition disqualifies him of that right.
I'm all for opposing orthodoxy, if it is done intelligently, if it is in favour of new knowledge -- as opposed to old idiocy. Unfortunately, many people before him have showed the capability to aquire a doctorate, and *still* be kooks.
Say, what do you think of Keith Latimer's _Head of God_ theory...?
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
Hum, you have obviously never seen some rich old lady and their dogs. They would not give a penny to a begger in the street ("get a job" is their moto) but they buy premium meat for their little puppy.
When someone starts talking about his race/species superiority, you can hear marching troops in the background... because you are smarter than a dog doesn't mean you have all rights over dogs.
The one holy catholic and apostolic church. Note the small `c` on `catholic`, which is a Greek word meaning `universal`. `Apostolic` means `founded by the Apostles`. So really it means `The one holy universal and original church` - ie all denominations together. Anyone who worships God is part of the one holy catholic and apostolic church.
The great historian Philo-Judaeus, born before Jesus and living long after the time of his reputed death, lived in Jerusalem during Christ's miraculous birth and the Herodian massacre?
Umm, no, Philo lived in Alexandria. Sorry.
no. evolution is not a fact, it's a theory. The theory tries to create a best fit with the facts. Remember classical physics? it fit reality quite well up to a point. later we got all the quantum physics stuff, which happened to fit better (note: I'm not a physicist, so I won't go into specifics here, they'd be wrong anyway). I guess my point is that IMO for now evolution is the leading theory, uintil someone comes up with something better.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
How many Atheist are in the house? (1)
What many creationists don't understand is that when you disprove a part of a theory, the theory adapts to take in the new evidence. I would like to see the Bible be that flexible.
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Truth is a weak foundation. Mathematics is on no firmer ground than evolution. Godel and Tarski showed that mathematics isn't about truth, it's about logical relationships between statements. Your system is never any better than your axioms, and no finite set of axioms can ever suffice.
You know, I wish someone had told me that back in preschool. I went through most of high school and college thinking that I knew what Math and Physics was about, at least on a fundimental level.
Now I know that I don't know anything at all, and I won't be able to figure it out until I've learned a large part of it. For example:
Math: I remember the day I was introducted to imaginary numbers. You should have seen how pissed I was. Here I was in 10th grade, and now I was being told that there was a whole new number system out there. Or how about when I learned about "artifical" answers one can almost always get when solving a divergant set of equations. You told me for years there was no answer, now there is?
Physics: Classical Physics was easy. Okay, now I can build anything. What? You mean there are special relevtistic issues that need to be taken into account sometimes? Okay, most of the time? I always wondered about "frictionless" air too. So all those equations I learned really aren't right? Why didn't my high school teacher tell me that?
Most sciences are taught from the top down, increasing and clarify details as you do along. To me this represents a lot of unlearning. Maybe I'm different from the rest of the world, but so far high school/college has done nothing but mislead me. I personally wish we where taught from the group up. Yeah the ground is really shaky, but at least it's something fairly FIRM to stand on.
Maybe it would take us longer to learn stuff, but at least you would know I we really KNEW it, instead of forcing us random trivia.
As with any new skill you plan on absorbing, the most efficient method is to find somebody that already knows it and exchange ideas. The point is that you're more likely to be receptive to somebody's ideas if you go out and find them and ask them than if somebody else decides what you will and will not learn on your own. To quote Plato - physical excercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body. Education, when compulsory, obtains no hold on the mind (sorry if I mangled the quote).
And as to 'limiting' other people to learning on their own.. that's gotta be about the most absurd thing I've heard all week. If you'd like to go into that further, I could make the assertion that the sum of human knowledge was created by self-taught people, and passed on so that each successive generation could improve upon the design(s) and idea(s).
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Me and the Mrs don't currently have any rugrats running around, but if and when we do, I'll be hard pressed not to home school the child(ren). I have a strong background in the sciences and the Mrs has a strong background in the liberal arts (i.e. history and english). And the way things are going, I'm frankly very very scared that if I send my child(ren) through the current school curriculum that any inherrent intelligence that they might have would be systematically squashed and ruined. In fact we're both so concerned about this state of affairs that it has become a real issue in the discussion of whether or not to have children. This angers me beyond belief, and saddens me that the state of affairs has been allowed to progress so far down this spiral into oblivion. And the things I see at the collegiate level aren't helping my state of mind. The other day in my data structures class the professor was talking about algorithm analysis and had written a statment that contained the expression: log(base 2) 2^10 The rest of the expression was simple arithmetic operators. When he turned to the class, expecting somebody to respond with a numerical answer, he was met with blank stares. Then people started reaching for their calculators. I barked out then answer (which I did in my head, as I realize that log(base 2) 2^10 == 10). He was so flustered that people were having to reach for their calculators that he dismissed class right then and there. It was a very wrenching experience. The other students weren't morons, they simply had never learned mathematical relationships on even the rudimentary level. I suspect in every math class they had ever had they've solved every problem by reading an number from the glowing screen of their TI-whatever calculators (btw I'm a non-trad student, and actually had to work all this stuff out by hand at some point). This may seem a bit off topic, but the general philosophy is the same. In the attempt to "protect" our childrens "emotional fortitude" we're effectively creating a whole generation of people who have been trained from the very outset of their educational experience to blindly believe whatever "glowing screen" is presented to them. I seem to recall that one of the reasons for getting an education was to allow you to approach the world with an objective eye with a focus towards discerning elements of truth within the maelstrom of life that surrounds you. I think it is dangerously unfortunate that we are systematically stripping from our children the very tools they they require to be contributing members of an ever increasingly complex world. "Facts are stupid things..." --Ronald Reagan
RFC2119
In the hospital, I give antibiotics to patients with blood infections. While the drugs work for a period of time, often times within a week the population of bacteria in the patient's blood gets resistant -- that is, the bacteria population has _evolved_ and is now immune to the effects of the drug. The ones that were susceptible to the drug were killed, the remainder lived to breed another day & flourished.
This is evolution in its most easily observable form, and is indisputable.
Using evolution to describe the origin of our species is necessarily more difficult, as the evidence is not as readily observable as a population of rapidly-dividing bacteria.
Regardless, the basic theory needs to be taught. Period. It is fundamental to the study of biology, and any kid that doesn't get exposed to it is being cheated.
Let people learn the bedrock basics; allow them to draw their own conclusions about the broader applicability of the theory. Kids deserve as much.
docwolf
I'm interested to know how many states have laws forcing teachers to teach about creationism. Does anyone know? I hope it's not beyond New Mexico...
Rajiv Varma
-NT-
+&x
This is a bad example If the distance from one brim to the other was 9.7 cubits, then the circumference is closer to 30 cubits than 31. Therefore, measuring to the nearest cubit, the figures given are perfectly legitimate.
(Even the alt.atheism FAQ dismisses this one as a red herring.)
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
What is forward, what is backwards? Evolution is about what works now, not some ideal. When the climate gets colder, things adapt or die. When it gets warmer, things adapt back. (Gould's essays have more than a little to say about this...)
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Personally I'm a creationist, and all I want is to not be insulted by teachers. I have no problem with evolution being taught in schools. I don't care if creationism is taught in schools. I object when stereotyping of any sort is taught in schools. Calling all creationists fools is stereotyping. Particularly as you haven't met a majority of creationists, and it's an area where a small group gives the rest a bad name.
All I want is for people to respect my right to my own beliefs, just as I respect theirs.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
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You gotta admit, beliefs are odd.
Some Christians wear crosses around their neck. Do you think, that if he comes back here, he's ever gonna want to see a cross again?
Creationists believe that the earth is 6,000 years old. I ask them how they get that number.
"Well, we take all the people between now and Adam and Eve, add them all together, and it comes to 6,000 years. Roughly."
"Well, how scientific is that? I mean, how can I argue with that. But can I ask you a question? It's a one word question."
"Sure, go ahead."
"You sure?"
"Yep, shoot."
"Dinosaurs?"
"Well, uhh. God put those there to test our faith."
Well, buddy, I think you're here to test my faith.
"Okay, so where are the dinosaurs in the Bible? 'And JESUS and his DICIPLES rounded a corner and there was a giant BRONTOSAURUS. And the deciples ran, but JESUS was unafraid. So he went to the dinosaur, and pluck'd a splinter from his paw. And they became friends, and the dinosaur went to Scotland and lived in a Loch. And hundereds of years later, all the fat American tourists come with their fat dollars. And how the scots did PRAISE the LORD!'"
-
Have you ever noticed that people that believe in creationism look really unevolved?
---
From http://www.billhicks.com, dead heroes and all that rot.
Dan
Hehe, good end comment. I'm not a last word freak, I just thought that was funny.
Some of the worse ones?
They were right about all of these. Whether the answer has to do with air resistance, technical quantum mechanical definitions, or general relativity...
But I will never forget reading that list of assertions for the first time. I wish that they had kept it.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
The whole point behind this debate is what two different sets of people believe compared to what is taught in schools. Personally, I don't think we should teach either method in class. Why? Not because, since I don't believe in one that neither should be taught, but because we have no honestly, universally-accepted set of facts that proves or disproves either theory.
Oh, but we do!, you say. X-number of perfectly renowned scientists say that ABCD happened and the world began evolving! OK, but its still a theory because it can never be proven. Never. Again, why? Because not one of us was around when the world began, and no records were kept of this event (save the Bible, which we are deliberately excluding since it is not independent of both theories, and its accuracy cannot be proven or disproven at this time), so there is no concrete evidence.
The next question that will probably be asked is, then what's the point of teaching any theories? By my logic, they shouldn't be taught because they are still unproven theories. My answer: Teaching the theory of relativity, etc, is valid because we have records, evidence and so forth, based upon humanity's evaluation of the Earth which support those theories' existance. Creationism/evolutionism do not have this data because we didn't get to writing anything down until a few thousand (give or take) years after the event. All that, and the fact that equations can be proven simply because there will (hopefully, though we don't know, so we call it a theory) be a set of valid answers that, when compared to each other, prove their parent equation.
very good point. I wouldn't even know what the hell algebra was if it wasn't for school 'forcing it down my throat'
Asks the great news-paper "The Onion", instument of the rich, pacifier of the poor, americas finest news source, on its July 20, 1925 front page. "Scopes monkey trial raises troubling question: IS SCIENCE BEING TAUGHT IN OUR SCHOOLS? Should children be exposed to facts? are reason and empirical evidence suitable school subjects?" Clearly the answer to thes questions is no, as a man who holds that the welfare of the country takes precedence over any other human concern, I must stand firmly against the teaching of Science in our schools. This Science has already caused turmoil among the god-fearing readers of Slashdot, americas second finest, and most accurate, news source These peoples had no wish to know that they, as human creatures, may have descended from apes. What if Science were to champion other truths, provable and real, which people do not want to hear? For example, god forbid, what if Linux were proven by Science, to be superior to any version of Windows? The peoples reaction would cause division and conflict in our nation, nay, in our world, that would doubtless outweigh any benefits of the actual Scientific discovery. Should we teach our children facts? No, I say, a thousand time no! As they grow into tomorrows farmers, housewives, mill workers, and microsoft executives, facts are the last things they will need. Manners, subservience, above all, obedience! To speak only when spoken to, to standardize on one platform, and to not cause trouble! These are the principles upon which our educational system was founded. Why in the name of god should we replace it with a system that actually encourages the ignorant man to ask questions? A good citizen does nothing of the sort. He is content with the reasons he is given by his betters. Humanitys noblest heroes were not men who cared about facts. They were men who stood up for what they believed in, to hell with facts! To hell with any truth not their own! Our most cherished heroes would fight to the death, bludgeoning their enemies repeatedly, wholly uninterested in whether they were right or wrong. Once something is accepted as true, it should be true forever. This noble ideal, with its emphasis on unquestioning acceptance and obedience to authority, is what we should teach our children. It is the rock upon which we have built our government, our religion, and our American way of life, and it is the very ideal that science seeks to thwart with its new "discoveries" and impersonal ledgers of "facts". Learning! Why should we provide our citizens with learning? Does learning mathematics aid a man who will spend the rest of his life smelting iron in a foundry? Does knowing that man comes from apes, if he indeed does, which seems to be the subject of some debate, change the lot of the farmwife who spends her years shuttling barefoot between the birthing-bed and the milking-stool, as is proper? I say it does not. Furthermore, it fills the brains of children with useless facts which does not help them become better American Citizens. Does a fact have any inherent moral value? Does Science? We know that science allowed the Germans to develop the mustard gas,the motor-gun, and techno music. Has religion ever been used in such a fashion? With the exception of the holy hand grenade of antioch, no. Is it possible that we, with our motorcars, and aero-planes, powered by our internal-combustion engines, have already started us down a slippery slope of our destruction. We were not content to stay with time honored steam, to travel in our dignified trains and coach-and-fours, but we can take action now, before ape worshipping scientists turn us one against the other. We must cease our march of progress now, and there is no better way to achieve this than to keep the hellborn demon Science, and his diabolical Facts, from coming into contact with our children.
This is ON topic. As well, I believe, it might be advised that you and I (or anyone else) should NOT move to this particular state (or do business with it -- or the students of it).
.... tell me WHY?!?????!!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!!!
Am I wrong? Do NOT rate me
Yeh, we should kill all the non-beleavers
Throw them in concentration camps, test stuff on theM!
Christianity gets more like nazism every day!
Go off, read some FAQs...
The fact is that not only are Creationist arguments wrong, they are incredibly bad and typically dishonest to boot! They range from faked data to deliberate misquotes to misunderstandings of basic physical laws!
Yet ignorant people will continue to assume that somehow Creationism is equivalent to Evolution. And - because they choose to remain ignorant - they will never learn differently.
*sigh*
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Can you provide references? I am very curious about this matter. I have a friend that claims she can argue for the existence of god through the law of identity. We are still researching our sides, and so I haven't been exposed to her "evidence". I would like to know what to expect though.
Books Online has some essays which argue against the existence of god. For example:
Plea for Atheism.
Two books which address atheism:
"What is Atheism?" by Douglas E. Krueger
"Philosophy & Atheism" by Kai Nielson (just started reading it)
Ironically, I find CS Lewis to be a good proponent of atheism within his works wich argue for god. Example: "The Problem of Pain"
I don't recall where I got this from, but I had this had this bit saved on my hard drive:
In 1897 the Indiana state House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill setting pi equal to 16/(sqrt 3), which approximately equals 9.2376.
I have no clue whether it's true.. but it's certainly funny.
Right on.
I spent a large chunk of my morning playing with a demo version of macromedia flash 4. Everything i know about computers is self taught, and it only took me half an hour to come up with a nice simple animation. This is because I was able to experiment with the program, I was not limited by what people had taught me about computers.
In fact, i know people who are learning computers in school (this is in Australia, btw) who don't even know what Windows95 is. They simply assume that it is what all computers are like, and they don't know anything different. If you put one of these people onto a computer system that they are unfamiliar with (ie a Macintosh), then they can't use it, as they don't understand the basic concepts behind it.
This can be applied to other areas as well, such as the way students are taught to write in high school. The teachers don't encourage students to be imaginative, or to come up with new ideas. I consistently got low marks in high school, not because i was stupid, but because the learning environment did not suit me.
life is a canvas/and the paint is hope and promise/the world is ours/no one can ever take it from us.
Truth is a weak foundation. Mathematics is on no firmer ground than evolution. Godel and Tarski showed that mathematics isn't about truth, it's about logical relationships between statements. Your system is never any better than your axioms, and no finite set of axioms can ever suffice.
What you've described is exactly why mathematics isn't a science. Mathematicians define axioms, scientists make empirical measurements -- whether you like it or not, there is an independent reality distinct from how you define your axioms.
Serious scientists in fields connected in any way with Evolutionary theory do not seriously believe in Creationism. In fact the basic tenants of literal interpretations of Creationism were discredited as far back as the early 1800's when it was shown that there had been no World Flood covering England (and marks that had been taken as evidence for that were actually left by ice sheets). This predated Darwin considerably.
Why not educate yourself a little?
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
"The language is highly symbolic."
Just curious... how do you determine which
language is symbolic, and which is "FOR REAL"?
You seem to claim "dragons" and "bowls in the
sky" are outrageous. I'm just interested to hear
why someone being killed and resurrecting them-
selves is somehow more plausible.
Enlighten me, please.
-WW
Why is it that nobody can get it right. The Kansas change only removed evolution from required curiculum. As a results students wouldn't be tested over it and teachers can teach what they want. This leaves the decision up to invidiual districts not the state. Read the minutes of the meeting for more information.
you'd think god could spell revalations right. guess he's got his mind on other things
The talk.origins faq is ripe with lots of info on evolution, fossil records, etc., with which to debunk the views of your not-so-friendly neighborhood bible-thumper www.talkorigins.org
I didn't know this was happening anywhere. I thought even in Kansas they were just not teaching anything.
Anyone know other states that are teaching creationism?
If I were a student at a school teaching creationism I think I'd sue saying it was unconstitutional(1st amendment).
Your argument seems to be the "theistically guided evolution" that around 40% of Americans believe in (just behind the 45% or so that believe in creationism, and way ahead of the 15% or so that don't involve deities in their evolution). This makes some sense, if Genesis is viewed as allegorical, rather than literal, but viewing the Bible as anything other than literal tends to annoy a great many fundamentalists. There's also the slight problem that in Genesis plants are created before the sun is created, which is not how evolution worked.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Just for accuracy's sake, Dinosaurs are not actually lizards. Scientific proof exists to say that they were warm blooded, and it is believed (by evolutionists) that they evolved into birds.
life is a canvas/and the paint is hope and promise/the world is ours/no one can ever take it from us.
They seem to be splitting things up into "macroevoloution" and "microevoloution" with some hazy distinction between the two they never really get into. I mean, where's the line? I'm sure they would rather not have to pay attention to that, but you can't completely _ignore_ it; i mean, genetics isn't something you can ignore, and what they call "microevoloution" can kill you, since diseases do it constantly.
Just for the record, microevolution and macroevolution are not words made up by creationists. Microevolution is the change within a species, but not resulting in the change to a new species, i.e. moths that change wing patterns based on the change in available resting places, but are still able to breed with the "old wing-style" moths. Macroevolution is the change of a species to a new species, i.e. the "new wing-style" moths would not be able to breed with the "old wing-style" moths.
