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Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

 
 
spendius
 
  0  
Reply Fri 16 Apr, 2010 01:18 pm
@spendius,
Quote:
I am starting to turn my mind to organising next year's Darwin Day in Birmingham--the big one, for Darwin's 200th birthday. So far, I have Dover trial journalist Lauri Lebo pencilled in as one of the star attractions, but will sort out a fuller programme in the next week or two.


Gee-- a little cottage industry.

Quote:
Special Darwin Day Fundraising Event " TWO plays plus food for your delectation. Entry price £10 for fundraising to support LGBT rights/humanism. GALHA has been marking Darwin Day since 2003 and this one's going to be extra special!

Special Darwin Day Fundraising Event " 2 plays and plus food for your delectation.

Entry price £10. Note that this event starts at 7.00pm.

GALHA has been marking Darwin Day since 2003 and we are particularly pleased to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth on 12 February 1809. At a time when it is claimed that nearly a third of UK teachers think that 'creationism or intelligent design should be given the same status as evolution in the classroom', we need to remember and appreciate Darwin's work more than ever. Since 1999 Fire and Brimstone Productions have been performing plays based on events in humanist history. This evening we present some of the best Darwin performances to date.

* Mrs Darwin at Home " The great debate looms and Mrs Darwin grapples with her pro-religious views while being interviewed by a journalist from The Times.

* The Debate that Changed the World " A dramatisation of the debate between Thomas Henry Huxley ('Darwin's Bulldog') and the Reverend Samuel Wilberforce ('Soapy Sam'), which took place in front of 700 people at Oxford University in 1860 and led to the widespread acceptance of Darwin's theory of natural selection.

* Young Darwin: a short film

OUTeverywhere member organiser
This event has been added to the OUTeverywhere calendar by Adam K from Euston in the London area.



More details are available to members
Become a member of our gay social networking website and membership organisation: you'll be able to enjoy this great event on 13 February. Get in touch with the people who will be going:



farmerman
 
  2  
Reply Fri 16 Apr, 2010 08:38 pm
@spendius,
your point to all this is?? Damn spendi, you can be a tiresome old shitbird who sings but one song over and over and over and over.....
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Sat 17 Apr, 2010 03:52 am
@farmerman,
You're point can only be that only anti-IDers are allowed to post reports of Darwin connected gigs. You have posted quite a few over the years and I thought you might be interested in ones over here where it all got started.

You are a tiresome old shitbird who sings but one song over and over and over and over.....Mr Bigshot. As in the usage LGN instead of gas. Your obsessive need to demonstrate your technical expertise is really, really tiresome and uncommunicative.

It's amazing the difference being a veteran of these threads makes to reading Desmond & Moore to my first perusal.

My point all along, and I make no bones about repeating it, is that the anti-Christian rhetoric on here and in other places doesn't derive from science or history or an interest in the "facts" (Lord help us) but from sources linked to "personal issues" such as homosexuality, in this case, abortion, birth control, eugenics, divorce and other aspects of far left ideology.

At least the boys and girls in the gig in Birmingham were up-front, open and honest about it which is better than being furtive. Dawkins even walks furtively. And Darwin studied that sort of thing a bit.
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Sat 17 Apr, 2010 10:10 am
@spendius,
Correction to follow


spendius
 
  1  
Reply Sat 17 Apr, 2010 11:15 am
@spendius,
Desmond and Moore quote from a pamphlet by Sir John Sebright this passage-

Quote:
A severe winter, or a scarcity of food, by destroying the weak and unhealthy, has had all the good effects of the most skilful selection. In cold and barren countries no animals can live to the age of maturity, but those who have strong constitutions; the weak and the unhealthy do not live to propagate their infirmities.


They follow this quote with this--

Quote:
Darwin scored this passage with its "excellent observations of sickly offspring being cut off". He was beginning to appreciate the darker side of nature. Experienced breeders like Sebright also laid emphasis on the sexual struggle. He talked of the females falling to "the most vigorous males" and claimed that the " strongest individuals of both sexes, by driving away the weakest, will enjoy the best food, and the most favourable situations, for themselves and for their offspring". Here was the evidence of the natural wastage that Darwin had been mooting.


