After all of these posts from successful Eagle Scout/Honors Students, I have to point out that you are all missing the point. Having a child that is an honor student/eagle scout/whatever does not mean that he or she is an upstanding person, nor does it mean that he or she won't find a way to get access to all of the things that are forbidden to them.
As a recent graduate from high school, I know what at least my high school was like. I can't speak for all schools, of course, but mine was considered to be one of the better ones in the state.
From my experience, people in school clubs, people that were in the top 10% of our class, people that were succeeding in every aspect of high school were just as likely as everyone else to go out to a party and get plowed. Kids get into some clubs because of social prestige and they do well in school for many reasons.
I speak from the perspective of someone who never did terribly well in school, for reasons that are beyond the scope of what is relevant to this discussion. I have long hair and facial hair, wear shirts from my favorite bands, and generally end up not wearing trendy clothing. I never was in very many clubs, though I was in band for 6 years before I quit due to general dislike of the experience. I am very politically and socially liberal, and believe many things that people find morally reprehensible should be legal. I am not religious in the least.
Now that being said, I never tried drugs, I have never smoked, I have never had sex, I have had alcohol only twice in my life, both times in the presence of my parents, and the most I drank in one sitting was a glass of champagne and a glass of wine. I was a national merit semifinalist and scored a 1550 on my SAT and am currently sitting in my dorm at the University of Texas.
There is no way you can tell whether kids are going to abuse any of the afformentioned things based on their activities in high school.
So why didn't I end up falling into the hippie and/or druggie persona that I so resembled? I don't know entirely, of course, but though I chafed at some of their rules (as all teenagers do) my parents were very lenient. Sure, I was grounded a lot for bad grades, but my parents' policies on other things were very focused on personal responisbility. My mother had something that she called a "no bitch" policy. She made sure that I knew that if I ever got drunk and couldn't find a sober ride home, I could call her at any time, and she would come and pick me up. She promised not to give me a hard time at all, because she realized that my returning home safely was the most important thing and that if I wanted to go get drunk, I could, and the choice would be left to me no matter her rules. Instead my parents focused on helping me make the right choices.
What it comes down to is that you as a parent, no matter how many rules you set down, can never take the choices out of your kids hands. You can delay them, you can make your child hide them from you, but they will still be made eventually. I am what I am today not because my parents tried to make my choices for me, but rather because my parents realized that that was impossible.
On a separate note, there has been a repeated theme of earning of trust/privacy and whether or not children have a right to their own personal space.
The first point that needs to be made is that there is a vast distinction between respecting someone and showing respect. After spending so much time with authority figures demanding respect of me, I came to realize that they were never getting the respect they demanded. They were only getting people to show respect. I was as polite and responsive to them as was required, but only those people that truly earned my respect and trust got an inch more than that. Positive learning will always therefore be more powerful and successful than negative learning. If a kid learns to do things becuase he or she fears the punishment that will be dealt out by a parent if he or she does not, the effe
You repeatedly assert that all of the evidence available works for both evolution and Creationism. How about empirical evidence that leaves little doubt that the world was not created 6000 years ago? Carbon dating, among other things, though not accurate to a very specific degree, is indeed accurate enough to place the first life on earth far before 6000 years ago.
"Disregarding any religious aspects of the document, it's just as valid as a scientific source as Darwin's ideals for evolution, for those who still use him as a source or inspiration for their research."
Disregarding any religious aspects of the document would leave you almost nothing. If you are referring to the histories of the Old Testament, I might remind you that people often lived 400 years in those histories.
Also, "Darwin's ideals" is a phrase that bothers me to no end. He was a good Christian that observed the present evidence which all but proved that natural selection exists. His ideals had nothing to do with it. He merely wrote down what he observed.
"If I made the enormous claim that we were all burped up from the belly of an enormous glob of jelly, and that glob is living 10 zillion light years away now, sure, that hypothesis would be debunked in a snap..."
No, your argument could be applied in its entirety to the glob of jelly. There would be absolutely no way to patently disprove the theory, so by your argument, it should be taught on equal ground with your Creationism.