Where does "microevoloution" stop and "macroevoloution" start? You can interbreed dogs and get new things; so are all dogs related? What about wolves? At some point in order for creationism to work you've got to point at one specific thing that begat all doglike creatures, or all catlike or cowlike or undersea protazoa or fish. But are all fish from the same ancestor? What about sharks? They're a lot bigger. Things get very hazy, especially if you pay any attention to the fossil record. You start looking for the one ancestor of all those things and find it's pretty similar to a lot of other things at that time.
This was covered in my previous explanation. Creationism doesn't group things into "doglike" and "catlike" or "fishlike". Likewise, biology deals with specific species. Can a dog and a wolf breed? If so they're the same species. Can your two example fish breed? If so, they're the same species. However, for the point of evolution, "doglike" and "catlike" do have meaning, because we're trying to determine common ancestry of modern (or fossil-record) species. Just don't confuse the statements of evolution and creationism. Another misconception about creationism is that it explains all current species. It doesn't. Don't forget that those that beleive in the Biblical creationism would also beleive in Noah's arc, in which two of all creatures existing at that time (not necessarily those that were at creation) were loaded into the arc, and that current species are descended from those.
Oh, that's right, carbon dating is all lies. But then if THAT'S true, we've got to reevaluate a LOT of history, since we base dates of certain early historical things on carbon dating and similar technologies. All our dates must be wrong. And what about atomic science? it describes exactly how and why carbon dating works; if carbon dating is lies, then that means our entire hypothesis of nuclear decay is totally wrong.
You're right about that. If the theories of nuclear decay are wrong, then that changes a lot. The point that scientists supporting creation make is that it's possible our theories on nuclear decay are wrong, and that the rate of decay is not constant (i.e. we haven't been observing decay for 5700 years to know for sure the half-life of Carbon-14, and haven't observed that the protons emitted by the sun for the past 700 centuries has been a constant (i.e. the decay is caused by proton bombardment, and 700 centuries is the "upper limit" of C-14 dating).
You can't really put creationism in a school. It isn't science.
I agree. It isn't. I certainly wouldn't support the presentation of creationism as science. But please don't make the mistake that everything in your science book is good science either. See things like: there is no gravity in space, sound travels better though solids and liquids than air, friction is caused by rough surfaces, infrared light = heat, rainbows have only seven colors, laser light is "in phase", air is weightless, water drops are "pointy ovals", batteries store electrical charge, hot water freezes faster, water drains clockwise/anti-clockwise depending on your hemisphere, etc. So I wouldn't call Creationism science either. But then I would correct all the falsehoods that are taught as science also.
On the other hand Revelation is presented as a vision. Genesis as history. In addition the entire tone of Revelation is symbolic, whereas Genesis obviously intends to record history.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
>I can imagine how it would start out: ::Lights are dimmed.::
>
>
>
> (Booming voice) "In the beginning, >there was darkness..."
How about:
There's a theory called evolution which most scientists today accept . . . (explanation of evolution). It still has some flaws however such as (list flaws), and not everyone believes in it."
Was that so intolerable?
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
I intend to explain a rather basic idea, though I have a feeling that the explaining could get rather long. At any length, I plan to show why creationism (or more accurately evolution-backlash) is gaining a resurgence currently.
I think the major conflict between the the creationists and evolutionary theory is the misunderstanding of what evolution really is. Most people who believe in creation over evolution do accept micro-evolution (to not accept that bacteria evolves to become resistant to certain antibacterials would be to accuse scientists of outright dishonesty, not just misinterpretation of evidence).
The major sticking point for creationists is not in fact evolution but biogenesis. How life came about. And even more importantly (though it really doesn't fall into evolutionary theory) how the universe came into being. Those asserting that man did not come from animals are in a similar camp to those who's basic aversion to evolution theory concerns biogenesis: They for the most part seem to be in acceptance of evolution of animals as long as it does not concern man (the 'in the image of God' argument).
Neither of the above standpoints is necessarily exclusive of evolution, and in reality this is the great pitfall for Christian thought (or any other creationist thought, for that matter). Evolution is conceivably compatible with liberal Christian theory. It in effect has to be, for as it must do with all strongly founded scientific theory, to be viable Christianity must accept blatent reality.
It is not however compatible in a lump sum, because big ideas do not become blatent reality until smaller parts from which they are derived become so.
Christianity for a very long period of time accepted that species were static groups. Extinction was unfathomable (consider Noah's Ark...). Yet there came a point when the existence of extinction was undeniable. This accepted, it follows that species must also be newly formed to replace the old. This laid a strong groundwork for the idea of a changing world. The rejection of instructionalism (if not the whole of evolution) and selectionism's later support from genetics made microevolution nearly common sense. And today, as the human genome is being mapped and the patterns of similarity and dissimilarity between species are plainly discernable, evolution is becoming even more than scientific fact (or very close to scientific fact). Evolution is becoming an obvious reality. By this I mean it is becoming an underlying postulate of the common sense of existence. Like gravity, it will be taken for granted.
That said, the cause behind the current evolution hostility may not be obvious. The near-acceptence of evolution by common sense and the near-compatibility between evolution and Christianity is a greater threat to Christianity than any radical (and incompatible) theory could be. The acceptance of evolution by the mainstream has been an erosive effort--as I demonstrated earlier.
Evolution is derived from a number of small, easy to swallow (for the most part) ideas. So why does this present a problem to, for example, the Kansas school board? Simple: as it comes closer to being common sense, those people can see it in a more well-defined light. Suddenly it becomes apparent not only what evolution means (how acceptable it is) but what ideas may be derived from it. Returning to the beginning of this post, three major ideas that may be derived from strict evolution are biogenesis, man as a higher animal, and big bang-ish genesis (or others; I sort of like Stephen Hawking's idea of a vague non-beginnig as opposed to a distinct, pointed singulatity).
As acceptence of evolution is not counter to the church in itself, rejection on a large scale becomes very difficult. Those who see the possible results have little recourse but to make evolution more loathesome by tacking on these possible derivatives to the evolution bandwagon. It is only at this point that they can point at evolution and say 'This is what they believe. Do you really want to believe this?' and present a converse to the added-on ideas. Creationism and creation science don't really address the core of evolution. Fortunatly for truth the manipulation is all too obvious.
Jose M. Weeks
jmweeks@cord.edu
None of us were around when the USA was purportedly founded! How can you teach that stuff as fact?
Ridiculous, isn't it? But the fact is that your argument against evolution is no less ridiculous to anyone who has bothered to learn about the subject. So why not get some basic information?
Sincerely,
Ben Tilly
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Oh gawd yessss, where can I sign up for this!!!
In fact, I thought Tolkien WAS god for at least
a few months after I read the trilogy....
-WW
It is interesting because it is polotics. and polotics affect every one no matter how you view religion.
Can I Play With Madness?
Anyone mind telling me what the answers to numbers 2 and 3 are? (Number 1 has to do with the skinny man catching more air resistance per unit mass, I'm presuming.)
> they're just deluded... believers in faith
I wouldn't have a problem with that. If they weren't trying to brainwash schoolchildren into the same delusion.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Number7 dun said:
At least in Kentucky's case, evolution isn't against the law (yet) nor do they have to teach creationism (yet)--it's more of a matter of the word "evolution" being dropped and the definition of evolution substituted.
In this case, I expect this was done to make it harder for the Religious Reich in Kentucky to try to mount a legal challenge. (As it is, the entire school reform program is under attack by the Religious Reich because the school system now recognises the idea of multiple intelligences and much of the system is set up similar to gifted/talented or Montessori schools.) I'll also note that this was basically done by the superintendant of public schools without the permission of the teacher's council, and the latter are QUITE angry over it.
Sadly, I can understand why they'd want to cover their arse over it. When I was young and stupid and didn't know any better and hadn't walked away yet, I went to a fundy church in Kentucky that is, for all intents and purposes, the headquarters of the Religious Reich in Kentucky (I can't give out any more details, or I would have to post this as an Anonymous Coward--suffice it to say the Kentuckians on the list will recognise the name of Frank Simon [for those of you outside the state--he's essentially a little fundy who wants to be Fred "godhatesfags.com" Phelps when he grows up, and has distributed libel-rags claiming all homosexuals are members of NAMBLA in grocery stores when the idea of banning discrimination against gay/les/bi/trans folks came up--in the city of Louisville I'm proud to say he was told to Fuck Off]...he happens to be a deacon at the church in question.) The church, in addition to being the de facto headquarters of the Religious Reich in Kentucky, also happens to use coercive tactics and can be described as a Bible-based cult not unlike that whole "Brownsville Revival" crap in Pensacola [same denomination, yet]...I can testify that the people there are NOT the most stable individuals in the world, and it doesn't help that a fair number have practically been brainwashed from birth.
It also doesn't help that a fair percentage of Kentucky's population doesn't vote, to the point that the Religious Reich has more power than one would think in terms of population (this is pretty much true all over the US, though--so kids, if you don't want the fundies dictating what to do then VOTE and if you're of legal age run for local offices--even school board. Vote, even if you have to write in "None of the Above" or Bill the Cat or Dunkelzahn the Fuckin' Dragon). At least two persons on the General Assembly (Gex Williams {R}, who [thank the god and the goddess] is no longer in office, and state rep Tom Riner [R] [who is so far in with the Religious Reich that he's campaigned on the grounds of aforementioned fundy cult in direct violation of Kentucky and US elections law, and is a member of the Council for National Policy which is pretty much the major think-tank/brains nationally for the Religious Reich])...at least they're still being able to teach evolution.
That's not the only crying shame, really...two school districts in rural Kentucky are STILL fighting to try to put the Ten Commandments up in the classrooms. Almost twenty years after a US Supreme Court order to remove them. (And yes, I WOULD find the Ten Commandments in a classroom as offensive AT THE LEAST--as I noted above, I'm a walkaway from a fundamentalist group that could be described as a Bible-based coercive group that did many of the same nasty tricks as Scientology tends to do--including trying to ruin the lives of people who are outspoken against them, the fundy version of "engrams" ["deliverance ministry"--in essence, any doubt you have about the church is the result of demons that must be "exorcised" or prayed out--the Scientology version {replace demons with engrams} is known as possibly one of the most damaging tactics used in coercive groups], and other fun stuff. Even now, over thirteen years since I walked away, it is STILL painful for me to look at anything of a heavy Christian bent, and for someone walking away being exposed to tools used by the group that used to abuse you can be damaging. [It would have been twice as damaging in my case, because I would have probably known several of the people who pushed for it.] Even now, sometimes when the local fundies are really pushing for something I feel trapped like they're trying to suck me back in-- which is a common fear of walkaways, even if the group you walked away from hasn't taken over a major political party in your state.)
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
As in the talk.origins FAQs.
The truth of the matter is that the case for evolution is very strong and the basic theory has had no serious scientific challenges in 80 years. The common Creationist arguments are very weak and are generally based on misinformation, misunderstanding, and more than a few cases of outright deception.
Sincerely,
Ben Tilly
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
What does that have to do with anything? Does your english book foretell micro-processors? Does that make it invalid?
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
This could lead to even larger battles between those who stand for Creationism and those who stand for Evolutionism. Since we have whole states as the key players, it could become very serious, and even more so due to the small amount of mediocrity on either side.
Please help! I'm stuck inside my virtual reality headset!
Lets get a few things cleared up. First of all, I am a strong believer in the Theory of(or as your website put it, fact Therom of) Evolution. All that I am saying is that its still a theory. Logical thought points to the gradual change of genetic information over time, but no one has actually proven it.
You also referred to fossils. If the earth suddenly appeared (or was created in six days), which I'm not saying it was, then why couldn't all the fossils be there in order to mislead people. And although this can spark a totally different debate, if you could prove Creationism, it would take the whole point out of religion, which is based primarily on faith.
All I am saying is that you can't simply assume that his happened or this happened, like you did. As good of a theory as it may be, its still a theory, and you have to explore alternative possibilties.
Peter Pawlowski
See things like: there is no gravity in space, sound travels better though solids and liquids than air, friction is caused by rough surfaces, infrared light = heat, rainbows have only seven colors, laser light is "in phase", air is weightless, water drops are "pointy ovals", batteries store electrical charge, hot water freezes faster, water drains clockwise/anti-clockwise depending on your hemisphere, etc. So I wouldn't call Creationism science either. But then I would correct all the falsehoods that are taught as science also.
---
I gotta ask, what dumbass textbooks have you been reading?
What you are trying to say is not coming across right. You obviously do not read up on the theory/belief of Creation by a higher being, so your statement is chuck full of inaccuracies. Most devout atheists are good at ignoring facts and turning away from anything that poses a challenge to their fractured way of learning. Lets piece apart your arguments, shall we? "macroevoloution" and "microevoloution" are 2 different things, first off. Second, who is it that you are refering to? To blindly assume that human kind evolved from some unknown, unreported creature with no scientific proof is not very scientific. Hog-wash would be a better description. "they _start_ with claiming that man are not directly related to bacteria", again, who is refering to this? Please do not quote Jerry Fallwell. There are "quacks" in every camp. If you are refering to the idea that some Creationists use the "primordial soup" with God adding in the dumplings and cabbage to make it all work, this is hypocricy at its worst. I neither condone nor advocate such hog-wash. And those skelatal remains you are refering to are not complete. Matter of fact, no complete skeleton of man earlier than 30,000 years is "complete" from head to toe. "Lucy" was a hoax/mistake and folks fell for it. Hook, line, and sinker. (And no, I am not talking about the hit 50's series TV show) Carbon dating is as much a method of interpretation as it is a tool. Why is it that no method of carbon dating has been established that reproduces the same results within 1500 years? the farther and farther back that "scientists" try and use carbon dating, the less and less accurate their findings are. to the point where dating an actual object just 3,000 years old (catacombs in egyptian salt mines) shows that human remains are nearly 50,000 years old? C'mon. Science are art are more alike than what humanists care to believe. You MUST put forth creationism if you are going to teach evolution. Notice, I said "teach". NOT PREACH!!! There is a difference. God Bless.
I'll give you a counterexample of scientific dogma. My 7th grade science teacher gave me this one and I've encountered it at higher levels as well, the a priori exclusion of God. I've heard it in many forms but it boils down to "we can't put God in a lab and run him through experiments so we aren't even going to deal with the question of his existence".
Barring God coming down and demonstrating his existence in a direct fashion (which most christians call 'the end of the world' see the book of Revelations) this scientific dogma denies God without using the scientific method. How are you going to 'adapt and evolve' science when you deny Him a priori?
Intelligent design is taken into account in archeology. Pathology takes it into account when it considers whether a death is an accident or a crime and other branches of science can use intelligent design as well. But somehow when it comes to biology and biochemistry it is a scientific heresy to consider intelligent design.
TML
A mormon biology teacher? I hope that he actually teaches science and doesn't try to brainwash the kids(i.e. he teaches evolution, and not creationism?)
My biology book listed flaws in evolution. And it refered to it as a law. No I can't think of them all off the top of my head at 2 in the morning.
For starters there are still "holes" in the fossil record. And the most compelling examples of macro-evolution I've heard of involve birds which nobody (including the biologist's working with them) can tell apart without practically disecting the things.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
There are many ambivalent posts here that I empathize with. Let me try to explain why this strikes nerves.
There are two perennial sectarian subjects that seem to seek a focus at any opportunity: the exalted status of faith and the old ideological 'fight for the children'.
If you listen long to Christian media, you will sense a preoccupation with persecution. The Christian is under siege. The mass media consists of "anti-Christian bigots". Gov. Ventura is a bigot. When it is suggested that 'bigot' does not apply to ideological matters, that pure assertions should be taken on their own merit---that faith must merit respect and not be guaranteed the dispensation of respect---a peculiar sort of cult insanity is exposed. The burden of proof lies completely on the believer and not on the unbeliever or the disbeliever? The Romans used a stake for crucifixion---at no time anywhere did they employ a crossbeam? The great historian Philo-Judaeus, born before Jesus and living long after the time of his reputed death, lived in Jerusalem during Christ's miraculous birth and the Herodian massacre? He was there for Christ's supposed grand entry into Jerusalem and for the crucifixion with attendant earthquake, magic darkness, and resurrection with the many witnesses to his heavenward ascent that amazed the world? And he makes no mention of Jesus or anything remotely like this story in his comprehensive history of the Jews during his life? The only other autochthonous historian, Justin of Tiberius, was a native of Galilee and in his incredibly detailed history we know how the crops did in each of these years, masses of political gossip, and have complete martial account of the land without a single mention of the savior?
This is war! Attend Christian soldiers! This "free inquiry" is conspiracy! Myth discrimination! The Focus on the Family Christian Attorney's mailing list starts chugging. The Religious Liberties Protection Act has just passed in the House. CBN calls scientists elitist "bullies" (this from the chosen people). There is now an act in the New York senate introduced by Sen. Maltese making it a crime to "ridicule religious beliefs or practices".
One prime front in that war is for the minds of the children. I attended a Catholic pre-school! I once read, "With other subjects we wait until the child has the mental maturity to grasp them. We do not start a child on analytical chemistry or solid geometry. We begin with small numbers and lesser skills in every subject---except religion. [...] other subjects wait, until the child is old enough to understand and evaluate it. But, for religion and the churches, it is literally the child or nothing; for if they fail to get the child, it is a matter of time before they get nothing."
Even if we're talking about high-schoolers, mature minds, there is a desire for no discontinuity between early Sunday school and secondary education in these ontological matters. Mention in the context of science ironically reifies the Creation as a scientific 'live option'. I remember coming around about the time I read this by Arthur Schopenhauer, "There is no absurdity so obvious that it cannot be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to impose it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity."
The resort to force of force when force of reason does not apply keeps its edge for all its repetition. It's the hot button for many like me. The Mediterranean societies of the time of Paul's Gospel weren't in a substantively inferior position to Enlightenment Europe; the western world seemed then poised for a scientific revolution. What came next is known as the Dark Ages: a supranational theocracy. So, unfair as it may be, I now see these ideas as arresting the development of humanity for over fifteen hundred years. Evolution is at least constructive. How much do you want to give up for a fable? Is all the allegory in history worth kissing Hank's ass?
Ok, I'll admit that I'm a theist, and a rather naive one at that.
I disagree (about the naive part.) You make perfect sense to me.