The scientific justification for eugenics, ethnic cleansing and fascism and sexual promiscuity.

That supposed socialists support that sort of thing is just incredible. The only explanation for their attitude is the utility of Darwin and science for attacking the Christian religion with which they have issues of a personal nature. Science has nothing to do with it. Nor truth. It is entirely emotional. And demonstrated by the pains they take to deny that they support eugenics, ethnic cleansing, fascism and sexual promiscuity and even pretend that these issues don't exist or are off topic or gobshite or spurious. If those fail it's straight to the Ignore function, the internet's version of the slammed door and the sweet thrumming of outraged righteous indignation as even Prof Dawkins his very self indulged in recently and which so ill befits a man of science.
farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Sun 18 Apr, 2010 04:55 am
@spendius,
You seem to be dragging out all of your arguments in one post. Youve only missed Spengler and deSade to enable you to score a "spendi triple double".
I hope someone takes the time to engage your fevered pleadings, I shall merely comment that you havent changed , nor understood, what these threads were about for 5 years. At least your semi consistent, if not logical.
When ya gonna start your own therad about your big issues? Id participate, I promise. Its just that this is not the place .
spendius
 
  0  
Reply Sun 18 Apr, 2010 06:28 am
@farmerman,
It is "a challenge" to the teaching of evolution that it promotes acceptance of eugenics, ethnic cleansing, fascism and sexual promiscuity. Notice the "good effects" in the quote from Sir John and Darwin's remark upon it.

What on earth are you on about fm? It's the main challenge. I didn't even mention the attack on marriage and property implied in transmutation (evolution) and survival of the fittest. It even justifies revolution.

You are supposed to dispute the challenge if you disagree with it and not try to shunt it off into a siding.

farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Sun 18 Apr, 2010 06:36 am
@spendius,
(((((((((YAWN))))))))))
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Sun 18 Apr, 2010 07:46 am
@farmerman,
Brilliant. That's what we need. Original methods of Ignore.

Very impressive. Chucks your case into the dustbin.
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Sun 18 Apr, 2010 08:44 am
@spendius,
In fact Darwin hisself could use strokes like that one fm just pulled and for which he ought to be ashamed.

Dig this--

D&M report him ruminating that there must have been "a thousand intermediate forms" (Darwin's words) between the otter and its land ancestor.

First off--none of these intermediate forms are in the fossil record and--second--there must have been a lot more than a thousand assuming they existed.

And now for Mr Darwin's response in his own words--

Quote:
Opponents will say, show me them. I will answer yes, if you will show me every step between bull Dog & Greyhound.


What a non sequitur that is. The opponents never claimed there were intermediate forms between bulldog and the greyhound in the first place. Their point was that there were none between the otter and its land ancestor either.

What a silly old goat the would-be clergyman, dilettante and stealer of ideas actually was. No wonder his acolytes think ((((((((Yawn)))))))) is a powerful argument clincher.

Even FitzRoy had to give him a bollocking for giving out that all the credit belonged to himself for observations on the Beagle trip.
farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Sun 18 Apr, 2010 09:21 am
@spendius,
Fitzroy, the great Christian who commited suicide several years later?

The fact that Darwin couldnt know of intermediates on any animal save archeopteryx was what science prediction is all about dummy. You seem captivated by phrases from the books but dont have the necessary corpus to associate the phrases with the science and the predictive basis.

You always seem to miss "the big picture spendi" hence the (((((YAWN))))))

When you try to think on your own, lemme know, Ill alert the media.
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Sun 18 Apr, 2010 09:57 am
@farmerman,
Quote:
Fitzroy, the great Christian who commited suicide several years later?


It is a sign of ill breeding to remark upon suicides without knowing the reason for them and even then as well. It is also of no consequence to the point I made. Darwin did take FitzRoy's criticism on board and recognised the contributions of others on the Beagle in later editions.

The point was Darwin's petulant attempts to claim all the credit for himself which he also did in relation to other evolutionary idea preceding him. The Captain committing suicide has nothing to do with that point and is another silly and distasteful non-sequitur.

What is the "big picture" you assert I am missing?

