You cannot observe macro evolution. Unless (according to the ToE) you are a few hundred million years old. Not once has a divergence of a species into another species been recorded.
There is no such thing as "macro" evolution, nor is there "micro" evolution. There is only "evolution". These other terms were invented by Creationists in order to try to sow confusion and somehow divide evolution into different categories after their asses were handed to them when laboratory tests confirmed evolution in bacteria. The exact same process which is responsible for divergence of species in bacteria is also responsible for divergence of species in higher animals. All that is different is the time scale due to longevity of each generation and much lower population counts.
As a direct result of activities of various greedy bone-heads who run such countries into the ground. And so as a "cure" for all that is ailing these places they propose all-purpose greed... only more of it then before.
Look, I am not blaming, nor judging, the people who are forced to make horrible choices due to being stuck in countries which have been sold down the river, my beef is with the dick-heads who are directly responsible for these conditions and who either live in exclusive gated communities or somewhere in London, living it up on all the money they stole, while pontificating on the virtues of dog-eat-dog Capitalism while their private-school educated offspring whines on Slashdot about the "lazy" denizens of their native land who should feel grateful for being in the mine at the age of 6.
So I think you are mis-understanding the nature of my posts completely.
No one ever claimed that Occam's Razor constitutes any proof, it merely helps us detect suspect "theories" as I indicated in the previous post.
Also, even discussing an untestable "truth" is utterly pointless as it is... well... untestable and thus unknowable, for all knowledge requires an ability to be falsified as a prerequisite, or else it is not "knowledge" but "fantasy".
That is actually the point I am making, that these greed worshipers cannot comprehend any other alternatives then "abject poverty, prostitution, etc" or "back-breaking child labor since the age of 3". It never crossed their minds that what they are proposing removes them from the pool of "humanity" and places them in some species more akin to vultures and hyenas then people.
The problems of these countries will not be solved by borrowing IMF money at loan-shark rates and with murderous "reform" requirements only to allow for importing callous multi-nationals to put every kid into a sweat-shop, nor will they be somehow fixed by promoting the "McDonald's Culture(tm)". There is are of course other alternatives but these are ideologically taboo for our nascent Acolytes of Avarice to even mention by name, for they fear that they are like the fabled Mefisto and that they will appear to claim their soul as soon as the name is spoken.
So is it valid to continue to refine the hamster hypothesis to fit the results of experiments, and continue to claim that it hasn't been discredited by experiment after experiment that show that aspect after aspect of the hypothesis are verifiably false? I would say no...
And you would be right. You see a "theory" which continuously radically modifies itself to accommodate evidence is no theory at all as it is fundamentally untestable, i.e there is no possible test which would produce a condition of the theory being "invalidated", as it will be simply modified to accommodate the new evidence ad infinitum!
One could also look at it this way: the "hamster theory" in its original form was invalidated but the True Believers replaced it with another, radically different (now a "Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement"), theory. The process of course continues every time some experiment is performed, each time destroying yet another lunatic "theory", which the True Believers replace with another ever more radically convoluted "theory".
One way or another, this is precisely why we have the Occam's Razor.
Frex, I remember how we learned that the sun doesn't go around the earth. Our sci. teacher set up an earthnocentric model, and let us break it down into "why it doesn't work".
Again, I sympathize with that way of teaching but evolution is much, much harder to demonstrate in the classroom as it is a process which occurs over very extended periods of time. Some enterprising schools apparently attempted to demonstrate evolution in fruit-flies and bacteria but even then this covers only a small section of the whole comprehensive theory and the wackos are ready with plausibly sounding (until you spend a lot of time dissecting them) "explanations". That is why Flat Earthers went relatively extinct, their particular stupidity was too easily demonstrable. Anti-evolution crowd is safer because their lunacy is not as straightforward to demonstrate and they of course do everything in their power to convolute, obfuscate and obscure whatever they can, making the process even more atrocious. This, while not effective against dedicated scientists, is unfortunately quite effective against laymen, especially when coupled with and reinforced by the other scourge of humanity: religion.
I believe I would agree with questioning the knowledge of a person who seriously contends that evolution doesn't take place and isn't the primary motive force behind the variety of life we see. To deny evolution to that degree is to deny that water is wet.
Which is precisely what this whole hullabaloo is all about. When you read about "Creationism" or "Intelligent Design" in US politics, those are code words for fundamentalist Christianist wackos, none others. These are people who build Creationist "museums" complete with a Dinosaur-riding Jesus.
