Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

@edgarblythe,

Quote:

Evolution has the ability to stand on its own, because it is not Darwin or any other person. So you can relate anecdotes about him and others to your heart's content, with no effect. When are you going to look at the science itself?

I have looked at it. More than any of you lot.

Once again Ed, and do yourself a favour and try to get the point, it is simple, we are discussing teaching evolution and not evolution itself.

The point about my post earlier was that a lot of the science has been well known, assuming we can call it science, for a long time and the teaching of it was rejected. It is rejected now, if it is taught properly, by the majority of the western world. I don't think having evolution science lessons is necessarily the same as teaching evolution science. The first can be a mere label.

Let me ask you a question- why do you think this debate has lasted so long and been fought so strenuously if it can be decided by your side's ignorant and vituperative assertions.

You must have an explanation for that. I have.

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@spendius,

It's mind boggling that we expend that much energy for someone who doesnt give a crap about honest debating.

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@edgarblythe,

What was dishonest about my earlier post which had the Spengler quote in it.

It is dishonest to offer advice on a nation's education system without first having engaged your mind on stuff of that nature.

What was dishonest about my reference to the argument in The Classroom chapter of Women in Love. I only said that Hermione's argument ought to be considered. Birkin (Lawrence) rejected it.

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A trip around the alimentary which takes the place of Spendi's brain (his gut feeling, if you like) never relinquishes a straight response or answer -- he alludes to "juvenile" or "elementary" ("My Dear Watson") and other garden variety put downs, but then, unable to really explain anything himself, goes on to quote Spenglar or some other tome he's copying and pasting from the Internet with absolutely nothing to do with the original statement. Not even a clever diversion -- he still hasn't explained much less proven that evolution should not be taught in public schools, but ID should, other than his fear that it will warp the young little minds into questioning the church. He's actually:

http://www.pollsb.com/photos/o/177316-meryl_streep_doubt.jpg

1 Reply

@Lightwizard,

It amazes me the lengths people will go to and the liberties they will take with their own language to desperately try to avoid discovering that the simplistic views they have spewed out over the years in front of witnesses they can't avoid now are not worth a blow on a ragman's trumpet and were only ever believed in order to justify their escape from religious discipline and particularly with reference to sexual matters.

Which of the 10 commandments do you disagree with LW and which aspects of The Sermon on the Mount.

That should be easy enough to answer.

My advice LW is to relocate to where you are unknown and make a fresh start as a born again Christian. You'll get laid 7 nights a week assuming you have no unfortunate dispositions.

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@spendius,

You could even get KiwiChic on your trail with a bit of effort.

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@spendius,

What do the 10 commandments and the Sermon on the Mount have to do with the teaching of evolution? You wish to pry, like Ms. Nun Streep, into private things to satisfy your lust for knowledge? It's frankly none of your business. A geographic wouldn't solve anything for you and in my neighborhood, I am virtually unknown except, extremely casually, by a two neighbors. My stomping grounds are many areas along the South Coast beaches in restaurants and lounges although I'm not always receptive every time one of my friends calls and wants to meet, but I get out enough to satisfy a wanderlust. Besides taking off to San Francisco or Hawaii once or twice a year, or going out with family, most likely to restaurants (we're doing a retrospect of the famous eateries in LA once every few months -- next time the Ocean House in Santa Monica). I do not need your worthless advice to become a born again anything and if you are going to the pub as a born again Christian and getting laid 7 nights a week, I'd stay where you are. I assume there are no mirrors in the pub. I do hope you don't fly over here just to proselytize at my front door. I get enough Johovah's Witnesses, but you'd think in California I'd get more Scientology freaks.

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Quote:

Georgia Educators Learn Tactics to Better Teach Evolution
(Jacqueline Ingles, WCTV.tv, June 24, 2009)

Evolution.

It's a touchy topic for educators in the Bible Belt.

"I had friends that actually cut the chapters out of their science books, glued their pages together, skipped over the section," said Gail Jennings, a 7th grade science teacher from Moultrie.

"I've had children bring the Bible into class and when the word evolution was mentioned maybe the first week of school and they hear what we are going over and they say, 'That is wrong! That is wrong,"" said Cynthia Pousman, a high school science teacher from Augusta.

But no matter which side of the evolution fence teachers, students and parents fall on, the State of Georgia closed the book on the controversy, making evolution a curriculum requirement.

For 27 years, it wasn't part of the state mandated Quality Core Curriculum.

In 2004, that changed.

"By putting it in the Georgia Performance Standards its increased its visibility and teachers recognize the importance of addressing it," said Thomas Koballa, Ph.D., a principal investigator for Georgia's Teacher Quality Program.

And for teachers like Gail Jennings, who is guided by her Christian beliefs, teaching evolution is something she is trying to grow into. That's why she enrolled in an evolution workshop being held at VSU this week as part of the Georgia Teacher Quality Program.

"As a teacher I felt ill-equipped because I really hadn't addressed the topic of evolution with students for 15 years. We're learning ways to present evolution that's non-threatening to your faith," Jennings explained.

But all the teachers in attendance agree, believing what science has to say about evolution or believing a higher power had a hand in creation, is a matter of choice.

