Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

It's so easy to lose interest in Texas politics! Yawn. Their challenge to the teaching of evolution has got the clout of a toy tank trying to win the battle.

It's a well known gambit is that LW. Taking an obsessional interest in something when you think you hold the aces and then going all conspicuously yawny on finding out you don't. Trying to make "Ignore" sound cool.

Don't worry about them winning the battle. They will do. Did you think that getting rid of the dentist would result in a Dawkins fan being appointed?

Remember its only a publishing contractual issue. Theres no science involved. SOmeone from a major Texas university has stated that there is an arbiter in this. Its the University participation in several science programs of Texas high schools. They will establish minimum text requirements and requirements for entry into the U system if the ED board tries to pull some sneaky Midieval bullshit.

The battle lines were drawn in Texas many years ago. They rarely waver.

If you knew your history and science effemm you would know that it was medieval bullshit that invented agriculture and science.

Alas you don't, so I suppose all you have left are ignorant smears. Lack of effort I put it down to but if you keep on asserting how hard you've worked and how clever you are perhaps some dimwits might believe you. Real dimwits I mean.

Carry on making a big deal about grilling some sausages. It suits you.

actually it was the Sumerians and later , the several ancient Mideastern cultures that developed and made agriculture pretty much what it is today. (Row crops, tilling, contouring, irrigation technology, controlled germination, seed development and animal husbandry )were better understood by the ancients and much was actually lost thanks to the Catholic Church.


Science weve discussed so many times before that Im surprised that youve forgotten your lessons.I understand that you want to believe that "Holy Mother" the Church was involved in the foundation and development of much science but alas, not to be. For every renegade monk or church "Intellectual" that you name, I can name 10 pre Christian or non-Christian scientists who developed science to a level that predated Midieval times.

During the period from say 650AD to the Rennaissance, the Church was more busy trying to have Christian scientists declared guilty of heresies.

And, spendi, that didn't end with Charles Darwin. However, they (the catholic church) have changed their tune a bit to combine creationism with evolution. It's all in the grand design.

Sounds like a misconception of a sophomore majoring in "liberal arts" or, perhaps sandbox. The history of science academics during the Enlightenment really begins with the Academy of Science, founded in 1666 in Paris. Medievalism ended at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century with the persecution of Galileo, a bad hangover of the Medievalist church that is apparently still making Pope Spendius XXX's head throb even today. A good part of the Middle Ages was given over to the Dark Ages, where the church did most of their dirty work, in bed with the wealthy nobles. Then there was the 100 years war -- maybe the Pope would like to return to those times. Too bad he doesn't have a time machine -- none of us would shed a tear seeing him whisked of to where he belongs. Agriculture was scarecely more advanced than the ancient Sumerians, the Egyptians and the up to Roman times. In other words, virtually nothing was happening except wars, disease, famine (not seemingly aided by their advanced agriculture), religious persecutions, graft and embezzlement of funds by priests collected to build gigantic Gothic churches, false church propaganda, just to name a few. The Catholic Medievalist doctrines were all anti-science and seems alive, but maybe not so well, in Texas and in the heads of trolls who fancy themselves as historians.

. Theres a series of books I use as sources in class. These are by a guy named Rosenberg, and they are specialized parsing of geologic sciences through time
1. From Ancient SUmer to the Midieval Times, 2. From Midieval Times to the Reannaissance,and 3. From the Rennaissance to the Enlightenment.
Very good reading , and chock full of historic references for more in-depth analyses for the citizen and the scholar(and the citizen scholar).
I never get too flumoxed over Spendis view of things since he consistently comes back to his mantra that the "Church was responsible for all advances in science and technology". Of course hes just full of it but I like when he sounds like the pompous douche he is and shouts it out.

In that, he somewaht sounds like Nicky Kruschev in his "kitchen and corn debates" of the 60's, I followed those in the news and learned early that everyone has an asshole but some (like Kruschev and spendi) use theirs for communication..

The Catholic Church was, is and will be, opposed to nothing except insofar as it is seen to impinge on social consequences and the dangers inherent in a too rapid dissemination of new ideas.