Flat earth theory, while wrong, was a legitimate theory, supported by observation and falsifiable by experiment. To equate creationism with flat earth implies that creationism is wrong simply because there's some (possibly controversial) evidence against it, and this is not true.
Actually, prior to the advent of science, particularly geology, astronomy, geophysics, Darwinian evolution theory etc "creationism" was "plausible" as one of the possible competing theories explaining the natural order of things around us, simply due to our inability to analyze such things. It is simply that various elements of religious myth were discredited one by one over time with very few, essentially so vague as to be meaningless and thus unfalsifiable, remaining.
Creationism is based not on observations that some human made, but on direct communication from a higher being. It makes no predictions about future events, so it is not falsifiable. The Judeo-Christian creation story may or may not be how the world came to have its present configuration, but there is no aspect of it that fulfills any of the characteristics of a scientific paradigm.
That definition of "creationism" is not the one used by its proponents in the US school system. They are talking about taking the Bible literally for starters. You are unaware the level of medieval backwardness which has been slowly coming to the prominence in North America in recent years.
Man this is getting silly. Stop quoting people without understanding what they say. This argument is not applicable outside specific claims of existence of various phenomena (i.e. "flying reindeer", "spoon bending psychics" etc). That is what Randi focuses on exclusively, and that is why he is right but only in that narrow scope of inquiry. It is not applicable to explanatory powers of theories for example! You are confused beyond belief.
Let me give you an example, so maybe you will grasp where you are going so wrong:
I have a flashlight, I turn it on and off. Light comes out. I present a "theory" that it is powered by a hamster on a wheel with a dynamo within. You claim it is a chemical battery. We decide on a scientific experiment to open it and examine its contents. Upon doing so a D-cell comes out. To further test this we disect the cell, and a bunch of chemicals come out but no hamster. At this point the evidence collected is "positive" for your theory, effectively validating it, and it is devastating for mine, effectively discrediting it. Do you comprehend now it how it is possible for the same set of evidence to both validate and invalidate various theories?
Well, I can feel your sentiment but I think you seriously underestimate the zeal and resources of the lunatics bent on controlling our society's future. What you describe works in an environment where objective discussion is possible, not where more then a half of the kids in your class are being furiously, at all times in and out of school, brainwashed by many not-so-disinterested, well financed groups.
If you can come up with a way to offset such a handicap, then by all means, teach all religious myths and let the kids dissect them. Judging from past events however I remain pessimistic as to the outcome.
From the very quotes posted here, she said a lot of self-contradictory things, repeatedly (usually based on whom she is talking to). That does not bode well for her integrity. My personal view is that she simply has no clue whatsoever and merely yaps out whatever she thinks will score her points with her "constituency", and when she finds the stuff back-firing, she simply "clarifies" or "explains" it away... until the next time. It is a time-proven modus operandi amongst particularly sleazy politicos of all stripes, but recently perfected to the form of art by the so-called "conservatives".
Evolution has not place at this moment in the discussion. This particular tangent of the thread was comparing Creationism and the Flat Earth Theory.
What?! Anti-evolution "theories" are exactly what is meant by "creationism" (or more precisely "Intelligent Design" as these cooks call themselves these days in a bid to sound more "scientific") in the school curriculum context, as it always was ever since the Enlightenment. Specially in the USA. Were you living under a rock for the last 100 years of US politics?
Since the rest of your post is based on the silly premise that we are not discussing evolution, I won't even bother with it.
Dude you are embarrassing yourself. It apparently never occurred to you that evidence collected can also contradict many theories. Thus evidence can be "positive" for some theories, reinforcing them, and at the same time lead to discrediting of other theories, thus be "negative" for them. That is the very process of elimination which landed the "Turtles All The Way Down" idea along with the Flat Earth and Creationism in the same garbage bin of science.
Modern astronomy has greater standing than the "turtles all the way down" idea because it has considerable positive evidence. The "turtles all the way down" idea has none.
No. The "Turtles All The Way Down" is directly contradicted by modern scientific evidence (which evidence also, at the same time reinforces and supports other theories). That is far more powerful then mere "lack of evidence for". Again you are utterly confused about the relationship of evidence and theory, and that evidence can exist "against" some theory, i.e. be "negative" from that theory's perspective.
The rest of your arguments are based on this confusion. You simply do not grasp the most basic fundamentals of the scientific process.