"For me - hypothesis = theory."
Hypothesis does not = theory by any stretch of the imagination. You only say this to blur the distinction between the arguments for Creationism and evolution. You repeatedly say that all of the evidence present can be used in Creationism as well as evolution, but it can not. The world was not created 6000 years ago, we have evidence of that. How can that be equally applied to both? Creationism is only still viable in some people's minds because as you put it, it can't be patently disproven. The evidence does not point to each equally, it points nearly without fail to evolution. You can go dig up fossils of animals that don't exist any more, and you can find similar but distinct counterparts still living for which you can find no remains from the same time period as the other remains.
"What I know for a fact is that I'm pulled down towards the earth, being large and highly dense."
But you can't prove for all cases that you will get pulled down to the earth because you have mass. I could propose that gravity quits applying to people if they survive on a diet of only pebbles and cyanide for a year, and you couldn't patently disprove it, so by your own arguments, you can't know that gravity works for a fact. It is only a theory and shouldn't be taught in schools unless my theory is taught as an alternative.
We don't have to teach every hypothesis that comes along to justify teaching the ones that all evidence points to. If we did, we would either learn nothing in school or never finish. And despite your claims that Creationism has as much scientific merit as evolution, all of our evidence points to evolution, and in many cases patently not to Creationism.
What part of the Constitution has anything to do with Judeo-Christian ideals? There is not even mention of something as basic as "Thou shalt not murder" anywhere in the document. The constitution was designed purely as a framework for the government, and needs no morality in any form to be the way it is. The framers were intelligent to realize that they needed to separate their concerns. Even laws as basic as those against murder, rape, and theft do not appear in the consitution because they would confuse the issue, and aren't relevant to the basic nature of the document. The Constitution is a foundation on which the government is built, and if you have to change it with people's changing morality, our country, like any structure with repeated foundation changes, would fall apart.
What I object to are the people that repeatedly assert that the country was founded on Judeo-Christian ideals without any evidence besides pointing out that the founders were Christian (even though a large portion of them were not).
Slashdot Mirror
After all of these posts from successful Eagle Scout/Honors Students, I have to point out that you are all missing the point. Having a child that is an honor student/eagle scout/whatever does not mean that he or she is an upstanding person, nor does it mean that he or she won't find a way to get access to all of the things that are forbidden to them.
As a recent graduate from high school, I know what at least my high school was like. I can't speak for all schools, of course, but mine was considered to be one of the better ones in the state.
From my experience, people in school clubs, people that were in the top 10% of our class, people that were succeeding in every aspect of high school were just as likely as everyone else to go out to a party and get plowed. Kids get into some clubs because of social prestige and they do well in school for many reasons.
I speak from the perspective of someone who never did terribly well in school, for reasons that are beyond the scope of what is relevant to this discussion. I have long hair and facial hair, wear shirts from my favorite bands, and generally end up not wearing trendy clothing. I never was in very many clubs, though I was in band for 6 years before I quit due to general dislike of the experience. I am very politically and socially liberal, and believe many things that people find morally reprehensible should be legal. I am not religious in the least.
Now that being said, I never tried drugs, I have never smoked, I have never had sex, I have had alcohol only twice in my life, both times in the presence of my parents, and the most I drank in one sitting was a glass of champagne and a glass of wine. I was a national merit semifinalist and scored a 1550 on my SAT and am currently sitting in my dorm at the University of Texas.
There is no way you can tell whether kids are going to abuse any of the afformentioned things based on their activities in high school.
So why didn't I end up falling into the hippie and/or druggie persona that I so resembled? I don't know entirely, of course, but though I chafed at some of their rules (as all teenagers do) my parents were very lenient. Sure, I was grounded a lot for bad grades, but my parents' policies on other things were very focused on personal responisbility. My mother had something that she called a "no bitch" policy. She made sure that I knew that if I ever got drunk and couldn't find a sober ride home, I could call her at any time, and she would come and pick me up. She promised not to give me a hard time at all, because she realized that my returning home safely was the most important thing and that if I wanted to go get drunk, I could, and the choice would be left to me no matter her rules. Instead my parents focused on helping me make the right choices.
