Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

What could be the point of a class that teaches religion at the same time it teaches science? Science relies on facts, while religion relies on faith in the unseen. Religion theory means speculation. Science theory means study of a proven conclusion. You can teach children it's okay to disbelieve the facts, but how does that help them in the real world?

These guys Rebecca never give anybody any credit unless they give them support and comfort in their atheist, scientific, amoral, materialist agenda. They don't even give the proponents of The Materialist Theory of Mind any credit as I have proved often enough. That is because that theory goes too far for them in exposing the logic and rigour of the materialist position. They are half-baked. They would rather read stuff that tells them what they already know and is presented in simple terms than read such like as D.M. Armstrong & Co.

Which is to say that they are anti-education. They have become set in concrete in order to justify certain behaviours which the Christian religion condemns as immoral. That's really all there is to it.

There you go Rebecca. In actual fact there is so much material relating to these matters that hundreds of lifetimes would be required to get past the introductory lessons. On full time courses.

It comforts wande to go around making silly assertions of that nature. As if his classes are the end of the matter.

Here we go again despite an unanswered criticism having been given for that sort of smear. The atheist is assumed to not be "all shiny-suited and slick" and "properly" means what farmerman says it means.

Unless you are up for banging your head against the wall Rebecca, like I do, you might consider not bothering with these guys. They are not reformable.

fm assumes that being shiny-suited and slick can influence students and then offers no explanation of why that is because it involves a certain mild charisma which is a function of the emotions and he has to deny the existence of emotions to keep himself in one piece logically. How his high school teacher who he is fantasising properly moderating the proceedings is dressed and rhetorical equipt he doesn't say. Which is just as well I suppose.

Obviously if you start from the position that there is only one thing to explain and ignore any other considerations such as how to organise society given that human beings in the mass are irrational and driven by emotions.

Spendi thinks we have an agenda to make everyone an atheist. As Joe Friday once opined, "All we want are the facts." What you do with them is your affair.

Yes--I know. Could you specify the techniques involved in your "retraining" programme? Wouldn't it be more efficient to apply the techniques in utero as Huxley more than hinted at? Or in infancy.

It could look like you are encouraging felonies for no other reason than to apply your retraining methods. Felonies do create a lot of jobs it must be admitted. And what would media use to replace the stories resulting from felonies? Won't you have to create some new felonies, such as laughing at po-faced scientific types, to keep the whole massive business on the road.

When everybody is retrained along the lines you approve of do you think society would continue to function in the way we are accustomed to it doing?

spendi and aidan,

I was under the impression that aidan was talking about a high school elective class comparing creationism and evolution. As farmerman pointed out, aidan then responded with a discussion about the latest scientific research. This would be appropriate for a science class, but this degree of detail is usually reserved for college courses.

I am sorry, aidan, but what you are proposing is unclear.

What Rebecca is proposing is something along the lines of an experiment we tried here and in which I was involved for a time. It was called "Liberal Studies". The idea was to broaden the minds of those taking courses in scientific subjects who the government had identified as being expert zombies who couldn't think outside the box of their specialised subjects.

I was on the first course that trained lecturers, as opposed to school teachers, to try to widen the horizons of these tunnel-visioned minds. I have to admit that the easy-going nature of the course, which lasted an academic year, and the presence on it of some married women of that age when they are wondering if they can still exercise their enchantments, and some well practiced boozers, were the main attraction. It was something of a holiday atmosphere with pub lunches lasting three hours and some quite interesting extra curricula activities in the evenings.

After it was done and dusted and no other similar course was on offer we went our separate ways although I did remain in touch with one of them for a satisfactory period of time. There were 11 of us and we were chosen for our experience in higher education and our bohemian outlook. The Head of Department was a Druid I discovered later.

We could teach whatever we wished because the authorities in the various institutions washed their hands of us. There were no exams. Each department was required to send their charges to us for one hour a week. It wasn't elective. The ladies hairdressers were the class I have the fondest memories of. I was cajoled into allowing them to practice on me. The engineers brought a dart board with them. It was pretty cool. Very eclectic.

No curriculum. Trust the teacher who was assumed to have been trained satisfactorily.

I presume you think no new facts will appear resulting from a society of 301 million atheists.

Can you not pitch a ball which one might take a little pride in swiping into the bleachers. These soft lobs are boring.

Yes, let's introduce everyone to the Fog of Religion in schools.

I don't know if you're aware of this or not, wande, but there are some amazingly bright students in highschool. At the last highschool at which I taught, we had students taking the bus over to UNC's campus in Chapel Hill to take math and science classes the school didn't offer.

And 'compare' is the wrong word I think. I'd say 'study' or 'examine' each. And yes, I do think it'd be interesting to look at them, even independently of each other maybe not even with a view to come to any conclusion, but just with the aim to collate all the available information in an organized and somewhat linear fashion.

Because I don't think most people do that. Yes, everyone can read on his or her own, but how many people do? And I happen to think it's a fascinating subject, myself.

Why? Is somebody arguing for that on this thread?

You're trolling again Wiz. It must be in your bones which is why you project it so much.

The subject is introducing scientifically rigorous evolution theory into schools and not that "curtains round the piano legs" version which I think you have in mind. That's pretty foggy.

Why do you keep on coming back to that red herring? It's been dealt with. It's off topic.