Actually, no, he is not. I already addressed that. The process of evolution, like the shape of the Earth, is scientifically demonstrable, as opposed to the shape of make-believe beings like "flying reindeer" or "bigfoot". The GP was simply utterly confused as to what "proving the negative" means.
Whether the universe was "created" cannot be so easily disproved.
You are mis-understanding what aspects of "creationism" are being discussed in this context. It is specifically the evolution of biological organisms which is the bone of contention here for the knuckle-draggers, not the origins of the Universe or the Big Bang.
They of course do not subscribe to the idea that God created every individual type of creature and life form individually
Actually, this is precisely what these Creationists we are discussing here do. The cornerstone of this lunacy is the premise that the Bible has to be taken literally. No esoteric equivocations. Seven actual days ~6000 years ago, Adam + Eve from his rib, etc and so on.
I understand your position and indeed science does not (presently) reach beyond the t-zero moment of the Big Bang. But the people who can reconcile that view with their religion are most likely Deists, not Christians and they are unlikely to be involved with the Creationist lunacies we are discussing here.
Personally I think she is a typical "conservative" opportunist who, as you indicate, has no clue about anything but who comes with a never shutting maw capable of opening meters wide to voice her "opinion" on just about anything, solicited or not. Like any "conservative" she believes that "truth" belongs to she who can shout the loudest with the most froth and spittle being disgorged. But she also has a modicum of a political sense to moderate her yapping to suit her audience, which is what gets her elected, but what also produces these delightfully self-contradictory "positions" she is being quoted voicing.
That pretty much sums it up. A knuckle-dragging candidate for knuckle-draggers.
You obviously aren't all that familiar with the DailyKos. They do, in fact, delete posts that do not tow their party line. They'll leave up hateful, obscenity filled crap up if it's far left. A thoughtful argument by a conservative has a tendency to just disappear.
I've been on that site a lot and I saw no such things happening. Could you please point me to some evidence of this? And I do not mean people who after being on Kos for months raising hell have been kicked out after having been Troll Rated to oblivion repeatedly... or who posted "insightful" posts beginning with "Hey you fucking idiot Moonbats..."
Sure, the site is not a perfect platform for Free Speech, granted. But it is leagues away from any other "opposing" site, like Red State, who are famously trigger happy banning people in minutes after 1 post which even mildly does not adhere to their "party line".
How so - you can observe the earth is not flat, you cannot "observe" a negative like "There is no god" or "God is not directing evolution".
We can, and did, observe the process of evolution. Note that "God" has nothing whatsoever to do with this physical, replicable in the lab, observable process with mountains of evidence to support it. Just as it is with the shape of the Earth. Creationism on the other hand has exactly zero scientific evidence to support it, very much like the existence of "god".
Truly a dark day for Slashdot when supposedly scientific people are confusing basics of science like this.
This statement indicates that it is you who does not grasp even the most fundamental principles of science and wish to confuse your audience with your fained "outrage" as to our supposed scientific "heresy".
What you have just said is that Intelligent Design is a valid scientific theory. It has to be in order for the scientific method to discredit it.
It is a "theory", true. Everything purporting to explain things is. And it was discredited, many many times over.
The term "scientific" as applied to theory usually means that a rigorous enough process was followed while constructing it. That is why Creationism is not a "scientific" theory, merely a "theory". But science can discredit all theories, especially those which are not scientific.
The flat earth theory was disproved when we went around and up and saw, by golly, a ball. Intelligent Design is not disproved by strong evidence for evolution, because you can always say "well of course, there's intelligence behind the movements in evolution".
The Creationism, was, is and will remain disproved. Period. Only religious lunatics adhere to it, just like it used to be with Flat Earth "theory". The real problem is the abundance of imbecilic knuckle-draggers who figure that "science" is established by those who shout the loudest and whose spittle flies the farthest.
I don't believe in Intelligent Design, but I don't think it matters if the thought is presented in an educational context because I firmly believe people can think for themselves - and the need to learn the difference between science and faith is sorely needed, as evidenced by your post. You have started to confuse valid science with what some people are telling you is science.
"Presentation" is not what is sought here. "Promotion", complete with multi million dollar brain-addling smoke-and-mirrors campaigns, featuring celebrities, churches, politicians and what not all aimed at confusing students to the point that they are unable to think critically, all so that their brains become fertile ground for a host of other lunacies, is the goal here, as it always was with organized lunacies in lust of power, power built upon control of perceptions of people from the very young age.