What it comes down to is that you as a parent, no matter how many rules you set down, can never take the choices out of your kids hands. You can delay them, you can make your child hide them from you, but they will still be made eventually. I am what I am today not because my parents tried to make my choices for me, but rather because my parents realized that that was impossible.
On a separate note, there has been a repeated theme of earning of trust/privacy and whether or not children have a right to their own personal space.
The first point that needs to be made is that there is a vast distinction between respecting someone and showing respect. After spending so much time with authority figures demanding respect of me, I came to realize that they were never getting the respect they demanded. They were only getting people to show respect. I was as polite and responsive to them as was required, but only those people that truly earned my respect and trust got an inch more than that. Positive learning will always therefore be more powerful and successful than negative learning. If a kid learns to do things becuase he or she fears the punishment that will be dealt out by a parent if he or she does not, the effe
You repeatedly assert that all of the evidence available works for both evolution and Creationism. How about empirical evidence that leaves little doubt that the world was not created 6000 years ago? Carbon dating, among other things, though not accurate to a very specific degree, is indeed accurate enough to place the first life on earth far before 6000 years ago.
"Disregarding any religious aspects of the document, it's just as valid as a scientific source as Darwin's ideals for evolution, for those who still use him as a source or inspiration for their research."
Disregarding any religious aspects of the document would leave you almost nothing. If you are referring to the histories of the Old Testament, I might remind you that people often lived 400 years in those histories.
Also, "Darwin's ideals" is a phrase that bothers me to no end. He was a good Christian that observed the present evidence which all but proved that natural selection exists. His ideals had nothing to do with it. He merely wrote down what he observed.
"If I made the enormous claim that we were all burped up from the belly of an enormous glob of jelly, and that glob is living 10 zillion light years away now, sure, that hypothesis would be debunked in a snap..."
No, your argument could be applied in its entirety to the glob of jelly. There would be absolutely no way to patently disprove the theory, so by your argument, it should be taught on equal ground with your Creationism.
"For me - hypothesis = theory."
Hypothesis does not = theory by any stretch of the imagination. You only say this to blur the distinction between the arguments for Creationism and evolution. You repeatedly say that all of the evidence present can be used in Creationism as well as evolution, but it can not. The world was not created 6000 years ago, we have evidence of that. How can that be equally applied to both? Creationism is only still viable in some people's minds because as you put it, it can't be patently disproven. The evidence does not point to each equally, it points nearly without fail to evolution. You can go dig up fossils of animals that don't exist any more, and you can find similar but distinct counterparts still living for which you can find no remains from the same time period as the other remains.
"What I know for a fact is that I'm pulled down towards the earth, being large and highly dense."
But you can't prove for all cases that you will get pulled down to the earth because you have mass. I could propose that gravity quits applying to people if they survive on a diet of only pebbles and cyanide for a year, and you couldn't patently disprove it, so by your own arguments, you can't know that gravity works for a fact. It is only a theory and shouldn't be taught in schools unless my theory is taught as an alternative.
We don't have to teach every hypothesis that comes along to justify teaching the ones that all evidence points to. If we did, we would either learn nothing in school or never finish. And despite your claims that Creationism has as much scientific merit as evolution, all of our evidence points to evolution, and in many cases patently not to Creationism.
What part of the Constitution has anything to do with Judeo-Christian ideals? There is not even mention of something as basic as "Thou shalt not murder" anywhere in the document. The constitution was designed purely as a framework for the government, and needs no morality in any form to be the way it is. The framers were intelligent to realize that they needed to separate their concerns. Even laws as basic as those against murder, rape, and theft do not appear in the consitution because they would confuse the issue, and aren't relevant to the basic nature of the document. The Constitution is a foundation on which the government is built, and if you have to change it with people's changing morality, our country, like any structure with repeated foundation changes, would fall apart.
What I object to are the people that repeatedly assert that the country was founded on Judeo-Christian ideals without any evidence besides pointing out that the founders were Christian (even though a large portion of them were not).