Let us be knowing your evolution stance on Tiger Woods eh? And why he is deserving of the acolades of evolutionists.

And the rest of you too. Sticking to the science I mean. We don't want the Christian theological position clouding your judgment.

Not exactly. I was thinking of something more along the lines of a seminar course that I took in highschool called 'Current American Issues'. You had to be chosen to take this course - there were only two sections of twelve students (the same teacher taught both sections).
Every week we looked at and debated an issue - civil rights, abortion, homosexuality, (can you believe THAT - but its true and that was in a public school back in 1977), the conflict in Viet Nam, etc. etc. and we had to collect information and present position papers on each issue, choose a subject of special interest to teach the class about, etc. etc.

It was extremely interesting. And actually very good preparation for college.

I think the subject of Evolution would lend itself to such a course- because of all the ins and outs and disagreements and repercussions for our educational system and yes, society. I think today's students are, if anything, more capable than we were. I have no doubt there are kids who could and would benefit from such a course.


We were all underage, so there was none of this - but it did turn out to be my favorite class. I did almost drop it once though because he was always teasing me- once when I had a ski accident and my mother made me go to school with a scarred up and swollen face and I was trying to hide in the back of the room, he made me go to the front of the class saying, 'Oh look everybody, Becky's wearing her ugly face today.' That was the final straw.
I went down to my guidance counselor and said, 'I'm not going back to that class.' But he was a good guy, he told me later he only picked people he thought could handle his **** - because he definitely could hand it out.


I think we had a curriculum. The teacher was voted teacher of the year at our highschool every year I was in highschool. He was a history teacher - not really that young - but not afraid to be controversial and push buttons.

He'd have probably been fired by now if he were still teaching in the public schools today.

The troll who identified everyone else on the thread as a troll is again trying to play moderator. What an ass.

This meaningless post deserves no answer.

I've been addressing the subject of challenges to the teaching of evolution and you keep raising challenges, in very truncated form, i.e. blurts, to teaching religion and the activities of some headbanger in any out of the way place you can dredge up in your search for comfort that your position is anything other than a load of half-baked, half puritan, illiterate bullshit in the service of propping up some justification or other for slipping out from under the lid of Christian morality in one or more of its aspects probably related to the rumpy-pumpy business at moments of high excitement.

You are too thrummy, un-cool, to suggest any other explanation. You argue like the standard issue Big Girl's Blouse. I've been called as ass, and a silly ass, by better lookers than you Wiz.

It's obvious that you are emotionally engaged whereas I am simply advising my fellow citizens in the Western World to not be too easily swayed by twaddle without ascertaining what the result will be for young men of the future, with whom I sympathise, who will be born after I have departed.

Rider Haggard said that writing for the future lads was the only respectable way to write. Proper intellectuals wouldn't be caught dead writing about their own emotions assuming they have any apart from those that inspired The Pub With No Beer song. . A doubtful proposition. They have bigger fish to fry.

One only need compare a page of Darwin to that of one of Veblen's to know which of them had their emotions flapping on the washing line in the front yard. There's a Homeric tone to Veblen which is absent from Darwin. Homer's tales are campfire tales for the boys. Soon to be men. Listening to them was voluntary and thus they had to be enthralling what with the "soon to be women" running loose in the bushes, and, at the same time prepare them for their manhood by teaching them to value certain things and to despise others by a very mysterious process which some call art. Arty-farty types usually. All good story-tellers do that.

And I could have sat and listened to Thorstein's low, droll monotonous droning all night long if he talked on a bar stool like he writes. Same with Proust. They are my sort of evolutionists. That Herman Melville--he's another. There's a lot--pretty much all famous. Mr Holly in Sir Henry's sequel to She Who Must Be Obeyed--Ayesha. Those conservatives who voted for Mrs Thatcher had obviously never read that.

The nuttiest so far is Mr Joyce. By some distance. That's why American institutions of the Higher Research Fellowship bids taxpayer $$$$$s, so you can work out your own contribution if you fancy, theoretically anyway, for scraps of paper on which he wrote stray thoughts when sat in a Euro-cafe with Balkan garlic millionaires drinking White Lightning. He didn't want a bronze bust in Dublin's main library. He wanted to create an industry. A memorial no dust could settle on. Better than selling an old bridge eh? No cranes required for scraps of paper. Phew!!

Viewers here are quite capable of deciding which of us is trolling without your guidance counselling.

Spendi -
All those words are like sending Napoleon's forces into Moscow all over again. Evolution is not about morality or amorality. It is about how we got here. It has zero to do with your fears concerning atheists. Evolution is not a philosophy or belief system. Atheism is also not about a philosophy or belief system. It is in fact a non belief in the supernatural, and that's all. It presents no guidance system at all. But you will bluster past these words without a moment's thought, as you once again accuse someone of ignoring your charges against us and continue to blindly lash out.

I know all that Ed. The topic isn't evolution or atheism. It is the promotion of evolution and atheism by teaching them to kids that is the issue. And whether there are any reasons to challenge such a project which cannot, by definition, countenance anything else.

How did you get here?

What's this "we"? Do you mean the lower middle class American suburbanite or the Priestesses of the Aztec human sacrifice cults or their victims.

If you know, why the big stink about letting the students in on it? It isn't some great secret you know.