Sure it can. Otherwise the "Turtles All the Way Down" idea would be viewed exactly on par with modern astronomy, geophysics and the like.
It can't prove that reindeer cannot fly. It can't prove that bigfoot doesn't exist. It can't prove the world isn't flat. Science can't prove a negative.
Dude, you forfeited any credibility with that sentence. There is exactly zero evidence for "flying raindeer". Zero credible evidence for bigfoot. There is however plenty of evidence for earth not being flat. And science can quite conclusively prove that Earth is not flat. It can even demonstrate its actual shape.
You are completely confused as to what "proving the negative" means. It refers to an idea of demonstrating that something does not exist, not to demonstrating that something is one way or another. Since neither "flying reindeer" nor bigfoot are proven to exist, nothing can be said about these, nor any other imaginary creatures. The moment they are demonstrated to exist, all the usual rules apply and science then can and will demonstrate and explain the properties of such things.
Having started with this utterly flawed premise, I won't even address the rest.
Yes it is. Flath Earth "theory" and Creationism are pretty much the same as far as their complete lack of power to explain the observable evidence, therefore they are equivalent with each other in this respect from the point of view of science.
That's why I'm in favor of teaching creationism. Have the student's cross examine it with evolution and see what they come up with!
I see your point, but I think we have here a confusion as to what these people mean by "teaching". What you are talking about is "presenting" as in detailing the claims and then letting students figure out why the claims are wrong. What they mean is for you to present their "theory" as being of equal (or more) weight as the Theory of Evolution, "supported" by a vast array of pseudo-scientific babble (which they are willing to provide to you at no cost). The end result they hope for is quite different to what you hope to achieve: the plan is to sow enough confusion and smoke-and-mirrors trickery as to baffle the brains of young people and not only discredit science in general but to also make them more malleable for further injections of various bullshit.
And BTW, go ahead and teach Flat Earth Theory.
Have students cross examine it with Spherical Earth Theory and then show them how to prove the latter.
Very well, now change one thing: imagine that the Flat Earthers have managed to infiltrate mass media, are at every church, some family members of the kids are Flat Earthers, there are TV programs all day long featuring popular celebrities promoting the idea and that your kids in the class were given free, glossy, full-color books featuring famous "scientists" espousing words of "wisdom" as to how all of these cosmic probes were ether fake or a Communist conspiracy, distinguished-looking white bearded men in lab coats providing "scientific" sounding "explanations" for observable astronomical phenomena, while sorrowfully smiling former astronauts confirm that they were a party to a scam and that they repent for their sins...
Which is what that '==' symbol I used stood for. Not equality, which would be '=', but equivalence.
Note that some C, Java and the like junkies might be confused about this, but originally the symbols meant for 'assignment' were ':=' and the like, not '=' which was reserved for 'equality'. The use of '=' for assignment necessitated converting the symbol of equality from '=' to '==' which originally denoted 'equivalence'.
In any case, you've still misrepresented her -- she didn't say what they wanted to hear; she avoided saying what they didn't want to hear. It's a fine, but important, point.
Actually, no. You see, she slipped in one of the quotes to which I responded:
"When asked during a televised debate in 2006 about evolution and creationism, Palin said, according to the Anchorage Daily News: "Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both.""
And that pretty much closes the book on the idea that she somehow "avoided" pandering to the nutcases, while somehow holding true understanding of science back from the view of the frothing at the snout knuckle-draggers.
If it is already demonstrated that FE != S and if someone claims that C == S, and if I can demonstrate that C == FE, then it follows that I can substitute FE for C and thus reduce the original claim to FE == S, demonstrating the supposition false. Basic logic.
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There is no such thing as "macro" evolution, nor is there "micro" evolution. There is only "evolution". These other terms were invented by Creationists in order to try to sow confusion and somehow divide evolution into different categories after their asses were handed to them when laboratory tests confirmed evolution in bacteria. The exact same process which is responsible for divergence of species in bacteria is also responsible for divergence of species in higher animals. All that is different is the time scale due to longevity of each generation and much lower population counts.
As a direct result of activities of various greedy bone-heads who run such countries into the ground. And so as a "cure" for all that is ailing these places they propose all-purpose greed ... only more of it then before.