It's just too bad that some people are convinced that they will be sentenced to eternal torture for using their own brains, curiosity, creativity, and common sense. Makes you think, doesn't it?
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
You sound a bit like a Cartesian. Truly a thorny corner to get out of.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
and of course, they should teach the story of Ainulindale, the opening chapter of Tolkien's Silmarillion, which is also a creation myth. Equal time for that too...
life is a canvas/and the paint is hope and promise/the world is ours/no one can ever take it from us.
Could it be that what creationists want is for evolution to not be given a state endorsement? Could it be that it isn't ramming creationism down people's throats that is the current situation but ramming evolution down people's throats? Read Darwin's Black Box and tell me that evolution is proven enough that we want the state to endorse it as a mandatory part of instruction and that it should be on the mandatory state tests. Diversity of permissible opinion is what creationists want because, frankly, creationists aren't that unified among themselves and it would be preferrable for the coercive power of the state to stay out. TML
That is funny as hell:
"Should children be exposed to facts? are reason and empirical evidence suitable school subjects?" Clearly the answer to thes questions is no"
ROTFL
Neither way is TELLING PEOPLE WHAT TO THINK. One way says what science supports, the other (Creationism) NOT. And that is it.
... !!!!!!!
Do Not Say That Science Supports Creationism (OR Even Imply It -- That Is Bad!!!!!!!)
Science Says Evolution.
Non-Science Says NOT.
Science is WAY more likely since it is based on THE WORLD AROUND US!!!!!!!!
OK, I guess we're talking about christianity then?
...... Discuss.
Before I get to the point of my post, I'd like to point out the following paradox: As I
understand it, God created light, and then
he created the Sun.
Now then... the part about what order the animals
was created in is not quite right. First
there was Adam, and then Eve was created from
one of Adam's ribs, right? And then God created
all the animals, which Adam then named...
presumably in Latin?
Let's not even get into how God created the
heavens and the earth on the same day... Unless
you can explain the quasars that are billions of
years older than earth...
The mind boggles.
-WW
The loophole in QM allows non-conservation as long as it is below the limits of direct measurement. (You can measure statistical effects from it, but not direct events.)
To take an extreme case, general relativity allows time-machines to be built. Consider a box that passes backwards in time only to later on be passed into the machine. In other words there was a time when its energy did not exist, then it came through the warp, and then it went away again! This is a loophole through which one could (literally) drive a mack truck!
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
I have encountered many claims of mysterious arguments that were supposed to be very persuasive. But I have yet to encounter one that is not in what you admit to be the category that 99.9% of them are in. Which is to say utter BS.
So rather than just say that such arguments exist, please give me tangible evidence for them. Otherwise I will have to relegate it as another "Just so" story to go with the Lady Hope lie. (She was the one who claimed to have been at Darwin's deathbed and that he renounced evolution and accepted God. His family claimed that she was not there and his actions do not fit with her claims either. But many people believe that "Even Darwin renounced Evolution in the end" but do not know the source of the story.)
It is about as believable as yet a Microsoft press release unless you can give me something resembling specifics...
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Check your K-12 textbooks. They draw water drops as "pointed ovals", claim that laser light is in-phase light, that batteries store charge, that water goes anti-clockwise down the drain in the Northern hemisphere, and all the other things I said. These are all incorrect or misrepresentations of what is correct. I didn't make these up. They're in common classroom textbooks. You were never taught *any* of those false things? I doubt that seriously.
"Was that so intolerable?"
Uhh, yeah?
How about:
I asked how you would teach creationism, not
how you might bash evolution. And before you go
into the "flaws" of evolution, be sure you cover
all the huge mounds of facts and evidence in
favor. It's always nice to present the full story.
-WW
is that the earth is pretty much in a black hole(very very close to one) and that screws up all scientific laws so that's why the light seems to be from so far away(the problem with this theory is that all the light waves here would be fucked all to hell and it would probably look pyscedelic)
or maybe that light used to move faster than it does now
grabbing at straws guys, grabbing at straws
Behe's book is about abiogenesis, not evolution.
Anyways, if you are interested in the subject, why not start with some critiques (which lead to links both pro and con). Or a biologist's critique.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
I guess /. doesn't like me to use greater-than, less than. That should have said:
How about:
(INSERT FACTS IN FAVOR OF CREATIONISM HERE)
...
I am in no way endorsing the decision in Kansas, and I beleive that New Mexico did the right thing. However, it is naive to think that biologists today have all the answers. Survival of the fittest is a good model, and much can be explained by it, but it is mistaken to believe that Evolution has anything to say about the ORIGINS of Life on Earth. Stanley Miller's experiment proved nothing, and most people in the biology community realize this. Think about diamonds created from peanut-butter in a lab. It is doable, but it has nothing to do with the way natural diamonds were made. Similarly, it is routine these days to order custom made oligonucleotides, which are easily made, yet their method of manufacture has as little to do with the origins of life as Miller's manufacture of amino acids, yet naive people cling RELIGOUSLY to millers results.
======
"Cyberspace scared me so bad I downloaded in my pants." --- Buddy Jellison
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Or maybe the great flood happend, but they used the bible story to explain it. History tells us, religion is used to explain the unexplainable.
I'd have to disagree with you on this one.
The point I'm about to make has been raised in this discussion already, and undoubtedly will be again, so I may be moderated down as "Redundant." However, I'm not sure you noticed it, so...
The decision can be interpreted (at least) two different ways.
They're trying to promote teaching of Creationism instead of Evolution, which seems awfully lame, and Judeo-Christian centric. Not something most people look for in a school, especially not a public one.
They don't think either should be required. This is way different from the first one; it allows the decision to filter down to a lower level. Do you see the distinction I'm trying to make? One way, they're telling people what to think; the other way, they're allowing people to make their own decisions. The Pi incident was of the former, while I'd like to think of the Kansas decision as being in the latter category. This way I can approve of it, instead of being disgusted by it.
-Matthead
I'm a homeschooler who is basically self-taught (maybe I took French). I would still say that I know more the most of me peers in more subjects. While I'm technically doing 9th grade work, I already understand algebra (anybody want to tell my Mom that...) and don't even study for History.
I already understand Physics and haven't ever taken a class on it. I've never taken a class on programming, and yet can write Java, Perl, C, C++, Python and UNIX shell.
More reasons that self-taught is better:
I. Learn what you like.
II. At your own pace.
III. In the manner the you like.
IV. It has been said that to truly master a subject, you must teach it. In essence, your teaching yourself.
In conclution, with very few exeptions, it is much better to be self taught. (note: there are many more reasons, I just write them all in)
That's my $(2^4*3+1/7%3*2/100)
--Justin Mitchell
"2nd Place is a fancy word for losing" --Bender (Futurama)
You're right about that. If the theories of nuclear decay are wrong, then that changes a lot. The point that scientists supporting creation make is
that it's possible our theories on nuclear decay are wrong, and that the rate of decay is not constant (i.e. we haven't been observing decay for
5700 years to know for sure the half-life of Carbon-14, and haven't observed that the protons emitted by the sun for the past 700 centuries has
been a constant (i.e. the decay is caused by proton bombardment, and 700 centuries is the "upper limit" of C-14 dating).
B***sh*t. It's neurton bombardment, and if you question that, you're questioning a lot of scientific law's including gravity, nuclear fussion, etc.
There are a LOT of reasons to accept these presumptions of C-14 dating. Maybe we're wrong
but then you better come up with some solid scientific agrument (or a url to it). Otherwise
i prefer to believe the theories i've confirmed with experiments during my education as a phyiscs
student.
You can't really put creationism in a school. It isn't science.
I agree. It isn't. I certainly wouldn't support the presentation of creationism as science. But please don't make the mistake that everything in your
science book is good science either. See things like: there is no gravity in space, sound travels better though solids and liquids than air, friction is
caused by rough surfaces, infrared light = heat, rainbows have only seven colors, laser light is "in phase", air is weightless, water drops are
"pointy ovals", batteries store electrical charge, hot water freezes faster, water drains clockwise/anti-clockwise depending on your hemisphere,
etc. So I wouldn't call Creationism science either. But then I would correct all the falsehoods that are taught as science also.
most of the things you say there are actually "right", exept for the hot water thing. Here "right" means in the meaning of "an apple falls to
the ground when dropped".
This isn't allways "right" and completely accurate, but it's what i mean by "right".
You can't just teach children all the things
"right" to the point where contemprairy science
understands them. Even 10 years of university
education isn't capable of doing that to the brightest of students.
better come up with something better if you want to convince me that evolution is generally wrong.
greetings.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Why should states explicitly teach anything? Do they explicitly state that they plan to teach arithmatic?
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
Funny how my post suggested giving all the evidence in favor of evolution. And in fact did not suggest teaching creationism.
I love having my words twisted.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
For once I'm happy to say I live in New Mexico. I heard about this a couple of days ago but I figured as usual we were just catching up to everybody else. Good to hear though, this state has a real problem with the quality of it's education system and I see this as if not a great step forward because evolution is already taught, at least it's not the steps backward I've come to expect from the people in charge here.
While the school board may have come to more or less a good overall decision, Sanchez's statement shows that she does not understand the basics of evolution either.
Evolution has absolulutely nothing to do with how the Earth was created. Evolution has to do with how species change. And calling the evolution the leading theory of how the earth was created (or even if we describe it more accurately, in terms of species changing) is like calling gravity the leading theory of why things fall to the Earth.
I guess you can't expect politicians to understand science.
-Dan
Come On -- This Is About Science, NOT random religion. Does the BIBLE foretell micro-processors?
The theory of evolution [...] holds that man is the descendant of apes
This is one of the most common bits of misinformation about evolution; in fact, Homo sapiens does not derive from any current species of primates, sharing with them only common ancestry. The fact that a major news site like cnn.com is spreading this notion only goes to show just how well-informed about the subject most of the world is. With [sarcasm]quality information[/sarcasm] like this, no wonder people are so fiercely opposed to evolution.
Frankly, I thought someone at Slashdot would have already brought this up, as it's so blatant.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
There is no 7,000 year chronology in Catholic doctrine so your point on carbon dating is untrue for a huge chunk of christianity. Ditto for the Orthodox and that section of protestantism that does not use a literalist interpretation of the Bible.
Science and religion do not necessarily have to be in contradiction. Where do you think Gregor Mendel was when he was growing those pea plants? He discovered the science of genetics working in the garden of a monastery. Try going out to the jesuitical observatory out in Arizona and argue with the tens of Jesuit/Astronomers that the pope funds to advance our understanding of the heavens. Let's not even try to categorize the important medical science work that is done at Catholic Universities and hospitals because the list would just be way too long.
It's exactly this kind of broad brush, false, misleading, anti-christian bigotry that drives the religious up a wall. You don't read what people are actually saying on the other side of the issue or you encounter a few yahoos and think that everybody on the other side is the same. Try reading Darwin's Black Box for a more serious discussion of the problem of intelligent design and evolution.
TML
Ooo, here's another juicy bit in Bible I just stumbled across in verse 26: "And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness... Cool, what would the fundamentalists think about the evident plurality of Gods as expressed in this particular verse?
You wouldn't offend any intelligent Christians that have read with a critical eye. Consider the first commandment: Exodus 20:2-3 : I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. [3] Thou shalt have no other gods before me. A lot of people think God meant "money" or "power" or a dozen other things here when He said "other gods". But then when taken in context to your comment, and the fact that the seventh plague was done to show that God was more powerful than the god of Egypt... the Bible absolutely admits there are other gods.
As a longtime resident of New Mexico and witness to many many boneheaded things coming out of our leaders I have to say they did at least this thing right! Kudos!
Calling all creationists fools is stereotyping.
There are people who still believe the world is flat an the round earth thing is just a big conspiracy.
Would you think that calling all flat-earthers fools is stereotyping?
Actually, I personally wouldn't, but not because I think they're right.. it's because I think stupidity is not necessarily the reason for their belief. I think there are other causes for people to believe in Creationism.. social factors and being taught it at a young age, as well as psychological comfort, and a host of other reasons that have nothing to do with "being fools".
This is sad. Truly sad. So many people engaged in what has to be the most pointless argument of all time (evolution and creationism answer two entirely different questions; they don't conflict at all and it's quite possible that they could both be right or both be wrong).
I should also point out that people here are severely overreacting to the Kansas decision, mainly because of a rather key piece of misinformation: Kansas does not require schools to teach creationism. All the law does is say that evolution is not a requirement; no new requirements were set (therefore, most school curricula were not affected in the least, since most biology teachers prefer to teach evolution).
Look. In the end, both theories are technically myths (or theories; use whichever term you prefer but it applies equally to both) anyway. We're never going to be able to conclusively prove either one unless someone gets a time machine and goes back with a camera. Personally, I'd love to see both turn out right, if only because the looks on the militant creationists' and militant evolutionists' faces would be priceless. Until that happens, the only truly honest and fair way to teach is to tell it like it is: we don't really know how life got here, here are the major theories, here are the flaws and merits of each; you'll have to decide for yourself what you believe.
For the record, I believe both. Evolution answers how life got here but never touches on why. Creationism provides a reason why but never states exactly what happened ("God said 'Let there be light...' and there was light"; gee, how descriptive). That's the strange part of things; religion deals with cosmic purpose, science deals with cosmic order, yet somehow people have gotten it into their heads that two things which deal with completely different matters somehow conflict.
>In addition the entire tone of Revelation is symbolic, whereas Genesis obviously intends to record history.
...admittedly it's a while since I read it. In any case, it seems to me that here language is used for purposes outside their usual meaning. In this respect, it is similar to Revelation. I agree though that its tone is quite distinct from Revelation, as you might expect given the character of the events each covers.
I agree the later chapters are far more historical; but the first few chapters
i) use words like "formless void" - I don't think the Hebrew for this is found anywhere else in the Bible. I also seem to recall mention of waters surrounding the earth...breathing life into dust, etc
ii) are similar to Revelation in that they present a story, but also simultaneously speak about deeper issues like human nature (eg. it was not good for Adam to be alone) or the nature of evil (in both the Fall and in Revelation). Both present such issues in concise pared down expositions making heavy use of symbols. eg. the apple, the fig leaves, etc. Note that I am not saying they didn't exist; rather, that these symbols and the resonances they have for us are at least as important as the historical content.
iii) repeat themselves, like Revelation. Note that the two separate accounts of Creation in Genesis are not identical in order and such details; but that hardly matters. Each account makes a different point, much as the cycles of symbols in Revelation look at identical events from different points of view and emphasise different themes, without worrying too much about being able to correlate everything between each cycle.
remove the sz's from my email to use it
n biology classes, should the teachers explain
that "when humans die, their bodies decompose and
they become food for worms. Also, some people
believe ghosts or spirits rise out of their bodies
and go to heaven."
Nah, they should do that in Theology classes,
along with explaining that some other Humans
believe that they'll enter another body (reincarnation), etc.
Believes are to be taught in a theology class.
Like Buddism, Jewism, christianism, Hare Krishna,
etc.
greetings,
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
>Before I get to the point of my post, I'd like to >point out the following paradox: As I ...... Discuss.
>understand it, God created light, and then
>he created the Sun.
The sun provides light. If our sun disappears that does not mean that light no longer exists. You could still light a match.
>Now then... the part about what order the animals
>was created in is not quite right. First
>there was Adam, and then Eve was created from
>one of Adam's ribs, right?
Yeah.
>And then God created
>all the animals, which Adam then named...
>presumably in Latin?
No, in the language that he was inventing at the time. Naming animals for the first time would probably constitue inventing a language.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
When something is found to be wrong scientifically, science drops it (or evolves the prevaling theory to include it). Religion never does this.
That bears repeating: Science changes with the evidence, Religion is about Dogma and never allows evidence to stand in the way of its mythology. Its the flashlight versus the bucket. Science is about looking at all the evidence, religion, when it looks at any evidence, is about only picking out those pieces that comply with dogma and ignoring everything else. So your examples are wonderful proof that science is indeed a pursuit of the truth, and not about preaching its dogma as some creationists have claimed. When new evidence comes to light, science, unlike religion (and creationism) adapts and evolves. Religion forces, science convinces.
--
Python
Python
First of all Columbus sailed over 500 years ago, not 400.
More importantly the argument brought against him (based on the Ptolemaic theory) was that the distance to China was too far and he would surely starve. And they were right! Had he not encountered a continent, he would have starved! (He was pretty close to it at that.)
Don't believe me?
As for what you said about my knowledge of evolution...put it this way. What you say shows charming faith in your world view. You did follow the link? If so then please explain to me about how series of transitional fossils (esp. ones showing things that Creationists think did not happen) can be shown to be as strongly evidence for Creationism as it is for evolution?
Similarly if I attempted to clear up some of your mis-conceptions, would that support the theory of creationism?
Come on, the theories are different and the differences are testable. The fact that the answers to the tests are not what you might want them to be are not my fault!
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
"What is the difference between man and beast? Man has a soul."
That's strange, I thought it was just that we
had an opposing thumb.
Please define what a "soul" is.
"The second G*D gave humans a soul was when humanity was created."
Please let me in on your definition of "humanity."
"And although science might seem in opposition to
G*D at times in the end it corrects us and only
brings us closer to and understanding of
his glorius world."
Interesting. Does god own all the planets in the
universe, or just earth?
-WW
Science thinks that evolution is true, and that that is the only possible explanation without a God, but that many people believe God eally did create us, and evidence exists to back them up.
Actually, science does not at all indicate that evolution is "true" and the "only possible explanation". Why? Because the entire point of science is that nothing is ever certain. Evolution is the best explanation given currently available evidence. It is no more deemed "true" than Newtonian mechanics was a hundred years ago before Einstein. If a evidence is found to support a different hypothesis, THAT will become the new primary theory.
Far from ever saying that things are "facts" or the "only true explanation", the power of science is in its flexibility and openness of amendment.
And those skelatal remains you are refering to are not complete. Matter of fact, no complete skeleton of man earlier than 30,000 years is "complete" from head to toe.
Gee.. y'think that being in the dirt for 30 thousand years will do that you? You seem to be implying that "incomplete" means "completely invalid". If you met a person with one arm amputated, would you say, "I'm not sure you're a human being because you don't have all four limbs"?! No! You'd see that the person is really similar to human beings in most ways, but for the missing arm, and extrapolate that the arm used to be there but is simply there no more.
"Lucy" was a hoax/mistake and folks fell for it. Hook, line, and sinker.