Your assertivitis is really quite chronic isn't it?

farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Sun 18 Apr, 2010 02:24 pm
@spendius,
So it was the same Fitzroy who offed himself. Isnt suicide, no matter what thye reason, a mortal sin?
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Sun 18 Apr, 2010 03:00 pm
@farmerman,
I don't know. It might well have been classed as a sin for social reasons. It's a tricky area I should have thought. There may have been a lot of suicides. There were plenty of temptations in those days. As de Sade said--what is there to risk in dying and what is the risk in living? A lot of people came to very sticky ends at that time.

It makes no difference to the point about Darwin. It's a red herring.

I don't even know whether FitzRoy did commit suicide and I doubt you do. Reading somewhere that he did is not scientific evidence. He might have gone insane. Or been saving his wife having to watch him die of some illness.

If he praised Darwin's work and then killed himself would his doing so have discredited Darwin? It's a silly point. I'm astonished you're pursuing it.

Maybe you're still trying to deny that it is a fair challenge to teaching evolution that it promotes eugenics, ethnic cleansing, fascism and sexual promiscuity. I can't see how it doesn't.

The only explanation I can think of for left-wingers to want to teach evolution is that they don't understand it but think they can use it for personal reasons. It's as right-wing as Atilla.

0 Replies
 
wandeljw
 
  1  
Reply Mon 19 Apr, 2010 09:26 am
Quote:
Intelligent Design proponent who works at JPL says he experienced religious discrimination
(By Emma Gallegos, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, 04/18/2010)

An employee at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory says his supervisors harassed and demoted him after he shared DVDs promoting his views on evolution, according to a complaint filed with the Los Angeles Superior Court.

David Coppedge is an IT employee who has worked on JPL's Cassini mission since 1997, but he is also a Christian who edits a blog titled "Creation-Evolution Headlines." The blog promotes the theory of intelligent design - the idea that an intelligent being - not evolution or random processes - is responsible for creating life and the universe.

"I think it's unfortunate that JPL, which is interested in exploring the origins of the universe would be hostile to the argument of intelligent design," said Coppedge's attorney William Becker, Jr.. "If anything, JPL is the premier space exploration resource in the world, it ought to have an openness to this theory."

JPL declined to comment on the case, because officials had not received a copy of the complaint early Friday afternoon, spokeswoman Veronica McGregor said.

After Coppedge discussed intelligent design with JPL scientists, his supervisors told him to stop discussing religion. Last April Coppedge's bosses demoted him. Coppedge had been a leader on the system administrator team for the Cassini mission, according to the suit.

The complaint states that Coppedge is the victim of religious discrimination and retaliation under California's Fair Employment and Housing Act.

But a case like his probably won't have a shot in court, because courts have viewed intelligent design as a religious belief, rather than a scientific theory, according to Gary Williams, a professor at Loyola Law School.

Certain kinds of religious activity are protected if they are not intrusive - such as wearing certain religious garb - but speech during work hours is not included, he said.

So even if intelligent design is viewed as a religious belief, employers have the right to restrict what their employees discuss in a work context, Williams said.

"If an employee is talking about anything in the workplace that is not related to work, the employer is entitled to say that `I don't want you to do this,"' Williams said. "You're not protected."

Coppedge claims he stopped talking about intelligent design with his coworkers in March 2009. He received a written warning and was demoted in April 2009.

Earlier this month Coppedge claims he met with his supervisors, who told him that the written warning was inappropriate and it would be removed from his file. The suit calls this is "an admission of liability."

This is not the first suit that Becker has taken up to defend proponents of intelligent design.

Last year, one of Becker's clients the American Freedom Alliance sued the California Science Center in Los Angeles after the center canceled a showing of "Darwin's Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record." The suit alleged the act was a violation of First Amendment protections for free speech, Becker said.

Coppedge sits on the board of directors of Illustra Media, the group that publishes the DVDs that he distributed to JPL employees, including "Unlocking the Mystery of Life" and "The Privileged Planet," according to Becker.
rosborne979
 
  1  
Reply Mon 19 Apr, 2010 06:51 pm
@wandeljw,
wandeljw wrote:

Quote:
Intelligent Design proponent who works at JPL says he experienced religious discrimination
(By Emma Gallegos, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, 04/18/2010)

Coppedge sits on the board of directors of Illustra Media, the group that publishes the DVDs that he distributed to JPL employees, including "Unlocking the Mystery of Life" and "The Privileged Planet," ...