Look, I am not blaming, nor judging, the people who are forced to make horrible choices due to being stuck in countries which have been sold down the river, my beef is with the dick-heads who are directly responsible for these conditions and who either live in exclusive gated communities or somewhere in London, living it up on all the money they stole, while pontificating on the virtues of dog-eat-dog Capitalism while their private-school educated offspring whines on Slashdot about the "lazy" denizens of their native land who should feel grateful for being in the mine at the age of 6.
So I think you are mis-understanding the nature of my posts completely.
No one ever claimed that Occam's Razor constitutes any proof, it merely helps us detect suspect "theories" as I indicated in the previous post.
Also, even discussing an untestable "truth" is utterly pointless as it is ... well ... untestable and thus unknowable, for all knowledge requires an ability to be falsified as a prerequisite, or else it is not "knowledge" but "fantasy".
That is actually the point I am making, that these greed worshipers cannot comprehend any other alternatives then "abject poverty, prostitution, etc" or "back-breaking child labor since the age of 3". It never crossed their minds that what they are proposing removes them from the pool of "humanity" and places them in some species more akin to vultures and hyenas then people.
The problems of these countries will not be solved by borrowing IMF money at loan-shark rates and with murderous "reform" requirements only to allow for importing callous multi-nationals to put every kid into a sweat-shop, nor will they be somehow fixed by promoting the "McDonald's Culture(tm)". There is are of course other alternatives but these are ideologically taboo for our nascent Acolytes of Avarice to even mention by name, for they fear that they are like the fabled Mefisto and that they will appear to claim their soul as soon as the name is spoken.
And you would be right. You see a "theory" which continuously radically modifies itself to accommodate evidence is no theory at all as it is fundamentally untestable, i.e there is no possible test which would produce a condition of the theory being "invalidated", as it will be simply modified to accommodate the new evidence ad infinitum!
One could also look at it this way: the "hamster theory" in its original form was invalidated but the True Believers replaced it with another, radically different (now a "Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement"), theory. The process of course continues every time some experiment is performed, each time destroying yet another lunatic "theory", which the True Believers replace with another ever more radically convoluted "theory".
One way or another, this is precisely why we have the Occam's Razor.
Again, I sympathize with that way of teaching but evolution is much, much harder to demonstrate in the classroom as it is a process which occurs over very extended periods of time. Some enterprising schools apparently attempted to demonstrate evolution in fruit-flies and bacteria but even then this covers only a small section of the whole comprehensive theory and the wackos are ready with plausibly sounding (until you spend a lot of time dissecting them) "explanations". That is why Flat Earthers went relatively extinct, their particular stupidity was too easily demonstrable. Anti-evolution crowd is safer because their lunacy is not as straightforward to demonstrate and they of course do everything in their power to convolute, obfuscate and obscure whatever they can, making the process even more atrocious. This, while not effective against dedicated scientists, is unfortunately quite effective against laymen, especially when coupled with and reinforced by the other scourge of humanity: religion.
Which is precisely what this whole hullabaloo is all about. When you read about "Creationism" or "Intelligent Design" in US politics, those are code words for fundamentalist Christianist wackos, none others. These are people who build Creationist "museums" complete with a Dinosaur-riding Jesus.
Actually, prior to the advent of science, particularly geology, astronomy, geophysics, Darwinian evolution theory etc "creationism" was "plausible" as one of the possible competing theories explaining the natural order of things around us, simply due to our inability to analyze such things. It is simply that various elements of religious myth were discredited one by one over time with very few, essentially so vague as to be meaningless and thus unfalsifiable, remaining.
That definition of "creationism" is not the one used by its proponents in the US school system. They are talking about taking the Bible literally for starters. You are unaware the level of medieval backwardness which has been slowly coming to the prominence in North America in recent years.
Man this is getting silly. Stop quoting people without understanding what they say. This argument is not applicable outside specific claims of existence of various phenomena (i.e. "flying reindeer", "spoon bending psychics" etc). That is what Randi focuses on exclusively, and that is why he is right but only in that narrow scope of inquiry. It is not applicable to explanatory powers of theories for example! You are confused beyond belief.
Let me give you an example, so maybe you will grasp where you are going so wrong:
I have a flashlight, I turn it on and off. Light comes out. I present a "theory" that it is powered by a hamster on a wheel with a dynamo within. You claim it is a chemical battery. We decide on a scientific experiment to open it and examine its contents. Upon doing so a D-cell comes out. To further test this we disect the cell, and a bunch of chemicals come out but no hamster. At this point the evidence collected is "positive" for your theory, effectively validating it, and it is devastating for mine, effectively discrediting it. Do you comprehend now it how it is possible for the same set of evidence to both validate and invalidate various theories?