Mind giving some EVIDENCE of that?
Ok, I'll admit that I'm a theist, and a rather naive one at that.
:) Not terribly enobling.
The first time I came accross the term "Creationism" was as I started delving into science and reading about evolutionary theory, etc.
Personally, I think it's quite interesting, our theories and ideas with respect to how the earth came about, and where the moderm man came from. Plus, the evidences for these things do indeed provide some good material for thought.
But that doesn't kick out the idea of a God, does it? I mean, if I was God, and I had to explain the whole thing to an ancient Human trying to write the book of Genesis, I wouldn't start out with "First, there were these microbes...." No, I'd say something like "OK, day one - organize some matter, day two - provide some light, etc." Plus, imagine how Moses woulda felt if God went and told him that, ultimately, his human body is a descendant of some pond scum or something.
Now, I realize that this kind of talk is heresy to some fundamentalist types out there. But, after all, just what IS Creationism anyway? Couldn't it be evolution after all?
I want you to experimentally prove George Washington to me.Reproduce the man and all his acomplishments in a lab. We can't, and we can't "prove" he existed, but will still teach it. Natural history got its name for a reason, and like all historical sciences, it is not well suited to laboratory experimentation. Like all geologic-scale systems, it is even less suited to observation.
This invalidates neither the science nor the conclusions we draw from it.
I'm not sure I see the connection to science here. The record on George Washington is fantastic, and witnessed and recorded first-hand. I understand your point about the fossil record having to stand for lack of a better one, but remember all the gaps it contains. However, "George Washington" is not a scientific theory. The scientific method doesn't apply to "reproducing a man and all his accomplishments". In my number of comments on this topic this evening, I have not said that I think macro-evolution is a bad theory. I think that considering the evidence, it is an excellent theory, but that it has failed to prove that changes of species occurred in the case of humans.
We prove Washington existed by looking at the record he left behind, and we can do likewise with previous pecies.
Again, "Washington" is not a scientific principal. He was not a species or change of species.
If spontaneous generation of species occured, something better would have come along and either ate them or starved them out.
And this has happened repeatedly, regardless of how species came to be! What is your point here? I'm not trying to be argumentative; I'm trying to understand how what you're saying relates.
Consider our teeth. I can't explain our teeth from creationism. Why would a benevolent God give us teeth that, without constant care, rot out of our mouths in less than half our life span? Especially when the Supreme Engineer already had a better system in place in sharks? But I can explain them from natural selection. Our teeth lasted for most of our ancestors lives, and certainly all through the breeding years. We don't have better teeth because we didn't need them. We do now, but natural selection, unlike God, has no foresight, so we live with imperfect teeth. A relic of our past.
Well, if you're going to ask those, then there are lots of others to ask too. Thinks like "Why does God let bad things happen to good people", and "how does gravity work anyway?". I certainly don't have the answers. It's entirely possible that natural selection and adaptation explain it perfectly and are 100% correct. Your comment about teeth having been good enough for our ancestor's lifespans is an excellent theory, similar to the one about the fact that women run out of eggs in their ovaries at about the same age that most of our teeth are "beyond hope" . The same explanation sounds excellent for both: our lives were shorter when our modern biology was "cemented". I certainly don't claim to have the answers. My training was in science as well; I am not a "rabid creationist". I am, however flawed it makes me as a scientist, a creationist nonetheless. I fully concede that creationism isn't scientific in the slightest. But my former statements stand as a made them: Macro-evolution isn't necessarily good science either. Time may prove it to be correct, however. Micro-evolution (evolution within a species that doesn't result in the creation of a new species) certainly panned out well.
If you want to learn alot about the creationists and other losers, and the logical arguments which they use and how easy it is to counter them, try reading:
7 0/o/qid=939537846/sr=8-1/002-6994426-57644 52
Why People Believe Weird Things : Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time
At amazon you can read some VERY good reviews at this address:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/07167338
This book is written by one of the founder of the Skeptic magazine, which is VERY good and centers around creationism and other pseudosciences, and how to counter them. Very very good reading, you can find it in ANY place with many magazines, ie Barnes and Nobles. The current one is about the cloning debate, but it covers more topics. Go fo it, and try this book, it is amazingly great, well written and interesting for any one 'amused' by all this movements.
Very well said! Someone needed to say it!
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
In general, the only difference between a law and a theory is that a LAW can be described by a formula, I don't remember the formula for gravity, but it's something like F = G*m1*m2/d^2, (force = the gravitational constant times the mass of both objects with the whole thing divided by the distance of the objects squared), or I could be wrong though (esp. about the squared part).
Obviously, you can't derive a mathematical formula for evolution, but it doesn't make it any less true. In fact Newton's theory of gravity, what you were probably taught it school is 100% false. When you're dealing with speeds nowhere near the speed of light, and with objects about the size of atoms, it yields pretty accurate results. When you remove those restrictions, however, the thing falls apart. So, in fact Evolution is much more true then Gravity
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
hot water freezes faster [than does cold]
Forgive me for a minor degree of pedantry, but I believe that it may be incorrect to assert that high school science books err when they teach that "hot water freezes faster than does cold". The following URL may prove to be of interest: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/ physics/hot_water.html.
For those of you struggling against Creationism, here's a very good web site called Talk.Origins :
http://www.talkorigins.org/
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
Thank god there's some people with brains in the state legistlature!!! Everyone spread the word, and lets get the rest of the country on the bandwagon -- Evolution must be taught. When the states explicitly teaching Evolution hits the tens or twenties, we can ask Kansas and Colorado to think again.
---
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# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
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Do you have some sort of basis for this belief?
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
More to the point - how many of you out there learned to use computers on your own? For those who are largely self-taught, how many of you would rate yourselves as better than your school-shaped counterparts?
--
The only way I could ever imagine it being "taught" is through "sunday school"...which really isn't school...it's just indoctronation.
I most certainly could not see creationism being taught in a "real" class..like A.P Bio...there's no academic rigour to apply to it, no scientific studies done on any of the postulates...even the "religion" courses that I took had more rigour involved then this.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that you can "teach" a scientific theory, and verify it through experimentation (that's what those "labs" were for after all). You can only "read" religious theories, or state what they are...the reasoning behind it shouldn't really be teachable material, except maybe for history class.
Furthermore, evolution is a falsifiable theory and is thus not "just as much religion as creationism". Creationism rests on untestable beliefs (i.e. religion); evolution does not.
I ask for flaws that you want presented and you can only come up with straw men like those?
Here, let me direct you at a reference for why there are and always will be gaps in the fossil record. And as for the birds, are you thinking of the se gulls? In which case your comment about dissecting the things is completely wrong. And while they make an extremely nice example, first of all do not be fooled into thinking that they are the only ring species. Besides which, there are lots of other reasons to believe in macro evolution. Or perhaps you forget what led Darwin to look at the theory of evolution?
Right, something completely different.
I am still waiting for a flaw that we are supposed to teach...
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
No matter what legislators think, the teachers don't ingrain either into the minds of students. For example, at my High School, whenever the issue of "How did we get here?" comes up, the teacher takes an extremely neutral position. Little, if any, debate occurs on this issue, mainly because students recognize that there are two sides of the issue, and nothing that they can say will change other's views on such deep issues.
As for what is officially taught, evolutions is presented not as the actual truth, but rather as a theroy, and faults of Darwin's Theory as stressed as much as the actual evolution. Teachers don't want to risk their jobs and money trying to teach students theories, rather they simply let students think what they want. This is where the parents come in. The issue of origin is rooted deeply in religion, and just like abortion or the death penatly, it is the job of the parent to help form the opinion of the child. School will not teach you a choice on abortion, just like it's not the job of the school to teach you your stance on evolution. Students are made aware of the theory of evolution, but their stance is shaped primarily by their parents and faith.
Peter Pawlowski
Written by Catherine Faber, performed by filksinger Kathy Mar. You can download it on MP3.com
The Word of God
From desert cliff and mountaintop we trace the wide design,
Strike-slip fault and overthrust and syn and anticline. . .
We gaze upon creation where erosion makes it known,
And count the countless aeons in the banding of the stone.
Odd, long-vanished creatures and their tracks and shells are found;
Where truth has left its sketches on the slate below the ground.
The patient stone can speak, if we but listen when it talks.
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the rocks.
There are those who name the stars, who watch the sky by night,
Seeking out the darkest place, to better see the light.
Long ago, when torture broke the remnant of his will,
Galileo recanted, but the Earth is moving still.
High above the mountaintops, where only distance bars,
The truth has left its footprints in the dust between the stars.
We may watch and study or may shudder and deny,
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the sky.
By stem and root and branch we trace, by feather, fang and fur,
How the living things that are descend from things that were.
The moss, the kelp, the zebrafish, the very mice and flies,
These tiny, humble, wordless things---how shall they tell us lies?
We are kin to beasts; no other answer can we bring.
The truth has left its fingerprints on every living thing.
Remember, should you have to choose between them in the strife,
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote life.
And we who listen to the stars, or walk the dusty grade,
Or break the very atoms down to see how they are made,
Or study cells, or living things, seek truth with open hand.
The profoundest act of worship is to try to understand.
Deep in flower and in flesh, in star and soil and seed,
The truth has left its living word for anyone to read.
So turn and look where best you think the story is unfurled.
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
There is nothing "intellectual" about creationism; the entire concept is faith-driven. You can't know, you didn't see it, you can't even ask your all-powerful God who must have initiated it (he doesn't take questions from mortals).
If you've got any intellectual arguments for creation, let's hear them. Maybe you have a certified letter from your deity that you'd like to scan?
--
Uhhh, that would be because MY original post
was asking the question, "How would you teach
creationism."
You answered it by saying you would just state
there is this other "theory" called creationism,
but no facts provided. I don't consider that
teaching at all.
-WW
Evolutionist : "Look how all the slow and clumsy Dinosaurs died out while the agile and quick mammals survived"
That's a pretty poor evolutionist. Dinosaurs out-competed mammals for millions of years. We didn't get our chance until they died off, an act that was completely independant of furry little forebearers.
it is good to hear that New Mexico has a clue.
Now, as for schools that don't, there is something I should point out:
Why just the Christian creation story?
If schools still continue with the Colorado or Kansas paradigm, then they must not only give equal time for creationism to join to evolution, but also the following theory, which I believe deserves equal time:
The universe came into being when I thought it up,
back in 1975.
All of it, including the memories and history of people of days prior to 1975, were things I contrived in order to give the world context.
It is not enough to teach creationism. Solipsism is a valid theory that deserves equal time.
"Most devout atheists are good at ignoring facts and turning away from anything that poses a challenge to their fractured way of learning."
Please, enlighten me with some facts. Creationists
are great at trying to tear evolution FACTS apart,
while offering none of their own. All you've done
is try and dispute some small pieces of evolution.
Why not offer some proof for Creation? Perhaps
because you have none?
"I neither condone nor advocate such hog-wash."
Well then what DO you condone?
"Carbon dating is as much a method of interpretation as it is a tool."
So you are familiar with the science of
carbon-dating? How much carbon-dating have you
ever done, personally? Lot's, I'm sure.
"Why is it that no method of carbon dating has been established that reproduces the same results within 1500 years?"
Let's pretend for a minute that you're right
about the "1500 years" comment. 1500 years is a
DROP IN THE BUCKET. Barely a blip on the calendar
of our planet's life (roughly 4.5 billion years).
A 1500 years versus 4.5 billion is the same as
comparing 0.00000003 to 1. In other words,
insignificant.
You're trying to paint 1500 years as a long time,
because our calendar is only 2000 years old. But
when you compare it to our planet's age, it tends
to pale in comparison, doesn't it? In fact, 1500
years would be like me guessing your age to within
a few picoseconds.
So please, try again.
"to the point where dating an actual object just
3,000 years old (catacombs in egyptian salt mines)
shows that human remains are nearly 50,000 years
old?"
Please, where exactly are you getting your info?
I forgot, Creationists don't need to cite refs,
just point to the holy book.
"You MUST put forth creationism if you are going to teach evolution."
Why MUST we? Because you believe it's true?
Back in Galileo's time, would you have been
pleading for "earth-centered universe" teachings
as well?
In biology classes, should the teachers explain
that "when humans die, their bodies decompose and
they become food for worms. Also, some people
believe ghosts or spirits rise out of their bodies
and go to heaven."
Is that what you're after?
I would prefer my children read fairy tales in
their spare time, not at school. One shred of
concrete proof would be nice to show in your
favor.
For example, I would LOVE to hear an example of
a presentation you would give to students on
creationism.
I can imagine how it would start out:
::Lights are dimmed.::
(Booming voice) "In the beginning, there was darkness..."
-WW
Creationists won't see reason on this. That's why they're Creationists.
Science and evolution triumphant equals a populace that are no longer dogma-ruled sheep. If Creationism is false, then maybe the Judeo-Christian God is false. If God doesn't exist, you automatically become the reponsible party. If you can't reason about something as basic as this, how could you handle that?
It says something about human nature and why change hurts... look how fervently people cling to this myth, rather than simply restructure their view of reality and their own place in it.
Listen... let me tell you an open secret. God is dead. I killed him. He didn't make any sense and it was a mercy to us both.
If something better comes along, believe me... I'll part ways with evolution for the thing which better fits the evidence before my very eyes.
Razor Blue, TechnoMage
shackled to tranquility / silenced for eternity / four walls no windows / in your bounding box
Razor Blue, TechnoMage
shackled to tranquility / silenced for eternity / four walls no windows /
The whole idea of _forcing_ teachers to instruct on anything that has not been conclusively proven is in and of itself very disturbing. Neither Creation nor Evolution can claim to be proven and both sides depend on faith in the overall theory to fill in the gaps in the evidence.
You need to teach how life works and what makes up organisms the food chain etc... Extinct creatures are a part of this. Students should be left to conclude for themselves weather T-Rex and Bronto turned into birds, were splattered by an Asteroid or just missed the Ark.
There is evidence and reasoning to support each conclusion. Nobody has conclusive proof.
Evolutionist : "So you think 'god' had a reason to make Mosquitoes and aquatic slugs ?"
Creationist : "You really think these animals exhibited better abilities to survive than all those things that went extinct ?"
Evolutionist : "Look how all the slow and clumsy Dinosaurs died out while the agile and quick mammals survived"
Creationist : "And what exactly dose a Crocodile have over a Raptor that would make the latter extinct ?"
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
After Kentucky and Kansas, it's nice to see a state with some stones. It's a crying shame that this is even an issue in this day. I say, everyone who pushes creationism, since they are so against any sort of real science, should have their computers, phones, microwaves, TVs, VCRs, etc. taken away. If they want to think in the 14th century, let them live in it.
As an aside, this is also the state who's governor thinks that the US reconsider the War on Drugs(tm), as the failure it is. Freethinking state; I may have to move there.
Once, in the wilds of Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew and had to live on food and water for a number of weeks.
Are you telling me that you are not uninformed? Evidence please.
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
is taught as if it's the truth.
When evolution is taught, the theory is stated, then evidence is shown. I mean, noone (intelligent) questions whether animals do change over time - biological evolution occurs. There's a difference between evolution - and evolution that leads to humans. Teaching evolution is like teaching anything else like Physics - it's what we can observe happens.
When evolution is taught, it is rarely shown as "this is the way we all come about believe it or be damned" - it's saying "this is what happens as we can see it - and then extends on that with more theories".
When religion is taught, the teachers (usually christians or the like) will run around stating things as if they are facts, scary kids into it by talking about HELL and what is good and right. Morals, Ethics, etc are relative....some parents might not want their kids taught that they will go to hell if they don't pray to jesus every night etc etc.
Creationism is religious - and religion MUST be seperated from the state. Teaching evolution teaches kids facts and science. Teaching creationsm teaches many things which only the parents and the children should discuss themselves until the children grow old enough to make decisions for themselves.
Usually when creationsm is taught - it's christian type stuff - why isolate all the other creationist theories?
I don't think I'd have too many problems with creationism being "introduced" to kids as a theory and if they were taught to examine it...what's right about it...what does make sense...etc. Not "Jesus died for us all...blah blah blah blah blah". That's what I was taught in primary school.
The Urban Legends Reference Pages at www.snopes.com list the pi==3 story as "false", although there was a similar effort in Indiana in 1897.
Actually they can according to an extremely amuaterish and ignorant theory I have. I figure that if there are a finite number of axioms in the universe and that truth does exist, then all axioms must be defined recursively. Think of the dictionary. Every word must be defined using another word in the dictionary. Look up the word 'the' once and see how often the word 'the' appears in it's own definition. 'The' is an extreme case. Logic concludes that all words in the dictionary must be defined recursivly.
I also think that the more axioms there are, the more fully the axioms are defined. Just like the dictionary. If there was only one word in the universe, the dictionary wouldn't be very usefull. Two words is a little better. A hundred words are much better and start to yeild meaningful definitions. So on and so on.
Hmmm. I wonder if someone has already thought of this. Probably, because I am not very smart.
klh@sedona.net
--
Evolution may or may not be true. The relevant question for any school board is 'has this idea proved its case?' Should the state be involved in excluding alternate theories by making the teaching of this particular theory mandatory? When the state gets involved in supporting one or another scientific theory, we should react with caution, even alarm. Try looking at Lysenkoism to see how dumb an idea this can end up being.
I'm aware that Stuart Kauffman has interesting things to say about complexity theory and evolution, not that he seems to have garnered a great deal of support in the academic world for his position, but the relevance of computer scientists and physicists to biochemical and even anatomical biology doesn't lend them much credence over the ideas of any other logical minded, sober layman IMHO.
Science, even evolutionary science, doesn't necessarily imply atheism but there are idiots who twist and misuse it to advocate atheism (funny, I don't hear as much moaning and groaning about this as I do about crank creationists). It is this unscientific attempt to debunk God that has conservatives among others up in arms. The pope doesn't have a particular problem with evolution as a mechanism that God used to make his creation. And that's as it should be. Religion's in the truth business too.
Science is the struggle for truth no matter where it leads you. But atheism cloaked in science says that a priori you can't include God in the mix regardless of whether or not he exists and is acting or has acted on a system being researched. That's like the little boy hiding behind one finger. Evidence of intelligent design should be as valid in evolutionary biology and biochemistry as it is in archeology and pathology.