But as anti-IDers are scared shitless of considering such an important matter and prefer to view these things in some abstract zone inside their own heads and divorced from human realities it is understandable that they will present the infantile views expressed above.

It is also understandable that they are unable to differentiate between science as they define it and the modern science of dynamic space on which our whole way of life is based and to which we owe our success. The latter was the invention of a monotheistic religion and it is impossible to conceive of it appearing in any other general theological scheme.

It is pitiful to see people whose every move, including their anti-IDism, dreams and sexual fantasies, has been conditioned by Christian thinking taking their time to strenuously deny and even denigrate the roots of their own culture and to fail to take account of the necessity for gradual and carefully considered change in large institutions.

They are revolutionaries who have no programme except breaking windows. They offer no suggestions for life without religion. They are simply destructive.

They have made no comment on the social implications of sperm banks in Darwinian conditions or the synthesis of sperm from skin samples which is, so far, the only positive result of stem cell research. Nor have they commented on many other issues I have raised such as lingerie shops and the inevitable emasculation of men under atheistic philosophies with free enterprise. Anti-ID would be an unmitigated disaster and the American people know it. Which is why not one single up-front atheist has ever run for president or is likely to in the foreseeable future. The reason being, of course, is that such a candidate would have to answer the questions I have raised and would not have the luxury demonstrated in the posts of anti-IDers of just spouting and sulking and ranting assertions.

It appears that the only one sulking and ranting is you darling spendi. Why not just stick to something you can handle, like opening porter bottles and drowning pretzels.

How big is your ass? from sitting on barstools and quaffing pilsners these last five years since youve begun infecting the boards, It must be bloody huge. Its so big that Ill bet its got its own weather satellite.

Are you wearing something frilly today? or just going about in your sun dress?

You seem a bit rattled effemm. You really do need to go on a remedial course in how to make English composition mean something. None of that means anything that I can see.

Having some religion in schools enables the authorities to manage the religious propensity. To remove religion from schools would offer religion as a means of escape from the supervision and control of authority and who knows what direction some kids would then take. It would leave the kids at the mercy of just the sort of people anti-IDers are most strongly opposed to. As I am.

No doubt anti-IDers would deny that there is a disposition to religiosity in human nature but such a denial would constitute another example of the anti-IDer's own propensity to bury his head in the sand when faced with an inconvenient truth and pretend it doesn't exist.

If there is a religious propensity, as there obviously is, it is better to have it under some sort of control than to allow it to seek outlets at random.

The Prissy Prig from Pettyville is getting hop(p)ing mad and is liable to stick that Pilsner in the wrong hole. If it's shaken up before being uncapped, we're liable to hear a huge sign of relief.

How everybody must wish that anti-IDers were in charge of education.

It is a crying shame that America's kids are denied their brilliant and imaginative insights and are prevented from imitating their intellectual accomplishments.

Professor David Riesman, Henry Ford II professor at Harvard, wrote-



Chapter IV of The Lonely Crowd-- a must read for anyone with pretensions to contribute meaningfully to this thread.

Riesman’s other works include Faces in the Crowd (1952, with Glazer and Denney); Thorstein Veblen: A Critical Interpretation (1953); Constraint and Variety in American Education (1956); Conversations in Japan: Modernization, Politics, and Culture (1967); The Academic Revolution (1968, with Christopher Jencks); and many others.

I see that spendi is throwing more boiled spaghetti up against the wall in the faint hopes that something will stick.

Nothing will stick, because all have dried up.

I don't think it knows between al dente and Al Denson.

At least I keep good company from beyond romper book stages.

I don't know whether anything will stick. And ci. does know that nothing will. That's marching up his own taste gradient. What evidence have you ci. that nothing will stick? At least effemm said "hopes". I wouldn't post the stuff if I didn't have hopes that some A2Kers might be interested in what experts thought. Ask an Expert is obviously a site geared to education. What mode of education do these assertions that I'm a failure represent? (That's called "antagonistic cooperation".)

Anybody going through these threads could not help but notice that anti-IDers have crabbed some of the greatest writers America has produced. And without reading them.