Well, I can feel your sentiment but I think you seriously underestimate the zeal and resources of the lunatics bent on controlling our society's future. What you describe works in an environment where objective discussion is possible, not where more then a half of the kids in your class are being furiously, at all times in and out of school, brainwashed by many not-so-disinterested, well financed groups.
If you can come up with a way to offset such a handicap, then by all means, teach all religious myths and let the kids dissect them. Judging from past events however I remain pessimistic as to the outcome.
From the very quotes posted here, she said a lot of self-contradictory things, repeatedly (usually based on whom she is talking to). That does not bode well for her integrity. My personal view is that she simply has no clue whatsoever and merely yaps out whatever she thinks will score her points with her "constituency", and when she finds the stuff back-firing, she simply "clarifies" or "explains" it away ... until the next time. It is a time-proven modus operandi amongst particularly sleazy politicos of all stripes, but recently perfected to the form of art by the so-called "conservatives".
What?! Anti-evolution "theories" are exactly what is meant by "creationism" (or more precisely "Intelligent Design" as these cooks call themselves these days in a bid to sound more "scientific") in the school curriculum context, as it always was ever since the Enlightenment. Specially in the USA. Were you living under a rock for the last 100 years of US politics?
Since the rest of your post is based on the silly premise that we are not discussing evolution, I won't even bother with it.
Dude you are embarrassing yourself. It apparently never occurred to you that evidence collected can also contradict many theories. Thus evidence can be "positive" for some theories, reinforcing them, and at the same time lead to discrediting of other theories, thus be "negative" for them. That is the very process of elimination which landed the "Turtles All The Way Down" idea along with the Flat Earth and Creationism in the same garbage bin of science.
No. The "Turtles All The Way Down" is directly contradicted by modern scientific evidence (which evidence also, at the same time reinforces and supports other theories). That is far more powerful then mere "lack of evidence for". Again you are utterly confused about the relationship of evidence and theory, and that evidence can exist "against" some theory, i.e. be "negative" from that theory's perspective.
The rest of your arguments are based on this confusion. You simply do not grasp the most basic fundamentals of the scientific process.
Actually, no, he is not. I already addressed that. The process of evolution, like the shape of the Earth, is scientifically demonstrable, as opposed to the shape of make-believe beings like "flying reindeer" or "bigfoot". The GP was simply utterly confused as to what "proving the negative" means.
You are mis-understanding what aspects of "creationism" are being discussed in this context. It is specifically the evolution of biological organisms which is the bone of contention here for the knuckle-draggers, not the origins of the Universe or the Big Bang.
Actually, this is precisely what these Creationists we are discussing here do. The cornerstone of this lunacy is the premise that the Bible has to be taken literally. No esoteric equivocations. Seven actual days ~6000 years ago, Adam + Eve from his rib, etc and so on.
I understand your position and indeed science does not (presently) reach beyond the t-zero moment of the Big Bang. But the people who can reconcile that view with their religion are most likely Deists, not Christians and they are unlikely to be involved with the Creationist lunacies we are discussing here.
Personally I think she is a typical "conservative" opportunist who, as you indicate, has no clue about anything but who comes with a never shutting maw capable of opening meters wide to voice her "opinion" on just about anything, solicited or not. Like any "conservative" she believes that "truth" belongs to she who can shout the loudest with the most froth and spittle being disgorged. But she also has a modicum of a political sense to moderate her yapping to suit her audience, which is what gets her elected, but what also produces these delightfully self-contradictory "positions" she is being quoted voicing.
That pretty much sums it up. A knuckle-dragging candidate for knuckle-draggers.
I've been on that site a lot and I saw no such things happening. Could you please point me to some evidence of this? And I do not mean people who after being on Kos for months raising hell have been kicked out after having been Troll Rated to oblivion repeatedly ... or who posted "insightful" posts beginning with "Hey you fucking idiot Moonbats ..."
Sure, the site is not a perfect platform for Free Speech, granted. But it is leagues away from any other "opposing" site, like Red State, who are famously trigger happy banning people in minutes after 1 post which even mildly does not adhere to their "party line".