When anti-religious bigotry travels under color of science is it any surprise that people of faith resist it? The crank who defends God doesn't effect the existence of God any more than the crank who defends Darwin say anything about the validity of Darwinism. But there are real scientists who question evolution.
I strongly recommend Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" for a biochemical look at evolution and the current problems it has. You can find a link at Behe's page as well as links to criticism of the book and rebuttals to the criticism. Does Behe prove his case? Well enough for me to say that the state should not give evolution a monopoly position in the curriculum.
TML
Faith is "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." Belief on the other hand has intelectual basises.
I have faith in God, I believe in creationism.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
and i didn't have christianity foisted upon me. I had never heard anything about teaching creationism at all, in fact. Good though! I would have been highly irritated. I commend the board on their 14-1 decision, and wonder what that one guy was thinking.
Juln
May I make the point that it is now 3 in the morning where I am, and I've been argueing for several hours straight. Tommarrow I'll pull out a textbook and provide some examples.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
by the existence of the whole debate. Creationism (as well as ban of abortions, prayer and ten commandments text) is a part of religion, and in this country religion is declared to be separated from state. So there should be no any possibility that state-sponsored schools will teach religious belief as fact or theory, mo matter what.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I doubt it, but I guess that's religious bias.
THANK GOD THAT WE ARE NOT MOST OTHER COUNTRIES WITH RELIGIOUS CONFLICTS.
MANY, MANY PEOPLE DIE (DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE) AS A CONSEQUENCE OF HOLDING A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW IN OTHER COUNTRIES BASED ON RELIGION
LITERALLY I THANK GOD THAT I LIVE HERE IN THE UNITED STATES!!!!!!!
So what IS true? Correct the mis-information here and people will read it and know the truth.
My point was that I wouldn't.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
Well, I suppose (judging from the record 15xx posts to the kansas article) this is destined to be an article whose comments have very deep involved threads, so I guess I'd better get myself at the top of one.
I am a firm beliver in science above all other explainations, so I think this is a good thing. I have never understood how people could rationalize the whole "teach evolution and creationism" thing, since in order for that to make sense, you would have to teach about every single creation story to keep them on equal ground (this being the "point" of teaching both, the real point, of course, being to prevent the teaching of either).
Btw, using the scientific method, I do not actually completely dismiss the biblical "theory" of creation. I simply assign it a very low probablity.
I am also amused at Kentucky's decision to change the wording from evolution to "change over time" as tho that makes a difference.
To those of you who think there is a fundemental difference between adaptation and evolution, you are wrong, but it is probably pointless to elaborate (again looking at the kansas posts).
I'm not sure that's true. Einstein was one of the founders of quantum theory, as well as special and general relativity, so he certainly understood the theory. I think he meant, when he said "God does not play dice", that although the experiments indicated entirely probabilistic effects at the fundamental level of Nature, he thought that if only we could understand it a little better, perhaps by uncovering something even more fundamental, we would see that the apparent "probabilities" are just due to our lack of knowledge. This hasn't happened yet!
David Bohm's book "Wholeness and the Implicate Order" presents a version of quantum theory that is non-probabilistic and non-local at root, using hidden variables, and there are some others as well. But the vast majority of physicists reject these.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Can a dog and a wolf breed? If so they're the same species. Can your two example fish breed? If so, they're the same species.
Hmmm. I suppose that would mean that when we all call a horse and a donkey two different species, we're all wrong? They are bred regularly and the result is called a mule.
But there are certain realities here.
We've got a mountain of evidence for evolutionary common descent. If this was a topic that did not conflict with people's religious views, nobody would even be debating this. It would be as widely accepted as the Blue Sky theory. Here's what we have:
- The fossil record
- Comparative anatomy
- Comparative embryology
- Comparative biochemistry
- Genetics
.. and the list goes on and on. All of these individual fields of study point to one thing: evolutionary common descent as the source of biodiversity on Earth. Now, "scientific creationists" can do whatever is in their power to exorcise these topics from public schools. But they do so at the risk of the education of our young people. And they do so while conveniently ignoring two basic facts:- Evolution says nothing
.. repeat, nothing about where life came from.
- Science does not rule out a higher power as a guiding force behind evolution.
The bottom line is that equating belief in evolution with atheism is indefensible. 500 years ago, people were convinced that the Earth was flat, and that it was the center of the Universe. And then along came Copernicus and Galileo, suggesting that we were a small, uninteresting ball of rock that was movingThey did things to Galileo; let's not talk about that.
Guess what? People eventually learned that their faith was just as valid on a tiny ball of rock as it was when they were at the center of the universe. And as a hopeless optimist, this is where I see the evolution "debate" going; literalist creationists will eventually stop trying to place limits on the power of their God, and they will come around. Those that don't will quickly fade out. This is a process that is known as "natural selection."
Yes, I believe that I live on a tiny ball of rock orbiting a main sequence star located in the suburbs of a very large spiral galaxy. Yes, I believe that the evolutionary precepts of changes in the gene pool over time have resulted in the diversity of life on our small planet. No, I don't believe that all of this has happened in purely naturalist terms that modern science can currently understand.
So, literalists: Stop putting words in my mouth.
Thank ya verr much.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Nerd are supposed to like SCIENCE. And this is about the politics behind an issue where people ignore the basic ideas behind science.
If we are to take the early chapters of Genesis absolutely literally, then of course the answer is yes, the two are irreconcilable.
However, very few Christians read Revelation, the last book of the bible dealing with all the apocalyptic end of world stuff, and expect to see literal dragons, bowls in the sky, etc. The language is highly symbolic. Mightn't we expect that descriptions of Creation, a situation also far outside of the environment our languages evolved to describe, might be symbolic too? And in that case, do we really need to take a Highlander-"there can only be one" approach?
The order of Creation, etc in Genesis is broadly compatible with evolution (emphasis on broadly here). However, it is unlikely that the intention of the author was to give a scientific account of Creation. Science isn't what the rest of the bible is concerned with; relationships between God and each other are. The Creation vs Evolution debate is IMHO not only pointless, but demonstrates a lack of appreciation for the orthogonal roles of Big Bang-Evolution type ideas of science and the Why am I here-What is the point etc type ideas of the early chapters of Genesis.
remove the sz's from my email to use it
That is basically what you are saying.
In case it makes you feel better, I personally believe that most Creationists are uninformed but not necesarily fools. But that does not mean that their ignorance deserves to be taught as science.
Sincerely,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Far be it from me to post yet another response to what looks like a very lengthy discussion, but I don't understand for the life of me why we can't seem to reconcile evolution with creationism. Obviously the seperation of church and state should keep this more homogenous view out of schools, no doubt, but let me ask a few questions and hopefully not step on too many people's toes.
.02
1. Is it implausible to assume that some deity(God, Buddah, whatever you choose to believe in)could have initiated the big bang, and in turn evolution?
2. In the Old Testament of the Bible the creation of the Universe is depicted to have taken place in 7 days. Then in Revelations we see that 1 day to God = 1000 years to man. But what is a day, exactly, to some omniscient, omnipotent being? Does time have any meaning, or were these 'days' in question simply used to give us lowly mortals something we could relate to? Obviously the Old Testament would make far less sense if it said 'And God collided 6.7 trillion quarks with 5.5 million leptons as the oceans formed, further colliding to form primitive hydrogen isotops which later decayed into hydrogen and oxygen, combining to form the seas of the earth.' It would certainly not have the mass-audience appeal it has had over a millenium. So can we say that maybe, just maybe, what is stated in the Old Testament and Revelations aren't necessarily supposed to be taken literally?
3. Is it again too much to assume that some deity ALLOWED evolution to happen along a course that eventually produced mankind?
I could be wrong here, and I'm always open to alterative viewpoints. But people always seem to seperate creationism and evolutionism as opposite sides of the spectrum - why? Creationism doesn't pretend to answer all the questions as to how things came to be, and the scientists who most ardently argue that the big bang occured freely admit they don't know why or how it occured.
My main point is simple -- these two viewpoints don't have to be so polarized. Combining the two together actually fills in a lot of gaps depending on how you look at it.
Just my
Forcing schools to teach creationism is the sort of religious fundamentalism has no place in the 20th century. Superstition replaced by organised religion replaced by science is a natural progression of a civilised society. Ours has arrived at the scientific age, the religious one is ending. Deal with it.
On a related note, are inner city schools in Chicago still teaching that Beethoven was black? Equally scary.
Not if Adam originaly had one more than Eve.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
I think that definition of species is very old. Its still taught in fifth grade, but real biologists have don't use it anymore.
-
See deism.org which claims that believing in the Bible is against reason.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Which would contradict the fact both males and females have an equal number.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
This is God. I forgot my password which is why I'm posting AC.
Well you guys amaze me with your intellect. You have figured out how I created you and everything around you. Hell, you're even figuring out how to create life too! As they say, like father like son. Heh heh..
Now will you quit with this creationism vs. evolution argument already? It's really starting to get me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. I created you using the technique you have called "evolution."
Now will you please shut up and write me a USB driver for Linux?
Oh yea, while I'm here, I thought you guys would like to know that Gates is that Antichrist guy you read about in Revolations. (You do read my work don't you?) When they start embedding WindowsCE in peoples foreheads in a couple of years you better not be one of the volunteers - or else!
And where did this "eparation of church and state" come from? Its not in a the Delectation of Independence, its not in the bill of rights, etc. OK I know where it came from but its not in any of our official documents from our founding father of the country.
Yes, it IS in the Bill of Rights, in the First Amendment, as a matter of fact. Although someone beat me to pointing that out.
In any case, you should remember why it's in there in the first place.. It's there in large part because the Christians who came to this continent were being oppressed by a different sect of Christians back home who were ruling the country.
(It certainly helped, though, that Thomas Jefferson and many other founding fathers were Deists who had been disillusioned with organized religion altogether.)
Each statement can be true or false depending on which physical model you use. The physical models in which they are false (with the possible exception of #1) are a lot more useful than the physical models in which they are false. Which is why they are teached first.
None of the models are likely to be an accurate representation of a Universal Truth, allthough they may all be pretty good approximations.
First off, the earth did not come to be by evolution (quoth the school board president). . . that would be the big bang. Evolution is a biological theory.
Anyway, it's an absurd debate to begin with. One side refuses to present arguments for and against evolution (the one taken by NM) - god forbid we teach our children to think for themselves. On the other hand, we could just turn our heads and ignore a scientific theory all together (as the bible camp would have us do).
Personally, I don't think the two "theories" are even mutually exclusive - argument goes something like this: god makes babies by sex/AI/whatever, pregnancy, birth, etc., god made man by the process of evolution. Many bible scholars in non-fundamentalist denominations take the book of Genesis (on which Christian creationism is based) as "poetic" literature, probably of symbolic nature, so evolution doesn't even necessarily contradict the Bible.
Final word: teach evolution and whatever else the locals want to teach; just be sure that *arguments* are given and *reason* is used. That's why schools are there, right?
-SD
He meant breed and produce offspring that can also breed. Mules are sterile.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
We started counting around 1400 (I think), and extrapolated back. the millenium can start whever we want, so it might as well start at significant digit change.
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
As I understand it, evolution was left out of the official state guidelines for what is supposed to be taught in schools. Therefore, each science teacher can choose either to teach it or not to teach it.
However, national media seem to have distorted this to mean that evolution will not be taught.
DISCLAIMER: My information is based on what the local newspaper in my real hometown reported when the decision was made. Therefore, due to biased reporting or the effects of time, this may not be 100% accurate either.
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A priori, creationists are not reasonable, they wish people not to think, and are hopelessly tied to a false myth. Well, that's three libels in five paragraphs. Bravo. Now try reading Darwin's Black Box and get back to me when you have something constructive to add. TML
Is anyone here Actually going to be affected by this decision other than me? Im a New Mexico High School Student and i DEMAND to be taught ALL theories on how we were created.
Just my little pissed off view.
rm -rf
We rejoice about the NM school board making a good decision, but it wasn't always this way. Two years ago, I was working at the Santa Fe Institute and we heard that the school board was going to have a public meeting on a preliminary decision over how to word evolution in the teaching requirements. They wanted to take evolution off. So a bunch of fairly famous SFI researchers, Staurt Kauffman (sp?) and others, along with big name researchers from Sandia Nat'l Labs and Los Alamos Nat'l Labs.
This fairly rural board (mostly conservative religious right types) had no idea the caliber of scientists in the room with them. Many highly regarded physicists, biologists and computer scientists all telling them it would be stupid to take evolution on the board. Anyway, to make a long story less long, after statements from very conservative families and scientists the board vote to keep evolution off.
The good side of the story is that they already had much of evolutionary theory in there without using the words. For example they had statements like: teaching the theory that "The genotype and non-somatic mutations within it are inherited", etc. (paraphrasing rather poorly) They were just offended by, not suprisingly, the theory that modern simians and humans have a common ancestor.
-- Moondog
Sorry to burst your bubble, but you weren't there when the earth came into existence and you don't really know no matter how much you think you do, what really happened
Were you around 100 years ago? So why do you believe that the world existed 100 years ago? For all you know, it could all have been fabricated the day before you were born. You "really don't know no matter how much you think you do, what really happened" before you were born, according to your logic.
with biological evolutionary theory. The only part I would revise is where some folks start talking about people coming from monkeys. My observations have led me to the conclusion that monkeys actually came from people.
Two quick points.
1) Creationism is not a religion. Christianity is a religion. Creationism is a belief.
2) Have you ever read Belief by Isaac Asimov? He makes the point that science is often none to willing to accept change.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
I had never heard that. I guess now I'll be compelled to starting believing creationism.
Of course, I might be more compelled if you could actually provide a link instead of just telling me some vague things about an article that may or may not exist.
I will check back tonight. A little disingenuous of you to claim that you can provide some examples from a textbook when no accurate textbook that I have seen contains such examples...
Yet another assertion without substance that some mysterious reference has the counter-arguments against Evolution, without anything to back it up.
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
I'm not sure what else there is left to observe. Darwin's finches evolved into thirteen distinct species of bird not found anywhere but the islands. They evolved because they needed to adapt (some birds got larger, some birds got smaller, some grew smaller beaks in proportion to their bodies, etc.). The genetic composition of these birds is now different, after centuries of change. They are different species in the way humans are different from chimpanzees.
--
IMO, the only reason evolution is not considered a "law" is because of the public (creationistic) response against it.
It's pretty clear that small things evolve, and large things evolve in small amounts, but as we haven't been around for the thousand or millions of years to observe macroevolution first-hand, some feel that we can't justify calling it a law just yet.
Though for all intents and purposes, it *is* truth. I have no problem considering it a law. Today we have no problem determining whether or not evolution occurs. The stuff we're still researching is *how* it occurred and what it did. There is no more research determining "if," because it's pretty much accepted that evolution is factual.
I do agree perfectly with you that creationism is by nature a religious/faith subject and should not be taught in the same realm as science. The whole purpose of scientific studies is to give the student a critical, experimental eye with respects to the world around him. Asking questions is not bad. Keep science here and you'll be fine.
> Studying creationism can be valuable, if only to understand its assumptions.
I was always taught that Genesis was about establishing who the main protagonist in "that book" is. 6 Days, three groups of three interrelated through time:
Day 1: light/dark -> Day 4: sun/moon
Day 2: water/land -> Day 5: fishes/birds
Day 3: trees/fruit -> Day 6: creatures/mankind
All this to establish the protagonist as an artist, a creator and has a multidimensional view of space-time that we can only start to grasp.
But that's Exegesis and Hermenutics, and this is Slashdot. So I'll shut up now.
Can you point me to this information (about the finches)? I'm not too current on all of it (too much time coding). :)
I would still say that the finches evolving is simply a matter of adpatation. But the birds are still birds.
I guess I am not familiar with this aspect of evolution. The one I remember learning about in college was a change in organism (lizard to bird) and not necessarily a rise of a new species.
You could say that there are different speicies of human beings because we all look different (as far as skin color, facial looks), but we are all still humans.
By the way, can those different species of finch breed with one another?
Remember the assumptions we made? How do we know they're true? First of all, we assume that carbon 14 has been created at a constant rate as long as life has been around. Various things can effect it's production (such as the strength of the earth's magnetic field, solar flares, and who knows what else.) The effect of any changes probably isn't that great, but how do we know how much it's changed? If something has happened to cause it to change, it would also take time for the decay/production to reach it's new equilibrium, so you're not even dealing with a constant amount of carbon 14 during this period. But I don't think that this would have too much impact on the dating methods (I could be wrong, though). Here's where the serious problem with carbon dating comes in: assuming that the ratio of carbon 12/13 to carbon 14 has always been what it has been. If you know anything about what the bible says, it tells of flood that killed just about everything. I think that it's pretty safe to assume that this flood would have buried massive amounts of carbon in various forms (coal and oil deposits are a good example). What does that mean? First, most of the formerly available carbon is now trapped in the earth where it is no longer available for use by living things. If we assume that the production of carbon 14 hasn't changed significantly, when it reaches it's production/decay equilibrium again, the ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 will have gone WAAAAY up, mainly because we have a lot less carbon 12. So now Mr. Scientist comes along, and not knowing what happened, assumes that this ratio has always been the same. He measures the ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 in his specimen and discovers that it's several million years old. Unfortunately, he didn't know that the carbon ratio of the specimen when it died was a lot smaller than he assumed it was. Therefore, the date he measured won't be even close to the real amount of time that has passed, although it may be indirectly proportional to its age.
The other effect that removing carbon from the environment would have is to throw the production/decay out of equilibrium. In fact, in any system that undergoes production/decay competition like this, it takes about 4 half lives to reach equilibrium from state of no product present. (It actually reaches about 96% of equilibrium, which is close enough). Therefore, right after the carbon is removed from the environment, the carbon ratio will be the same as before, but it will immediately start climbing as the production/decay tries to reach equilibrium. Basically, it would make it look like stuff that was alive at a time farther away from when equilibrium was reached would be much older, because the carbon ratio was a lot lower than it is now. That would mean that the million years scale timeline would be compressed into a much shorter time than the scientist would be led to believe by his measurements. I don't remember what the half-life of carbon 14 is off the top of my head, but it's long enough that the non-equilibrium effect would be very real.
That's my piece, whether you agree or disagree with creationism is up to you, but don't assume that just because something sort of fits the available data means that it's the only reasonable explanation of what really happened.
-Bryce Wagner
so does evolution. I mean, where did the material for the original things that everything evolved from come from
Who cares?