What a shock. The IT guy who lost his job also spent too much time passing out religious propaganda and pestering his peers with Intelligent Design bullshit.

When I get hired to do IT work, my employers usually expect me to actually do the IT work. Pretty simple terms for employment.
0 Replies
 
wandeljw
 
  1  
Reply Wed 21 Apr, 2010 07:00 am
BOOK REVIEW
Quote:
Cupp skips the facts in arguing against evolution
(By Steven E. Levingston | The Washington Post | April 21, 2010)

You can find S.E. Cupp’s commentaries on Tucker Carlson’s new conservative website The Daily Caller. You can read her in the online New York Daily News, and you can see her in her role as TV personality/commentator on Fox and CNN.

Now she has a new book due out next week called “Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity,” with a foreword by Mike Huckabee. The former presidential candidate vouches for Cupp’s devotion to facts in arguing her points: She “uses the sharp blade of careful research, thoughtful reasoning, and brilliant logic,” he writes, adding “she reaches a level of substance many writers twice and thrice her age only hope for.”

The thrust of Cupp’s argument is summed up in her introduction in which she says the American media, “with careful, covert nudges from the Obama administration,” are leading a revolution. “This revolution, already in full throttle around the country,” she writes, “is being waged against you and me and every other American, and its goal is simple: to overthrow God, and silence Christian America for good.”

It is important to distinguish between rhetoric and fact and to hold authors accountable for the information they impart to the public. Statements of fact should have no trouble withstanding educated scrutiny. Mike Huckabee endorses Cupp’s methods. Her “substance,” as Huckabee terms it, is scattered throughout the book. So let’s single out one chapter to zero in on, as a measure of the entire work. I have chosen Chapter Four " Thou Shalt Evolve. In this chapter, Cupp sums up her take on evolution like this: “The debate over the legitimacy of evolution isn’t really about a battle between fact and fiction. It’s about Christianity, and the liberal media’s attempt to eradicate it from all corners of society.”

As I don’t have the credentials to assess Cupp’s understanding of evolution, I have called on an expert in the field. I asked Joshua Rosenau to weigh in on Cupp’s scholarship. Rosenau is public information project director at the National Center for Science Education, which is a not-for-profit organization devoted to the teaching of evolution in public schools. Among its 4,000 members are scientists, teachers, clergy, and people holding a variety of religious beliefs.

Here is Rosenau’s response to Cupp’s chapter on evolution:

Joshua Rosenau:
S.E. Cupp's handling of science and religion misrepresents the nature of evolution, obscures the science of biology, and dismisses the deeply-held religious views of most Christians outside of the fundamentalist subculture. This is the sort of misrepresentation which leads her to concoct an anti-Christian conspiracy on the part of reporters, and " bizarrely " to say that Darwin is "quite literally the Anti Christ" for liberals.

Cupp presents creationism as "a counter-argument" to evolution, yet never provides a clear account of what evolution is, nor what she thinks creationism means.

Creationism is certainly not a scientific argument of any sort. Scientists, teachers, federal courts, and reporters all recognize that creationism is a religious argument that abuses specific sciences and science as an enterprise. In addition to evolution " the foundation of modern biology " many young earth creationists reject conventional plate tectonics (the basis of modern geology), and the basic physics behind radioisotopic dating methods. Conservation of mass and energy, not to mention basic thermodynamics, go out the window to concoct scenarios by which a global flood could transpire. All this abuses science as a way of testing claims about the world, twisting it to allow supernatural religious claims to supersede empirical science.

Cupp present evolution -- and science more generally -- as the enemy of religion. Reporters' "propping up of science," she writes, is an "attack on Christianity." If anything, it is Cupp's approach which insults Christians. Research detailed in Elaine Ecklund's forthcoming "Science vs. Religion," shows that many scientists are religious themselves and do not generally regard science and religion as enemies.