We can, and did, observe the process of evolution. Note that "God" has nothing whatsoever to do with this physical, replicable in the lab, observable process with mountains of evidence to support it. Just as it is with the shape of the Earth. Creationism on the other hand has exactly zero scientific evidence to support it, very much like the existence of "god".
This statement indicates that it is you who does not grasp even the most fundamental principles of science and wish to confuse your audience with your fained "outrage" as to our supposed scientific "heresy".
It is a "theory", true. Everything purporting to explain things is. And it was discredited, many many times over.
The term "scientific" as applied to theory usually means that a rigorous enough process was followed while constructing it. That is why Creationism is not a "scientific" theory, merely a "theory". But science can discredit all theories, especially those which are not scientific.
The Creationism, was, is and will remain disproved. Period. Only religious lunatics adhere to it, just like it used to be with Flat Earth "theory". The real problem is the abundance of imbecilic knuckle-draggers who figure that "science" is established by those who shout the loudest and whose spittle flies the farthest.
"Presentation" is not what is sought here. "Promotion", complete with multi million dollar brain-addling smoke-and-mirrors campaigns, featuring celebrities, churches, politicians and what not all aimed at confusing students to the point that they are unable to think critically, all so that their brains become fertile ground for a host of other lunacies, is the goal here, as it always was with organized lunacies in lust of power, power built upon control of perceptions of people from the very young age.
Sure it can. Otherwise the "Turtles All the Way Down" idea would be viewed exactly on par with modern astronomy, geophysics and the like.
Dude, you forfeited any credibility with that sentence. There is exactly zero evidence for "flying raindeer". Zero credible evidence for bigfoot. There is however plenty of evidence for earth not being flat. And science can quite conclusively prove that Earth is not flat. It can even demonstrate its actual shape.
You are completely confused as to what "proving the negative" means. It refers to an idea of demonstrating that something does not exist, not to demonstrating that something is one way or another. Since neither "flying reindeer" nor bigfoot are proven to exist, nothing can be said about these, nor any other imaginary creatures. The moment they are demonstrated to exist, all the usual rules apply and science then can and will demonstrate and explain the properties of such things.
Having started with this utterly flawed premise, I won't even address the rest.
Yes it is. Flath Earth "theory" and Creationism are pretty much the same as far as their complete lack of power to explain the observable evidence, therefore they are equivalent with each other in this respect from the point of view of science.
I see your point, but I think we have here a confusion as to what these people mean by "teaching". What you are talking about is "presenting" as in detailing the claims and then letting students figure out why the claims are wrong. What they mean is for you to present their "theory" as being of equal (or more) weight as the Theory of Evolution, "supported" by a vast array of pseudo-scientific babble (which they are willing to provide to you at no cost). The end result they hope for is quite different to what you hope to achieve: the plan is to sow enough confusion and smoke-and-mirrors trickery as to baffle the brains of young people and not only discredit science in general but to also make them more malleable for further injections of various bullshit.
Very well, now change one thing: imagine that the Flat Earthers have managed to infiltrate mass media, are at every church, some family members of the kids are Flat Earthers, there are TV programs all day long featuring popular celebrities promoting the idea and that your kids in the class were given free, glossy, full-color books featuring famous "scientists" espousing words of "wisdom" as to how all of these cosmic probes were ether fake or a Communist conspiracy, distinguished-looking white bearded men in lab coats providing "scientific" sounding "explanations" for observable astronomical phenomena, while sorrowfully smiling former astronauts confirm that they were a party to a scam and that they repent for their sins...
Which is what that '==' symbol I used stood for. Not equality, which would be '=', but equivalence.
Note that some C, Java and the like junkies might be confused about this, but originally the symbols meant for 'assignment' were ':=' and the like, not '=' which was reserved for 'equality'. The use of '=' for assignment necessitated converting the symbol of equality from '=' to '==' which originally denoted 'equivalence'.
Actually, no. You see, she slipped in one of the quotes to which I responded:
"When asked during a televised debate in 2006 about evolution and creationism, Palin said, according to the Anchorage Daily News: "Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both.""
And that pretty much closes the book on the idea that she somehow "avoided" pandering to the nutcases, while somehow holding true understanding of science back from the view of the frothing at the snout knuckle-draggers.
If it is already demonstrated that FE != S and if someone claims that C == S, and if I can demonstrate that C == FE, then it follows that I can substitute FE for C and thus reduce the original claim to FE == S, demonstrating the supposition false. Basic logic.