Evolution doesn't seek to explain the entire existence of everything. It only seeks to describe how species arise from other species. Evolution by itself doesn't even try to explain the creation of life (the theories on that are called ambiogenisys)
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Truth is a weak foundation. Mathematics is on no firmer ground than evolution. Godel and Tarski showed that mathematics isn't about truth, it's about logical relationships between statements. Your system is never any better than your axioms, and no finite set of axioms can ever suffice.
Just because evolution and creationism can't be proved true doesn't mean they're not useful. Note that the parallel postulate *or* its negation can be added to geometry and result in a consistent (i.e. useful) system. Hence the possibility of useful *and* conflicting theories is real. One is useful for planes, the other for curved surfaces.
The danger isn't in studying either evolution or creationism. It's in asserting that either is truth eternal or claiming that one necessarily negates the other. Both may be useful when applied to a system modelling their particular suppositions.
After studying them, my personal conclusion is that one is far more useful than the other because it requires far fewer assumptions. This seems to me a more rational basis for choice of what to teach in time limited classrooms, should such choice be necessary. Studying creationism can be valuable, if only to understand its assumptions.
Why can't they be like Australia and have so many fucking religions that they can't teach one without teaching the other? Truly, this kind of shit only happens in America, where all other shit happens of course.
Fuckin Yankies, don't even like our sheep.
I mean look at all the things around you that are infinitely less complex (e.g., electronic equipment). If I told you those were "made" in the same manner (i.e., by evolution), you'd laugh.
Er.. did you miss the recent Slashdot article about evolutionarily designed mechanical structures?
An evolutionary computing program designed a bridge and a crane and more...
Given the right info, there's no reason why it couldn't design electronic equipment.
You probably read something like this misinterpretation of the evidence.
If you actually go and read the articles you will find that what they found evidence for is that all humans have mitochondria that trace back to a single individual several hundred thousand years ago. That means that if you trace us all back on direct matrilineal descent (mother to mother to mother to...) you will eventually arrive at a single person.
What they don't mention is that the scientists expected to find that. Think of direct matrilineal descent as being a bush that constantly branches (women have daughters) and gets pruned (some women have no daughters). Starting from a specific point in time, all that that says is that all of the other branches existing at that point have since been completely pruned. This could happen pretty easily by chance, particularly if you started with a small population that was successful and spread out and replaced other groups.
If this really contradicted evolution, then you would think that courses discussing it might be a little more worried than they are, wouldn't you...
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Well, you may want people to believe that diversity may be what creationists want, but not a single one of the many I have ever talked to believes in diversity of belief. They have been very adamant that their beliefs are right and any different beliefs are wrong. What they want is the coercive power of the state endorsing their beliefs. That is why they have pushed through such things as banning the teaching of evolution in Kansas, and forced it to be taught as merely a theory in Texas. This is so much like the normal debating tactics of creationists, to ask questions that imply that they could be reasonable people, but when you watch the way they walk instead of listening to the way they talk, you see that the answer to these questions you've asked is always "NO."
Notice that none of the creationists in this thread has ever said anything positive. All they want to do is tear down evolution, not assert anything positive that has any of the tremendous power of explanation that evolution has.
I was surprised to note that dbrutus admits that creationists aren't unified among themselves. One of the main arguments that I have heard pushed by creationists is that evolutionists disagree about (the details of) how evolution works, therefore evolution is invalid. Never before have I seen a creationist admit that they disagree about (the main concept of) how creationism works. Bravo.
People should not fear their government. Governments should fear their people.
Other species of birds found on the islands exhibit great changes among their populations over periods as short as a few years. I wish I could find a reference to research done on this (I first heard of it from this month's Scientific American Frontiers). The short of it that variances in food supplies (seeds) over just a few years directly affects the overall appearance (physical size) of future generations of the birds. Smaller birds have less body to fuel, require fewer seeds to feed themselves, and possess beaks more adapted to cracking open their small food. Larger birds, when all available food is small seeds, can't eat enough to stay alive. The larger of the species die out, the smaller reproduce, and the physical properties of the smaller population are passed on to the following generation. Over periods of just 3 or 4 years, the populations of this island physically change to adapt to changes in their environment. The average bird becomes smaller. In food surplus (when larger, more varied foods are available), the opposite happens.
If you're up for a good laugh, visit Creation Research Society, a bunch of "scientists" out to prove that Creation is right. They have an scanning electron microscope, so I guess it's just a matter of time before they re-publish the Bible and prove science wrong, right?
--
I tried to load www.god.com . No server responded. On the other hand www.satan.com works.....sorta....It seems the Evil One spraypainted some graffitti on the Wev and exited hastily. Then it occurred to me that maybe the Personification Of Good wasn't out for profit so I tried www.god.org . Sure enough a page loaded but it was titled "God.org for sale" . The page's only text was "Coming soon, a site for all." Seems like Christianity V2.0 is going to work something like a Spielburg movie. The enigmatic www.satan.org contains a representation of Satan's Unix minion the BSD Daemon.....duh! of course! What else would Satan use to establish his web presence? And finally I found my own religion at satanic.org .
As for Galileo, let's talk about that. The Catholic church did condemn his teachings and has repented and proclaimed its error. So much for "religion can't admit when it's wrong".
Galileo pissed off a head of state (the pope), created a theological controversy when he didn't have to, and alienated his allies (the jesuits) who could have gotten him out of his predicament. He was punished by house arrest and limited to one servant. For the middle ages this is an incredibly restrained response. The inquisatorial manual of the time forbade torture and right under the pope's nose, the manual was followed to the letter.
I do agree about the problems with the literalists. But we aren't beasts and it's much more likely that ecumenism is going to educate and absorb back the literalists into the one church that Christ founded rather than evolutionary elimination.
TML
you can't prove the existence of your own left hand (if you lost your hand in a lawn-mower accident in your youth, replace "hand" with some body part you have). But according to certain assumptions you make about everyday life (i.e., that it's not a figment of your own reality, that things have causes, etc.), your hand does exist.
The fact of the matter is that Creationism explains everything very conveniently: God did it. Where did God come from? He didn't. It gives nice, simple, pat answers to some incredibly disturbing questions. Evolution, on the other hand, when asked where we are and where we're going, mumbles something like "Well, if we had somewhere to go, we'd be lost, but we don't, so we're wandering."
Not comforting at all.
Unless, of course, you consider futility the same as freedom, in which case you're grinning wildly.
So, there will always be unanswerable questions, but those are best left to philosophy classes, not biology. I agree that teachers should note the absence of all the answer, but I don't think they should throw evolution out just because it doesn't explain Pop Tarts.
-- I can't think of anything witty to put here. Sorry.
You claim that there are flaws with the basic theory. I have seen no evidence of that.
So please demonstrate your assertion by listing them.
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Please do not nitpick, I am speaking in a general sense.
If you want to teach a science class, biology for instance, then you have to teach evolution. It is a leading scientific theory of the origin of the species. It may be a wrong theory, but it is okay to be wrong with science. That is part of the process of how we extend the body of scientific knowledge.
If you want to teach a non-science class, maybe some type of humanities class, then you could teach creationism. It is a leading non-scientific theory of the origin of the species. Since the existence of a divine creator cannot be disproven, the theory cannot be proven wrong. Therefore the body of knowledge surrounding creationism cannot be extended through scientific means.
Hi there in the USA, this is from Europe,
We've got creationist like guys around here to.
Their argument out here is like:
Science is right until about 7000 years ago,
everything they put before that is fake,
God put it there to make us tempt us into
sin (of disbelieveing).
That's fine with me, i don't agree.
I'm simply happy that out here schoolt teach
scientific theory (like the evolution),
and churches teach faith (like creationism).
I think the two shouldn't be mixed.
** Schools are for teaching scientific theories,**
that is the most accepted ones.
(you have to LEARN something there)
When the kinds grow up, and they become a
scientist, that way they can investigate
the theories, and maybe prove them wrong.
I myself do believe in God, but i think you
shouldn't take the bible to litterally, it's a man made book afterall.
I've seen a lot of proof that the scientific
theories for evolution are sound, so i think the theory of evolution has a good chance of being near the truth, and until i hear something better i'll keep with it. Just like i kept with Newtonian mechanics, until i was taught Einsteins
theory of relativity.
And later in life Einstein understood that God does throw dice, as far as Heisenbergs unceratinty principle was concerned. (AFAIK)
Greetings,
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
If you're going to try and use some scientific principles to uphold your decidedly unscientific views, at least try to have a working understanding of said scientific principles.
My brother is unfortunately afflicted with Born Again Christianity, a very brainwashed and dangerous form of Christian cultism. He married a girl who is also afflicted, as is her entire family, and her oldest brother calling himself a minister and performed the actual marriage rite. At the end of the rite, he prayed over them and made a statement to the effect of, "...these 2 people were created whole, and didn't evolve from a microorginism...".
I found this offensive. I also find offensive how they poke fun at other Christain groups and proclaim that they are the only Christians. They must be stopped.
These morons are a large voting block in the US, and they won't be happy until the US is turned into a fundamentalist cesspool of a Theocracy. What is the difference between radical Fundamentlist Islam and radical Fundamentalist Christianity? Not much. If the funadamentalist Born Again rabble rousers had their way, they would be stoning people according to Old Testament Law. They rely alot on Old Testament myth, as is evidenced with this ridiculous preoccupation with Creationism. Why it is so damn important for Christians to believe literally in what is a SYMBOLIC story written by primitives to explain the origins of man is one of the great mystical tragedies of our day. I don't recall the message of Jesus somehow relying on how we evolved. I think if Jesus were here he would throw a hissy fit on these people.
Now, I was born and raised a Roman Catholic, and I was taught in Catholic school that Evolution is the most likely theory as to what happened, but that it was inspired, or touched off, by God. Now, even for aetheists, I would think that if the two groups could agree that Evolution is the most likely candidate, and agree on its teaching, but simply agree to disagree on the God factor, then I think that that would be workable. Its when these holier than thou nutcases crash the party that things get nasty, simply because the super religious can't tolerate opposing points of view and feel that it is their God given right to quash everything in favor of their simple little fairy tales. Why so many have chosen to insult the very God they worship by handing over their God given intellect to be spoon-fed a half-baked lie is beyond me. Sanity please?
Catholic Disclaimer: Before any of you anti-Catholics start needling me, I follow Catholic customs for family's sake, and plan to set an example for my kids so that they grow up with morals and ethics that I agree with, but I always reserve the right to make up my own mind on any subject and if the Church doesn't agree with that then that's tough. Also, the Inquisition and the Dark Ages were a LONG time ago and there is more than one viewpoint in the Catholic Church of modern times.
==============================
Windows NT has crashed,
I am the Blue Screen of Death,
I don't care if creationism is taught in schools. I object when stereotyping of any sort is taught in schools. Calling all creationists fools is stereotyping.
But you are all fools, since clearly, as any right-thinking person knows, the universe was created by the Invisible Pink Unicorn. This fact is clearly stated in the book of the Unicorn, and that proves it.
On the CNN story...
"[..] creationism or other alternative theories"
Creationism isn't a theory. To be a theory it
would need to be scientific which it isn't. Creationism is religion.
"[...] that the leading theory of how the Earth was created has to do with evolution."
How the Earth was "created" has nothing to do with evolution. That would be some branch of cosmology me thinks (planetary formation).
"Creationism is the belief that people and the Earth were formed by a divine being."
And while the creationists in the US do their best to hide it, it's about their specific diety, the judeo-christian one.
"Critics of the proposal had argued that evolution is a theory that shouldn't be taught as scientific fact."
Obviously the critics are morons with a religious agenda. Evolution (as in "change in allele frequency over time") is a fact. Only an idiot would say it isn't. Ask them how come some vermin come to be resistant to pesticides. Oh-oh, evolution in the works. Then watch them try to define words such as "evolution" and "fact" (which have very specific meanings in science).
End-of-rant
Belief is the currency of delusion.
New Mexicans are on a right track! First their
governor had the guts to declare 'the war on
marijuana' a total bullshit. Now, this one.
Grunt. Oink, oink.
i'd assume that if it isn't on standardised tests, they aren't going to be bothering with teaching it in a public school.
Not true. Most unbiased reports show that most of the school districts in Kansas aren't changing their curriculum at all (ie: leaving evolution in and creationism out).
-Tom O'Rear -- tomed@radiks.net
Easy, get rid of 100% of the religions
An interesting example of human evolution has been the systematic weeding out of non religious deviants. Throughout history, and no doubt for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, religious leaders have ordered their frigtened flock to kill or cast out those who did not believe, until a significant portion (majority) of the population became genetically 'wired' as devout follower, and the majority no longer seems to need physical threat to keep them in line. Getting rid of religion would not be easier than removing xenophobia or male pattern baldness from the human gene pool.
"The current theories which are based on current axioms are *right*. However, according to Godel, there are theorems that can not be proved with current axioms. So mathematics is indeed about truth and it is based on axioms, which I believe are on very firm ground currently"
Current mathematical theories are right in the sense that if you posit their axioms then their conclusions follow logically via a mechanical procedure of proof. If the axioms are true in a model, the theorems are too. I didn't mean to cast doubt on that.
But prior to Godel many mathematicians felt that there was one true axiom set for number theory that could be used to deduce any true property of numbers. Godel showed that this was not correct, true statements of number theory exist not provable from any particular set of consistent axioms. Mathematics cannot settle truth in the domain of numbers, it can only validate that conclusions are based on assumptions correctly. It is up to us to pick our axioms, for our particular needs at the time.
To bring it home, there are competing theories of real numbers. One theory includes infintesimally small numbers, the other doesn't. It is meaningless to ask which is true, the question is which is more useful. Since infintesimals essentially eliminate tedious epsilon-delta proofs in calculus, there are some that think it a better theory of the reals. You only have time to teach one, which will it be? Just don't look to truth for the answer -- preconceptions about what a real number is play a large part in an answer.
Exactly. Most Christians I know accept the fact that the Bible is a religious text, not a science textbook. In my opinion, so called "Creation Science" simply presents Christians in general in a bad light, and that's an unfortunate fact.
All too many people think that evolution is equated only with atheism, which is of course not the case. If God gave us rational minds, wouldn't He want us to use them to examine our world? I think people would do well to remember that, "The Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go"
This is all a scheme of satan trying to cybersquat god.com domain name. Hopefully the new ICANN will solve this issue :)
Erm, science is far from the ideal community you suggest - there's plenty of examples of the scientific othodoxy prevailing and not allowing stuff which breaks the mould and changes established theories to come through. For example: we've accepted his work now, but Gregor Mendel, the guy who theorised about genes, was rubbished at first because it was a huge shift in view and so people wouldn't believe it. Sure, that was some time ago, but the same thing happens elsewhere. And we now _know_ he was right.
This whole argument of Intelligent Design v Evolution gets rather silly sometimes. There's plenty of people who dismiss intelligent design as a posible theory because the Biblical account appears improbable, and plenty of people who throw out evolution because it's not how they read the bible. My take on it (accepting I'm a Computer Scientist, not a Biologist)? Probably Intelligent Design with Natural Selection. Natural selection is provable and demonstrable, which gives it a big advantage over both theories. Pure Darwinian Evolution - common origins and genetic mutation - seems fantastically unlikely, TBH. When did the chemicals swimming around suddenly form life? When did the Amoeba decide that the cells which had split would stick to each other, rather than make two differnt organisms? And when did the ball of cells develop recognisable, identifibale features? If we all started living in the sea, were we breathing as fish, mammals, amphibians? And how did the first creature to leave the sea then breathe in air? Also, I'm told that there's several diferent jaw designs out there. If they all have a common ancestor, this implies there's a common original design which they've all mutated from. Simple mechanics shows (again, as I'm told) that intermediate steps wouldn't have been mobile.
Fundamentally though, where are the Missing Link fossils? We've been searching for them for ages, so why have NONE turned up?
As for biblical creation, it _could_ have happened but I'm not ruling out other possibilities. Hence a general Intelligent Design support.
The point that some people seem not to realise is that pure Darwinian evolution is just a theory, and frankly a rather shanky one. It's not impossible, but much of the evidence could simply be taken as natural selection rather than genetic mutation from a common origin. It's not provable either as it can't be observed, so teaching it as scientific fact is crazy. Teach it as a likely theory by all means, but teaching it as fact is plain wrong.
Equally, basing everything on radio-carbon decay dating and rock dating is a little odd to say the least, as both of them are untestable theories which (I'm told) can be argued just as conclusively against as for. And you can't use Charles Lyall's uniformitarianism either, as rock layering isn't one layer per year. Mount St. Helens erupting showed that very conclusively, laying down many distinct layers in very short periods of time.
Incidentally, whoever moderated the original post of this thread up to 5, Informative? The author? It's badly written and shows a lack of basic knowledge.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
I'm with you on this one.
:-)
Despite being brought up in a religious family, (church on Sunday, Sunday School for weekly indoctrination etc.) I am now an atheist (if He is listening, I meant agnostic
It only became apparent to me just how deep this indoctrination went when (years later) I was best man at my friends wedding. They had the traditional service in church, and I realised that (without being in church for 15 or more years) I knew almost the entire service - not just my words but the Vicar's words as well. Scary!
Perhaps Henry VIII did us all a favour in Britain when he divorced the church from the state all that time ago - perhaps we no longer consider it important. Personally I think this is a good thing.
It might be instructive to look at *why* 'ole Kingy decided to get rid of the church. He was an absolute power in his land. None could 'say him nay', and yet this bunch of meddlesome priests were dictating how he lived his life - saying he couldn't just kill his wives and get more of them.
I think this brings home what the church (and I lump all organised religions and cults in with this) actually is - a power structure for those who would otherwise have no say over your life. How many people actually believe the most religious of (wo)men are actually those at the top of any religious order you care to mention ? Show me a true believer, and I'll show you a fool.
My views boil down to:
I have tolerance and (some) respect for other beliefs, as long as they don't inflict them on others. I even think the church plays a valuable role in society as a crutch for those who need one, either temporarily or permanently.
I would greatly resist the "teaching" of creationism in UK schools as policy. OTOH, I don't expect that will ever happen, this religious fervour is all a very US thing.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Evolution IS change over time. Many people forget that, thinking "evolution" means "life originating from abscence of life" but that is a separate question - abiogenesis.