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@wandeljw,

MOULTRIE-was town in DELIVERANCE

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Quote:

Hermione and Ursula strayed on together, united in a sudden bond of deep affection and closeness.
"I really do not want to be forced into all this criticism and analysis of life. I really do want to see things in their entirety, with their beauty left to them, and their wholeness, their natural holiness. Don't you feel it, don't you feel you can't be tortured with any more knowledge?" said Hermione, stopping in front of Ursula, and turning to her with clenched fists thrust downwards.
"Yes," said Ursula, "I do. I am sick of all this poking and prying."
"I'm so glad you are. Sometimes," said Hermione, again stopping arrested in her progress and turning to Ursula," sometimes I wonder of I ought to submit to all this realisation, if I am not being weak in rejecting it. But I feel I can't--I can't. It seems to destroy everything. All the beauty and the--and the true holiness is destroyed--and I feel I can't live without them."
"And it would be simply wrong to live without them," cried Ursula. "No, it is so irreverent to think that everything must be realised in the head. Really, something must be left to the Lord, there always is and always will be."

Women in Love.

You have clasrooms with half girls don't you? What exactly is it you are trying to make them be? Like your silly ******* selves??

That will be wonderful I must say for the young lads.

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What a ghastly mistake it was to phase out single sex schools. Truly ghastly.

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@wandeljw,

wandeljw wrote:

Quote:
Georgia Educators Learn Tactics to Better Teach Evolution
(Jacqueline Ingles, WCTV.tv, June 24, 2009)

"I've had children bring the Bible into class and when the word evolution was mentioned maybe the first week of school and they hear what we are going over and they say, 'That is wrong! That is wrong,"" said Cynthia Pousman, a high school science teacher from Augusta.

It must be loads of fun when that happens.

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@rosborne979,

It is too.

But ros, the intrepid adventurer in the world of thought who has me on Ignore, won't have read my quote from Lawrence so he is unable to even consider it. Which is very convenient for him and, one presumes, when his ideas saturate the educational system guess who will be deciding what is to be considered and what is to be on Ignore.

He is **** scared of finding out he might be wrong. Petrified.

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@rosborne979,

Quote:

For 27 years, it wasn't part of the state mandated Quality Core Curriculum.

In 2004, that changed

Isnt that how all science works? Genomics and the structure of secies genomes wasnt part of graduate education until after the Genome roject was completed. Now its a gut core for an MS in molecular bio, and its open reearch material for a PhD.

AS several big time religious leaders have said
"'The mountains of evidence that support natural selction cannot be denied"

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@farmerman,

Quote:

Now its a gut core for an MS in molecular bio, and its open research material for a PhD.

Something has to be because otherwise there would be no "open research material" for PhDs. If you have an egg eating competion somebody is going to win it.

But all what Nietzsche called the "botched and the bungled" mutations were "gut core" specimens in their day. Like the dinosuars say?

"Gut core" is flavour of the epoch ****. Your egoism effemm runs as far as you thinking you are "It". Whatever is now is the thing. Evolution theory blows you out of the water. Goodstyle.

I'm born in time. You're all mixed up.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

AS several big time religious leaders have said
"'The mountains of evidence that support natural selction cannot be denied"

Apparently it can be denied, just not with anything other than blind ignorance.

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

Because natural selection absolutely implies that nature is "god" and is a misunderstood intangible force scientists are still defining with new discoveries. To deny this science to young students is evoking the three monkeys, allowing them to remain abjectly ignorant (it's also mental laziness to just pass it off as all supernatural and can last their entire lifetime). In fact, what is being taught is not "evil," it's real science, not religious tainted quasi-science. "God" is a convenient catch-all label passed down from ancient civilizations -- that it's been edited down to one means nothing.

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@Lightwizard,

Quote:

Because natural selection absolutely implies that nature is "god" and is a misunderstood intangible force scientists are still defining with new discoveries.

Well--it is a pretty ghastly "God" I must say. And it is not one "God". It is pantheistic. Pagan. It is the worship of selfishness. And the here and now. And it went nowhere.

There is nobody on this thread trying to deny this "science" to young children. It is, or was, intended to be a discussion about challenges to teaching the "science".

What is the point on such a thread of coming on to say there are no challenges? Your position is that there are none. Which you arrive at by the laziest mental process known to man--by simply refusing to meet the challenge Lawrence presented and which I quoted and blithely going on with more off topic arguments about there being no challenges, and obvious lie, and which is not only repetitive but quite astonishingly badly written.

Which is what you do to every challenge.

Christianity is about overcoming Nature. Not worshipping it. What is a cathedral but a defiant two fingers to gravity. And NASA which is the intellectual offspring of that defiance. That's why film of space is always accompanied by Christian music. Which reaches for "another world".

You have no position with Nature as a God unless you get of to Stonehenge at the solstice and start dancing those wierd dances with the earth women. All that funny stuff associated with the worship of the feminine principle after chewing on certain plants. I don't think you know enough about this stuff LW.

If America, and western society, is at a crossroads on this issue, and it is, you are the guy saying "this way". And you haven't a lot of followers. Well--okay-- you don't need to keep saying it. We have got the picture.

What you need do is answer the challenges and not go off on another assertion binge. It suggests to me that you are frightened of taking on the excerpt from Women in Love which is a book I don't recommend to the faint of heart. I do so understand though that taking on the Lawrence quote runs the risk of plunging you into waters you haven't previously dared to enter. The deep end.

"Young children" are not an abstract concept for you to play word games with. They are beings who will soon become adult beings and there is a concern, whether you share it or not, that a psychological effect will actually happen to them of a new order if the "science" is taught properly. Whether you deny there will be an effect or not.

1 Reply

@spendius,

Quote:

Because natural selection absolutely implies that nature is "god" and is a misunderstood intangible force scientists are still defining with new discoveries.

Even one or two of your own side know that that is begging the question.

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@Lightwizard,

Lightwizard wrote:

"God" is a convenient catch-all label passed down from ancient civilizations

Sort of like a generic concept of "The Unknown" which has been anthropomorphized into something too finite to be meaningful.

1 Reply

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