Nor do Christian non-scientists, as illustrated by a string of powerful statements from the leadership of Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Episcopalian, and Presbyterian denominations, among others. Their views were put eloquently in a letter signed by more than 12,000 Christian clergy: "We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. … [T]he theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth…. To reject this truth or to treat it as 'one theory among others' is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance … We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God’s loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. … We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth."

Cupp's deepest offense against science comes in treating opinion polls as measures of scientific validity. Creationism belongs in science classes, she claims, because it is "not a conspiracy theory," and "half the American population believes it." The former claim is dubious at best, and the latter is simply irrelevant.

Scientific truth is universal, and Cupp wrongly focuses only on American polls. A 2006 analysis found that America was the second-least accepting of evolution among 35 industrialized nations, ahead of Turkey but behind scientific powerhouses like Cyprus, not to mention religious nations like Italy, Poland, and Ireland.

Regardless of polling, a scientific theory is measured by its ability to make testable and correct predictions, and to be accepted by scientists as a useful tool. Evolution is the foundation of modern biology, biotechnology, and medicine, and a vital component of agriculture, engineering, and other sciences crucial to American economic competitiveness, and polls cannot change the truth.

Cupp might have done her readers a service by even glancingly noting the scientific basis for evolution's nearly uniform acceptance among practicing biologists, or at least looked to the more meaningful surveys of scientists' opinion.

Cupp claims that statements about evolution's support among scientists are themselves "another way of saying faith and science are incompatible and believers are on the losing side of the argument." This argument insults the many Christians " scientists and non-scientists " who accept evolution and find science and religion compatible.

On top of misrepresenting the nature of science and the nature of religion, Cupp's coverage does violence not just to the science of evolution, but to the public's expectations of science journalists and science teachers. She misreports recent history and legal proceedings. She twists math itself to claim that 44 percent is "not a minority."

She concludes by complaining that "the liberal media is not interested in acknowledging our nation as a deeply religious one," and repeats her claim that evolution is a weapon used to attack Christians.

In fact, Cupp is the one who seems uninterested in acknowledging the nature of American religious faith. Many Americans find that evolution deepens and informs their faith, and reject the anti-science stance Cupp (an avowed atheist) attributes to religion. That many Americans do find evolution contrary to their religion does not, in any event, change the scientific truth of the matter.

Whether our nation is or isn't "deeply religious" does not change what science is or how it works, and does not change the century and a half of meticulous research which has convinced scientists that evolution is essential to biology and biology education.
spendius
 
  1  
Reply Wed 21 Apr, 2010 10:14 am
@wandeljw,
Where Ms Cupp has failed is to not have given a lurid account of what the Liberal Media and its paymasters have to gain by abolishing Christianity. Or I assume she has because such an analysis gets no mention. And is the core of the matter. Media will take any position which maximises profits and is legal. Any damn thing at all.

The quote from Rosenau changes the subject and winds its weary way through all the usual stuff and with little style. It is no answer to the charge against the Liberal Media.

But I suppose the editor had no expectation of the readers noticing. Mr Brauchi himself might not have noticed.

From these threads it has been obvious to me that Media is out to destroy Christianity. And for a long time.

farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Wed 21 Apr, 2010 10:34 am
@spendius,
what a dipshit you are. Its ok in your mind for the "Fundamentalist subculture" to attempt to wrest good science from our public schools, but just let someone call attention to the fraud being perped by these clowns and you come up with your stupid lying pronouncements that Christianity is being destroyed .

rosborne979
 
  1  
Reply Wed 21 Apr, 2010 11:29 am
@wandeljw,
wandeljw wrote:

BOOK REVIEW
Quote:
Cupp skips the facts in arguing against evolution
(By Steven E. Levingston | The Washington Post | April 21, 2010)

The thrust of Cupp’s argument is summed up in her introduction in which she says the American media, “with careful, covert nudges from the Obama administration,” are leading a revolution. “This revolution, already in full throttle around the country,” she writes, “is being waged against you and me and every other American, and its goal is simple: to overthrow God, and silence Christian America for good.”


Sounds like paranoidism to me Smile
0 Replies
 
 

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