Deciding to change terms like that, using "change over time" instead might actually be a GOOD move - using different wording will make the meaning more clear and reduce controversy while still sticking to science and facts. I applaud the move.
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
I've read Behe's book. He ignores or conveniently sidesteps many key points in his theory of irreducible complexity. One of which is absolutely essential: why does there have to be any prior function to a formative complex system at all? Or, better yet, why does that function have to be the same one the complex system exhibits now?
Species, our own included, are veritable treasure chests full of unexplainable and unused biological artifacts. Evolution can grow basic systems that are only waiting for a use or may have other uses than the one they were originally selected for. Sometimes the chance for use is actually there, and the traits kick in, confer an advantage upon the owner and evolve further.
Evolution takes all possibilities into account. Behe, Creationists and the Bible do not.
Razor Blue, TechnoMage
shackled to tranquility / silenced for eternity / four walls no windows / in your bounding box
Razor Blue, TechnoMage
shackled to tranquility / silenced for eternity / four walls no windows /
Ah, I find it wonderful, when the evolutionist tried to discredite the so-called "foolish ignorant" creationist, and in the process shows themself no better than what they perceieve the other side as.
Creationism, in any varient, cannot be proven. Neither can evolution. Both have flaws, both have strengths. The difference? The evolutionists have willed evolution into unquestionable, unchallenged fact. They don't want to have a principled, non-slighted debate on the facts and problems of the theories out there, they just want to paint evolution critics as a whole cache of bad things to downplay any point they bring up.
I am not arrogant enough to say what I believe, and contrary to some misinformation believe is not always blind faith, is true and cannot be challenged. I wish the otherside would be able to say the same.
As an aside, on the school issue, I see two solutions:
1. Teach as you do now, but also point out that their are strengths and weaknesses, and that not all doubters are ignorant and to be ignored totally.
2. The best solution, end the public schools and go for a true school choice program.
-Tom O'Rear -- tomed@radiks.net
While the Kansas Board of Education did make a completely boneheaded decision, most people have no clue what decision they screwed up.
Most people are under the impression the board decided evolution should not be taught, or even that creationism should be taught. This is not the case.
The board decided that the standards would no longer REQUIRE that ALL students be taught evolution. Still boneheaded, but not nearly as bad as most people think.
It makes me sad to say I am a native Kansan and still reside here by choice. For the schools, no less. My district has the facilities for special needs children such as mine -- so much so people move here from hundreds of miles away for the schools.
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
I'd like to apologise to some of the creationists who have been posting above - no, we don't thinks you're stupid, or ignorant, and yes, many extremely clever people don't agree with evolution. (To nail my own colours to the mast, I'm both an atheist and an evolutionist). But we have a reason to get angry...
You see, science is without a doubt the most important thing humanity has ever conceived. When you look at how we stumbled through history, grasping at reason and often being held back by organised religion, you realise how science isn't self evident, or common sense. It took us thousands of years to develop it, and some of us feel we're slowly losing it again.
That's why my blood boils when I hear of people consulting astrologers or going to faith healers - because they're trampling on what the greatest minds in history bequethed us.
On a side note, to those religious who feel devalued by being related to 'mere' apes; go and actually read 'The Origin Of Species'. When you understand it, know that while you are still an ape, there is something profoundly different about you now. You are part of a select group, possibly even unique in the whole universe, who knows where they came from.
MT
Just a thought, but maybe you should put a line with just three dashes or something at the top of your .sig, just so things like this don't happen :)
Search first, ask questions later.
!? I pay my taxes so that kids can be educated in FACTS not faith.
I agree with you completely, and I'm a creationist. Science class is not the place for creationism. I do know some dim-witted creationists that think creation should be taught in schools, but I don't know any intelligent ones that think that. Creationism will continue to be taught just fine in churches and Sunday schools. Anyone who beleives otherwise is being short-sighted. As one who majored in physics, I agree completely. Science class is a place for science.
For one particular creationist account, sure. It doesn't attempt to cover the whole field though, it's narrowly focused on the creationist account of only one religion. So it's okay as a place to start but you'd have to read a lot more to cover the subject comprehensively.
Well, I believe in God and am a creationist.
What I want is not to have creationism taught in schools, creationism is a belief, school is not made to teach you religious believes but what we know about the nature at one point of the time.
What I want is teacher stopping to say evolutionnism is the definite TRUTH as they are doing now. When they do that they are as bad as teacher teaching creationism as the only TRUTH. Evolution is a theory and should be taught as a theory and not as an immovable law. A theory is made to explain things we see in the most satisfactory way, when we have nwe clues we affine/change the theory. If you begin to teach a theory like a truth then you forbid students to question the theory and to come with another explanation that may be better.
So stop to teach evolutionism as the ultimate answer to the question to life, the universe and everything and begin to teach it as the most probable theory we have so far to explain fossils and things like that.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Personally I'm a creationist, but I have no problem whatsoever with evolution being taught in school. I only object when teachers make comments like "No one seriously believes in creationism anymore." As far as I'm concerned as long as they don't actively bash creationism teaching evolution is probably a good idea. It is the currently accepted theory according to most biologists. I have many problems with it scientifically, but as it is widely accepted I think that students should be exposed to it. Not exposing them to it is not preparing them for college or careers in the sciences.
Questioning should never be legislated against. It's impossible to really believe something without first questioning it.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
You cant hang on to every idea until everybody who ever thought it was true is dead.. science doesnt work like that. Evolution has plenty of proof behind it and creationism has extreamly little. If we hung on to every idea and continued to teach it as an 'alternative' explenation to what the scientific community generally considers correct we'd still have medical schools were doctors are taught that sickness is caused by 'bad humours' and if someone feels ill they need to have said humours bled out. Astronomy courses would require the teaching of the old crystalline sphere idea as an 'alternative' to solar systems and galaxies because someone, somewhere probably things the whole solar system thing is a bunch of hooey (just look at what they did to poor galileo). If we didnt give up on old, outmoded things eventually we'd stagnate as a society. Because of how science works, you cant Prove something is absolutely true or absolutely wrong so you cant say to just wait until one or the other happens to evolution. Heck, for all we can prove, virii and bacterium could Be the 'bad humours' of old.. malignant little spirits that just happen to look like biological organisms.
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
If your "karma" on slashdot, which is the sum of all moderation done on your comments, is over 20 (i.e. your comments have been moderated up 20 times more than they've been moderated down), you get a +1 bonus to your posts. Since my karma is 44, my posts start off at 2, rather than the usual one. However, to make you happy, I'll post this one at 1 =)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If you are interested, why not read a few books?
I really recommend "River Out of Eden", by Richard Dawkins as a short, accessible and fascinating book about the beauty of evolutionary theory.
I expect it will be more detailed than the coverage you get in class -- and evolution is so amazing that it deserves to be better understood by everyone.
In what way is it amazing? I suppose because it explains so much with such simple principles, and because our lives as humans depend so much on what evolution has 'done' in the past.
Perhaps someone else can recommend to you a book on Creationism?
I have discovered a wonderful
Darwinian evolution is flawed.
The concept of evolution isn't.
(imho, of course, and it is humble =) )
There are also many compelling ones for it.
You know what I've just about had enough of? The above. I see this all the time on IRC channels, usenet, and web pages when dealing with this stuff. The short end is this: "evolutionist" (seems a bit silly, like saying "gravityist") brings up mounds of evidence to support the theory of evolution. Creationist blows it all off by saying "Yes, those are all very compelling evidences. But creationism has just as many". Predictably, however, they never seem to cite any. And when asked, they'll proudly shout off several (usually silly) debunkings of evolution, hoping that nobody notices they didn't answer the question.
I've never seen any creationist actually list "evidence" for judeo-christian creationism. Would you be so kind?
That last sentence makes no sense to me whatsoever. I guess you proved your point...
Search first, ask questions later.
No, the reason evolution is not considered a law is because it's still just a theory. For it to become more than a theory, it has to be observed, and to date, that hasn't yet been done. For evolution to be considered a law, a species has to be seen to evolve into two (or more) separate species that can't interbreed. Although, we've observed various mutations leading to different characteristics in a number of creatures, it's the interbreeding part that's critical, and that's the bit we've yet to see.
As it happens, we may be on the verge of seeing just that (with a type of moth somewhere obscure that I can't remember :-), at which point, evolution will be considered a law.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Seriously, you posted elsewhere on this topic that you were convinced of creationism by some arguments that seemed really convincing at the time but that you can't remember what they were any more. Do you seriously belive that that's an "intellectual basis"?
If you feel that I'm misrepresenting what you said previously then I'll go back, find it and quote it, let me know if you need me to.
I dislike religion because on the whole, religion produces negative things.
(What? It produces hate, fear, andger, to name a few)
Faith, on the other hand, is a wonderful thing, and rarely are bad things attributed to pure Faith.
Most geek/nerds know and understand this important difference.
To draw from the bible (not to only interesting religious book, but a great example in our society...), What did Jesus think about religion?
And then, what did he say about faith?
I beg to differ. Stacks of highly unfashionable evidence exists which offer support to Creationists. Admittedly none which most status quo Creationists are generally to happy to embrace dependant on the specific faith in question. Remember Creationists are not necessarily Christians. There are many religious branches internationally each intrinisically buried into the very grain of various cultures. I say branches because I empathise with Taoists in that they are all ultimately one religion, with a lot of unnecessary despeckle and noise thrown in enroute.
3 01/starfire.html
i an.html
o nedisk_nf.shtml#1937
Creationism evidence [the good stuff] -- I'm NOT refering to the Bible which is generally a load of politically modified diddle of what was merely expedient to the purposes of the Jews or Christians at the time, fabricated from a blend of fact and fiction from many sources approx 1500 years after the alleged death of Jesus Christ. I could go on all day but cut to the chase. Yeah?
Alt reference points for research point your electronically enhanced microscopes with built in sceptic ejector seats this way...
1. Sumer. A truckload of those old clay tablets dating around 6000 years contain a shitload of material regarding the creation of homosapien as a genetic experiment at the hands of the Annunaki insert aliens from the 12th planet alias angels here]. Thousands have been faithfully translated and verified and all contain untimely information which much of modern physics/philosophy/astronomy/medicine etc is based/behind on.
2. Various ancient scrolls which were deliberately left out of the bible due to the explicit and unsavoury nature: the Dead Sea Scrolls, Book of Enoch are a good starting base.
3. All indigenous cultures have Creationist legends which upon analysis point to intervention with humanity from people/gods who came down from the skies. Imaginative bedtime stories, historical accounts or an imbellishment of the latter/or mix of both as it was retold over the ages? A number of online resources are available. Look at Tihuanco, Atlantis, India, China, Mesopotamia, Egypt. The earliest civilisations on this planet whose developmental acceleration has not been adequately explained through scientific methods have all credited Alien Gods "Nefilim/Annunaki/Elohim". Different cultures have different names.
Science is not an effective method for explaining everything which surrounds us. Ultimately it too is merely theory. I believe in a fusion of thought from all worlds... Neither apes nor Adam but 'aliens'. Evolution and Creationism except different to both mainstream schools of thought.
Look at our unique double helix stranded DNA. Nothing else on the planet has it. We were originally only part of this world.
Repeat! Science can not explain everything. To cling onto science as the harbinger of all knowledge is fallacious, narrow minded and ultimately dangerous as we unnecessarily lock the door to the postulation of other theories based on alternative methods. Science is NOT God. To worship it as such is merely substituting one crutch for another. A common trait in these 'enlightened' times. Science is an infant and those who cling to it desperately are more infantile still. We are children in a gigantic playground and the wisest thing is to admit we know nothing.
Stating the obvious... Many documented facts of our history do not make it to mainstream media merely because like the Jews or Christians of yesteryear it's not politically expedient for certain special interest groups to reveal information to us. We all know this. Conspiracy theory is based on something. Sure it's good to keep a grain of salt handy but is our inate sceptism blinfding us to certain truths? Do you really trust the US government? The US airforce? They certainly don't trust you or I with a great deal of information which they 'protect' us from. Hello! This is a drop in the pan. We know nothing. Use this as a basis premise and then it's easy to embrace enlightenment [whatever that is].
There is a ridiculous amount of material available which document Creationism with alien genetic programming, ancient historical FACTs which are often blurred into the fabric of literatire lie the Bible, but it's all been tarred with a brush to endear itself to people with a background in empirical scienmce to laugh at. It's difficult to seperate the wheat from the chaff, but it's all there.
That shocking movie with Kim Basinger may not be as ludicrous as it appears at face value. Well no, but I needed a punchline...
If you want links try these for size. Netscapes being a bitch and keeps crashing so my bookmarks are a nightmare, Here's a handful and if you want more mail me. No proof per se but makes for interesting reading:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/2
http://www.xensei.com/users/john9904/hqwest/ind
http://www.in-search-of.com/frames/stonedisk/st
http://www.zetatalk3.com/usenet/use00566.htm
http://www.nor.com.au/users/stingray/nibiru.htm
http://www.ufomind.com/ufo/topic/ancient/
http://bigsun.wbs.net/homepages/m/a/r/margofox/
http://www.disinfo.com
http://www.sitchin.com
http://www.grahamhancock.com/
That is all.
Disclaimer: I am NOT a Christian.
Sorry about the typos and shocking grammer -- I wrote this in a hurry. I want to go to bed *yawn*
To sleep to perchance to dream of immaculate conceptions and aliens...
BLAMMO shaken not stirred
I find this comment rather offensive. Personally I'm a sophomore in college, strongly considering majoring in physics, and a creationist. I do not find these two to be incompatible. Yes, there are a lot of really stupid arguements for creationism, and a lot of overused ones. There are also many compelling ones for it.
I do not attempt to convince other people of creationism, I consider it their right to believe whatever they choose, just as I consider it my right to believe whatever I choose.
I don't care if creationism isn't taught in schools. I do object when the attitude you just exhibited is taught. I consider it perfectly possible to be a rational being and a creationist.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
what, exactly, are the pro-creationists after?
i mean, really, they just seem to be destroying science without putting anything in its place. "creationism", the alternative to evoloution they seem to be pushing, doesn't seem to, like, contain any science. It has no factual basis, doesn't help with predicting things or explain anything, and it's based entirely on faith. If it's based on faith, what is there to teach? nothing.
They seem to be splitting things up into "macroevoloution" and "microevoloution" with some hazy distinction between the two they never really get into. I mean, where's the line? I'm sure they would rather not have to pay attention to that, but you can't completely _ignore_ it; i mean, genetics isn't something you can ignore, and what they call "microevoloution" can kill you, since diseases do it constantly.
It's one thing to say evoloution theory is bad, but when you try to get rid of it in the school and replace it with something concrete, well, creationism breaks down completely. The only option is to simply not teach anything. (which, i'll bet, is what they're doing in Kansas)
Where does "microevoloution" stop and "macroevoloution" start? You can interbreed dogs and get new things; so are all dogs related? What about wolves? At some point in order for creationism to work you've got to point at one specific thing that begat all doglike creatures, or all catlike or cowlike or undersea protazoa or fish. But are all fish from the same ancestor? What about sharks? They're a lot bigger. Things get very hazy, especially if you pay any attention to the fossil record. You start looking for the one ancestor of all those things and find it's pretty similar to a lot of other things at that time.
They point a lot to "gaps in the fossil record", but they seem to be saying that since evoloution isn't supported at every step by fossils, you should reject it in favor of a system that totally ignores the fossil record. How do they explain that the fossils seem to follow a kind of pattern of starting simpler and diverging into more adapted creatures? is it just a coincidence?
and this is where things get REALLY wierd. since of course they _start_ with claiming that man are not directly related to bacteria, but eventually it becomes less clear what they're after. What it comes down to is that eventually they claim that the earth can't be older than 7000 years. (if you allow more than that to occur it would contradict a literal interpretation of Genesis, and anyway if you lend any credence to carbon dating it kind of makes macroevoloution look kind of likely.) But if the earth isn't older than 7,000 years that kind of hurts history a lot. You've got to throw out quite a bit of early history-- i mean, historians seem to claim that real humans started around 35000 BC. Oh, and what about all those "homo habilis" and "austrolopithicus" things there seem to be fossils of? What the hell are THOSE? what about all those kind-of-humanlike fossils that start to get more and more humanlike over time?
Oh, that's right, carbon dating is all lies. But then if THAT'S true, we've got to reevaluate a LOT of history, since we base dates of certain early historical things on carbon dating and similar technologies. All our dates must be wrong. And what about atomic science? it describes exactly how and why carbon dating works; if carbon dating is lies, then that means our entire hypothesis of nuclear decay is totally wrong. We've got to come up with something in it's place. But nothing is offered to replace it. No good reason is offered as to why our theory of atoms is correct as far as it can make nuclear power plants and atomic bombs work, but its description of carbon isotopes decaying at a certain rate over time is somehow dead wrong. Do we have to throw out the periodic table, since it's where the neutrons come from?
The point is you wind up destroying more and more science the more you poke into this. Oh, and wouldn't our entire system of geology be wrong? plate tectonics describes earthquakes and how the mountains form and the deep-sea trenches and everything, but it describes things in terms of millions of years; there are only 7000 years.
You can't really put creationism in a school. It isn't science. Simple as that. It isn't like evoloution theory, which starts with a number of questions about why things are the way they are, and attempts to come up with the best explanation possible; creationism starts with an answer, and treats the questions as if they were totally irrelivant and unimportant. But if you're TEACHING SCIENCE, at some point questions do matter after a fashion.
ok i'm done rambling now.
--mcc-baka
"If we could just get everyone to close their eyes and visualize world peace for an hour, imagine how serene and quiet it would be until he looting started." -anonymous
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
When will people learn? All that Kansas BOE did was remove the evolution questions from the standardized tests. They did not endorse creationism or ban evolution. Please get the facts straight. This misreporting is sickening.
Godel/Tarski's observation may be true but it does not negate the fact that math IS about truth. If the facts in a theorem are based on truth then the foundation has been set.
Your first paragraph seems like the mental meanderings of self-absorption in the arguments of deconstructionism. I say, so what? what's your point. Is math now invalid?
Studying creationism is a concept completely distorted by the agenda of it's zealots. A TRUE scientist will be self-aware enough to release pre-dispositions in studies that are juxtaposed to their own.
The fact remains Kansas City's agenda is not study but CONTROL.
Your argument still begs the question and offers no insight into the real problem: Who's right?
My answer: The Constitution and the Bill of Rights
The people of Kansas do not believe that they have evolved from apes.
I see no reason to argue with them. I too, see no evidence that they have evolved from apes.
Perhaps inbreeding cures evolution?
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
If you actually read the article, you'd see that the NM decision requires teachers to present the evidence for and against evolution...
dbrutus writes:
"Could it be that what creationists want is for evolution to not be given a state endorsement? Could it be that it isn't ramming creationism down people's throats that is the current situation but ramming evolution down people's throats?"
Then let's stop "ramming" arithmetics and simple physics "down people's throats", too, while we're at it, why don't we? Oh, and geography, above all! Hey, they're ramming the round-earth theory down people's throats...
"Read Darwin's Black Box and tell me that evolution is proven enough that we want the state to endorse it as a mandatory part of instruction and that it should be on the mandatory state tests."
Yes, it is proven enough, and no amount of "learned" books by kooks is about to change that fact. You know, there are books by kooks that set out to explain how the Earth is flat, too... Or, which seems more popular nowadays, it's a *hollow* sphere, and we live on the *inside* of it.
Demanding "equal time" for such idiocy is demanding that children NOT be taught what we, to the best of our knowledge, call the TRUTH. People who advocate that should be ashamed of themselves.
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
i have to agree with main cahracter of this series (marfy brown) that people are just getting too fragile about what thay hear and that they are also loosing sense of humor.
and i also have to point out that such attitude do not help us to solve problems which are referenced as "hot topics" and which are named using some "better" words just to be more "politicaly correct": it just masquerade them not solve them!
hany
Sorry, but that's not all separation of church *insert-whatever-word-makes-you-happy* state was intended for. Why do we not have a state-sponsored religion? So that people can worship (or not worship) however they please. If the schools teach Christian creationism, they are pressuring those who are not Christians to conform.
I agree, there can be church-related things in the state. "In God We Trust." But if the schools teach creationism, they are actively pushing one religion over all others.
human://billy.j.mabray/
human://billy.j.mabray/
"Every good system has a backup." -- Dale Hanchey
We wont even go into how much the lizards thing wouldnt work (besides the warm blood there's the bone structure, and the other non-lizardly fe.. nevermind, i said i wouldnt). But the main problem isnt how the water got there, it's where it went. If it dropped out of the sky in a big splash, rained normally down, or anything else.. where'd it all go? It apparently drained away, but to where? That's one whole helluvalot of water and noplace for it to go.
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
dbrutus writes:
"The Catholic and Orthodox churches are huge parts of christianity and they do not subscribe to the literalist points that you claim they do. Heck, the pope doesn't have a problem with the idea of God using the mechanism of evolution to bring about his glorious creation. There is no 7,000 year chronology in Catholic doctrine so your point on carbon dating is untrue for a huge chunk of christianity. Ditto for the Orthodox and that section of protestantism that does not use a literalist interpretation of the Bible."
...if you, or "some" Christians, can accept *that* much science, then why not the rest of it? If you find that science goes so far towards explaining the world, why not trust those who are trying to tell you it can explain the rest, too? After all, the people who say that -- the "scientific community" at large -- are the same ones who brought you the bits you *do* accept.
And presumably, you accepted them, whatever parts of science you did accept, on the *evidence*. What evidence is there for creationism? None, even you say you accept that. So, what evidence is there for all the rest of the Bible?!? So why believe in that?!?
"Science and religion do not necessarily have to be in contradiction."
No; especially since religion isn't needed at all. It's irrelevant to science, and should be so to modern humans, too -- like all other medieval superstition.
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
Kings 1
7:23 And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.
know - if you know something, there is no doubt that it is true, and no doubt for anyone else that it is true unless they are ignorant.
believe - if you believe something, that means that out of a series of possibilities, what you believe is what you think is correct.
Now why did I just define these things? Well I find it is important because these things often confused when talking about religion.
Alright now. I believe in evolution. I believe in evolution because of all the evidence we know we know.
Now, you can believe in creationism, but you cannot know that it is true unless you were there when it happened.
The reason people believe in creationism is because either they believe that the Bible is correct on the beginning of life on Earth and they interpret the Bible strictly, or because of some form of divine truth.
In my opinion, the creationism/evolution controversy is just like when Galileo disproved the Geo-centric theory (that all the planets go revolve around the Earth) which was what the Church believed, except the Church no longer has the power to execute people with theories they don't believe in.
I would like to say that it is indeed possible that the way that God created life on our planet may be very similar to evolution theory, only much much faster. If I recall correctly in Genesis, God created fish, then birds, then mammals, and lastly, man. That is the same order of things that evolutionists believe, I think. I am just trying to say, being open-minded and all, that creationism and evolution don't have to be mutually exclusive.
Of course the Bible says that the earth was here before the sun, which goes against nebular theory (that the sun and planets were created in a vast cloud of gas and dust). Also that the stars were created after the earth which is contrary to the Big Bang Theory. But this is a different argument.
Note before I get flamed: Don't get to critical of what I say. I confess I do not have a bible in front of me nor do I have papers about Darwin's Theory of Evolution. I am going by a layman's understanding of both. Don't expect me to put in research for just mere Slashdot comment. If you know better, tell us, then I won't make the same mistake twice. Thank You.
--
You can learn a lot by teaching yourself. A whole lot. However, there is a lot to learn. A whole lot. A whole lot more, in fact, than you can learn by teaching yourself.
:-) I could go on: foreign languages, history of obscure places, etc, but I feel that these examples are enough.
Consider this: I can (and have) taught myself programming from assembler to C++; I have taught myself a fair deal about the internals and externals of UNIX systems; I have taught myself to use autoconf and automake. These things can be learned by doing and I believe I have learned them well.
Now: how do I teach myself linear algebra? How do I teach myself the fundamentals of quantum mechanics? How do I teach myself about optics? In all these cases, I wouldn't really even know where to begin, and if I did, simply learning one of them would consume so much time that I'd never start on the next. Quantum mechanics you can't even learn by doing, and linear algebra, while useful, is not a structure most people are likely to derive on their own. Fiddling with lenses might get you somewhere in optics, but not everyong is Newton.
This is what teachers, schools, and books are good for: the more theoretical and esoteric bits of learning that a student is not likely to pick up on his or her own. I really hate to use the word 'efficient' in connection with education, but the truth is that you can just learn a lot of things much faster from someone who knows them already than by just flailing around on your own.
I don't mean to disparage the value of hands-on experience with anything from a mathematical equation to a Mozart symphony -- this is indisputably important. It's unfortunate -- no, make that bad -- if you work with computers and can't grope your way to a solution when all else fails. But too many people in this forum and elsewhere have an arrogant "Edukashun? We don't need no steenkin' edukashun!" attitude, thinking that simply because they taught themselves to install Apache that they know everything and there's nothing anyone can teach them. This is generally nonsense; worse is the assumption that there's nothing anyone can teach
anyone
, because in a [nominally] democratic society that attitude can end up hurting
everyone
.
If you want to believe that what you can learn with your hands is the sum total of human knowledge -- fine. But don't limit other people to this.
One last thing -- I may not have learned to use computers in school (I assume you mean elementary and high school, college lets students choose what they want), but I certainly learned writing, mathematics, history and the basics of various sciences there. These, and the mental skills they encourage (eg, logical reasoning), not only help with computers but are also of paramount importance for any would-be self-schooler. Even if you feel that college is beneath you you will need these skills to effectively bootstrap any curriculum you choose.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
We do have a huge amount of evidence like tree rings for recent ages and progressions of fossils in various strata for older things. C-14 works for a few thousand years, decay of other elements can be used to radiometrically date things far older. And insofar as we can cross-check these dates, they all agree. Whether you're dating things by the decay of K-40 to argon, uranium to lead, or anything else, the dates all line up neatly with the old stuff on the bottom of the geological column and the young stuff on the top. If you are going to postulate that these dates are all way wrong you have to explain why the physics of radioactive decay changed and provide evidence for it. Lotsa luck!
If you find a mineral that gets natural uranium in it but chemically excludes lead during its formation (as you can prove in the lab and in young rocks), and you find a sample where there is an equal number of uranium atoms and lead atoms in it, you know that it is one uranium half-life old; the lead had to come from somewhere, and that could only be the decay of uranium. And there's literally mountains of evidence in support of those timelines.
The Earth, and life on it, is billions of years old. The evidence is irrefutable. If you insist on believing otherwise, you have to postulate a God who conjures up an enormous and consistent set of false evidence of age into His creation (in other words, a pathological liar). So I guess you could say that young-earth Creationists worship the Prince of Lies by definition. Scary, huh?
--
Deja Moo: The feeling that
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
A soul is a hard thing to define. I am certainly no great theologian but I will try.
The soul is what seperates man from beast. It is the moral, spiritual, intelectual, and emotional part of man's nature.
Although apes like Koko do share a lot of our intelectual and emotional aspects, they do not have a moral or spiritual conciousness.
Sorry. In using the word world I was refering to the universe.
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Reactionary religious Bigots will always abound and screw up everything intelligent people try to do. What we need are fewer cowards in politics, and more people, right or wrong, who are willing to speak what they believe and not what people want to hear . . . not what is pc or ez but what is nearer to truth than fable. ---nedy--------------------------------"All unuttered truths turn poisonous." . . . Nietzche
I suppose most Americans agree with us Europeans that Iran and Afghanistan and places like that are spooky, with their religious fundamentalism and fanaticism. After all, we're both part of the modern, cultured, Western World.
But then, in your own country shit like this can even be an *issue*?!? The Bible-thumpers have the power to get their medieval superstition declared "The Truth As It Shall Be Taught To The Children" in some entire *states*?!? The rational modern mind is reduced to celebrating it as some kind of "victory" when some state does *not* succumb to the kooks?!?
Geeze, talk about shades of Heinlein's _Revolt in 2100_ ! (Only, the Mongol invasion he postulated as a backdrop doesn't seem to be necessary at all.)
To an inhabitant of what more and more seems to be the only Cultured Continent, in some ways America looks no less weird than Iran or Afghanistan...
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
I don't know of any viable scientific alternative to naturalistic evolution. And wouldn't a supernatural theory of evolution be unscientific, i.e, non-falsifiable?
Do you know of a scientific alternative with a reasonable amount of evidence for it?
Here's a critique of Denton's book.
I'm glad Kentucky is going PC. We wouldn't want to offend the Neanderthals, would we?
-M
Amen. The motivation of so many students now is so close to nil that it's not even measurable. I remember that when I was still in elementary school, I was on a first-name basis with every librarian at the local branch.
But back to your point. So many teachers in schools nowadays, even in advanced classes, assume that all of their students have absolutely no idea how to go about the business of learning. They assume that each of their students must be force-fed information the way they have planned, and woe be the day when you even hint at the fact that you might know best how to teach yourself. After all, you've had years of experience discovering how you learn, years that no teacher will ever come close to having. Bring them in, fill them up, send them along. Assembly-line style.
My AP US History teacher last year made the fatal mistake of deciding that he was going to dictate pretty much exactly how your notes were going to be formatted, down to actual content and headings. And he collected them and graded them based on his criteria, and his criteria alone. That was a huge culture shock for me, because so far, even in two other AP classes, I'd taught myself everything by reading to learn, not to pass the upcoming test, not to please anyone else, but to absorb the material because I wanted to. Schools are totally unprepared for people in my situation. They view us as mere heretics that will eventually bow to the force of having their educational methods pressed upon us. So I did his lame notes for a couple of months, and then started skipping about every other assignment, instead giving the chapter a thorough read to remember, instead of reading to be able to quickly bullshit the night's assignment. He told me once, point blank, that my test grades were some of the highest in the class and that my homework grade was actually bringing me down.
I had a chat with him and explained my perspective, and he dictated to me a "modified" notes format just so he could "make sure" that I was doing the reading. If he original plan was an insult, this was a punch to the face. I let my homework slip almost totally in the last quarter and took a 76, my first quarter grade below a B+, ever. I made a 4 on the AP final. (For those unfamiliar with the AP grading system in the States, it's on a scale of 1 to 5, a four is about the top 20-30% of all students who take the exam). But I know that I could have gotten a 5 (~top 10%) if I had been allowed to use my own, proven system. Thank you, American Educational System.
Doesn't this seem a bit peculiar, that these people would prefer to ignore the scientific knowledge that humans have spent the past few thousand years amassing about themselves, and instead pass on some Biblical ideology? Nobody even knows who wrote the Bible, yet apparently there's a pressing need to use this as the source of information relating to our evolution..... how sad.
Anyway, this seems to be a bit of a "Christian Science" idea to me. After all, those "scientists" advocate the use of NATURAL HEALING over anything that science has offered a cure for. "Hit by a car? Walk it off -- God will take care of the rest" seems to be a paraphrased idea (if somewhat more than cynical) of what they preach. And now Kansas' board of education wishes to teach its students the "new science" of evolution?
Pretty sad, really -- these people are actively eroding the quality of education which thousands of kids receive, whom really have no say in the matter, given their age. All this because of some religious predispositions.......
I think people on both sides of this debate need to take a step back and look at the whole picture.
Our world has been around for a very, very, long time. Even when you read Genisis you will notice that man is the last of G*D's final creations.
Does nature evolve over time? Sure it does. Some species die out, and others adapt and change to become more viable.
What is the difference between man and beast? Man has a soul. Just because G*D gave this wonderful gift to some advanced primates we think of as Adam&Eve doesn't mean we are apes. The second G*D gave humans a soul was when humanity was created.
The people of Moses have to realize that creationism and evolution do co-exist and can be tought side by side withought being in total opposition of one-another.
Sience is our way of understanding the great emperical mystries of our universe. Just because the earth is round and not flat, or G*D's creation of the universe was by what our scientists call the "Big Ban" doesn't mean we are heathens. We simply understand more of the world around us. And although science might seem in opposition to G*D at times in the end it corrects us and only brings us closer to and understanding of his glorius world.
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Hitler used schools as great indoctrinators, and then controlled the kids even more with his Hitler Youth Clubs.
The main problem with Public schooling is the fact that they force you to accept morals and adhere to standards. Not doing so causes punishment, outcasting etc. (i think Jon katz talked about it more & better in his articles after the columbine shootings).
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Lets get one thing straight here first, you can spend you whole life studying the constitution, and will never see the phrase separation of church and state. To understand where this came from you must understand the first people in america. They were persecuted by the Government of places like england which had a mandatory religion for the whole country. The passage in the constitution that people refer to as "seperation of church and state" is, in all reality, saying the state can not controll the church. Our founding fathers believed in God and this country was based on God.
All you have to do is take out that pocket full of change and read what it says... I am not, however saying that there should be mandatory bible studies in schools like there used to be. I am saying however that it should be a choice that people could take as an elective. As far as i am concerned, evolutionism is a religion. It takes a whole lot more faith to believe that Bang it happened and a little thing of bacteria turned into me than believing that God created the universe. In fact, Darwin himself, on his deathbed rejected his own theory.
"Suppose there was no intelligence behind the universe. In this case nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. Thought is merely the by-product of some atoms within my skull. But if so how can i trust my own thinking to be true? But if i can trust my own thinking, of course, I cant truse the arguements leading to atheism and therefore have no reason to be an athiest, or anything else. Unleses I believe in God, I can't believe in thought; so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God." C.S Lewis
One of the hardest parts of a creationist theory to give up is the distinction of man. Under the mainstream Judeo-Christian creation story, Man is separate from all the other animals, from monkey to bacteria, placed on a higher level of existence, halfway between God and animal. Evolution denies such a privleging of Man: Man is merely an offshoot of a branch of zoology who happens to have developed intelligence to an extent previously unseen in billions of years of species proliferation.
This is difficult to give up. If you've grown up believing Man to be special on a certain merit(created separately by God), trying to deny that merit in the face of a differing theory is an ego blow. I'm not saying this is the only reason supporters of Creationist theories sometimes vehemently deny evolution, but it is certainly a reason supporters of any theory can understand.
But even within a purely evolutionist view of the world, it is possible to retain Man's distinction from the rest of the animal kingdom: intelligence. Never in the course of evolution has such intelligence been so focused, so complex, so beautiful. It it our ability to reason that distinguishes us from the animals, not some unprovable "and on the sixth day God created Man".
Religion is based on faith. We're all agreed? Good. Science is based on fact. Agreed? Good. The observations that compose our science are measured by technology we currently have. -as were observations that would contribute to religious beliefs 1000's of years ago. At any time, we may discover a new technology that will open up entire new observations to us, diproving every observation scientists have made in the last XXXX years. Belief in the current scientific model of (choose your field) is thus based on the belief that what we currently observe, and how we choose to define/explain it, will always remain true. Since we have no way of knowing for sure, we must take this on faith. Since science is based on this faith it is simply a religion.
Standard Christian Beliefs are Based on the Idea that God Created the Universe, And then Man.
:)
:)
Evolution States Man Evolved from bleh or Whatever.
Unless you Believe in Mars=Eden theories.. but enough on that
We have plants and Animals and Stuff that All show signs that Evolution Exists.
Fact: Evolution Through Natural Selection or other Unknown means DOES EXIST. This has been proven as an Absolute Fact, through observation. if you deny this, It is not Faith in your god, It is just an unwillingness to accept that wich is real, In wich case you might as well attempt to fly.
Did man Evolve from Something? I'm willing to bet on it. It's been proven that man, too, Is Evolving. We dont know if man was once something else, Because we tend not to have any records of Prehistoric Times.
I think that all signs besides Faith that man was sprung out of nothing in seven days point toward evolution, through some means.
Does this really go against Christian Belief that much?
I think not.
You have to, You MUST admit that The bible is in many ways innacurate, Unless you Believe that the World is flat, And the Sky is just a Vast Ocean above us. Some of the Bible may be true. But some of it was simply made up as an Explanation for things that man did not understand.
The Bible says god Gave man the Breath of Life. The Bible Also says god made man's physical self. Well let's just say Man Evolved. Then One Day God came along and Gave Monkeys or whatever the breath of life- Their Spirit. Their Conciousness. (How many of you reading this right now are thinking 2001?
In that sense, Does evolution theory really disagree with your beliefs that much? Enough to Deny the Teaching of something that has been Proven as Fact?
'God' May have created the Universe, wich lead to the comming of man, But God did not Create man in Seven Days.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All