Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

It was a point mysteryman made on another thread. Tax dollars being used to censor something the constitution says is legal.

You need a position on the matter. Pompous blather is not to be expected on a science thread.

What point are you making with your assertion that you live in a "pro-evolution" town?

That's just another empty assertion which is an attempt to inform A2Kers that to be considered "intelligent" they need to agree with fm.

Anybody who falls for that crap is defined as stupid. Scientifically. It's word magic. Agree with fm and, Hey Presto!, you are intelligent.

Mr Madoff said it was intelligent to invest your money in his schemes. He would have got nothing out of it had he said they were stupid.

And they were stupid.

Beware of people who tell you that you are intelligent if you agree with them.

I do agree with you Spindius You are very intelligent to be able to see this as most others can not!

Yes-- it is about seeing it from different scientific viewpoints. To claim that one viewpoint is the only way to see it is completely unscientific.

Isnt that excatly what you are attempting to do here? Your argumenst are totally vacuous. When Mysteryman states that its "Legal" he doesnt understand that hes dead wrong in the context of science taught in public schools. SO many of the"ID brotherhood" want to sound like theyre put upon when its merely the law of the lnd that is being redefined over and over, from USSC down to several District Courts.

Stating that the NCSE has but one goal (to undermine ID) is silly. The NCSE has been in business to counter the EVangelicals whove tried to get their noses under the US ed tent by promoting Cretionism and ID since the days of EPPERSON.

I am certainly tired of having to restate the obvious while you, like the MAd HAtter, try to redefine reality to suit your own silly world view.

The rest of your arguments are totally without substance and relevance. However, ignoring you pwermanently will prove nothing either, especially since people who are less informed can be easily swayed by run on sentences full of nothing of substance

Spendius I do agree with this last post of yours but I was making a joke about your post before this one Your quote:[Beware of people who tell you that you are intelligent if you agree with them.} I am not sure that you got it. I was not trying to cause harm only pointing out what seemed to be obvious! No harm intended!

spendius says:

Hasn't that been your position all along, spendius? The last three years or so it seems to me that you've been arguing that evolution shouldn't be taught because it's "dangerous" because, among other things, it makes people feel bad about themselves and their position in the universe, and so instead we should teach your version of intelligent design, because then kpeople will feel better and that's what religion says and you think your religion is the basis of Western civilization. Basically you want to use tax dollars to censor something that is perfectly legal as well as being completely supported by the scientific evidence.

And, of course, as farmerman repeatedly has pointed out to you, your version is inescapably based on a particular religious viewpoint and so violates the US separation of church and state. Teach it in the UK, if you can convince enough other troglodytes to go along with it, but not in the US.

I read Dr. Loennig's paper. He criticizes evolutionary biologists who contend that the length and route of the laryngeal nerve is a ridiculous detour. Those biologists look at the laryngeal nerve as an example of the evolutionary legacy of the fish to mammal transition from millions of years ago.

Loennig views the length and route of the laryngeal nerve not only as appropriate but even as irreducibly complex. Loennig contends that the laryngeal nerve has about thirty branches which function to ennervate other organs such as the esophagus, trachea, and cardiac filaments. He concludes that intelligent design offers a better explanation of the laryngeal nerve.

This is my own summary of Loennig's argument. I believe this is what he is trying to say.

What about Golda Mier and Margaret Thatcher's debating skills? They certainly weren't lightweights.

I assume you are suggesting that women can hit men and be treated less than adults. What about their bowels ? do they have to control them, or shall we let them **** everywhere like dogs...just like in Victorian times...and the origin of public toilets.

I always get involved in preventing bullies....your attitude that a woman cant bully because they are less than human I find rather repulsive.

How do you know that ? And wouldn't someone of even limited intelligence describe the circumstances, just so people don't think you mean he walks down the street compulsively hitting only women.

A myth promoted by the libbies to play-up their role in our survival. They dont want to be seen as doing the important work of looking after children because someone may suggest they still do it. Any analysis of gathering does not account for the amount of protein needed. If gathering was so nutritious, we wouldnt need survival skills. We could come home fat from survival situation. Add to this the need for protein for a growing brain and the vegies of the world have got it very wrong.

I wrote. and I stand by it 100%--



And this is what fm had written which prompted me to say it--



I've seen Dawkins use this base attempt to flatter people to try to get them on their own side. It implies that all you need do to be thought intelligent is to reject my dislocated (assertion) arguments. Which is false. And no attempt made to define intelligence. It's false, it's devious and it's weak. It's ridiculous and it's insulting by assuming A2Kers will fall for it when it doesn't mean anything. And it's arrogant with the "youve (sic) got to understand". It's a science free zone. It's the spin zone.

In response to my true statement, it's in Mailer, and it is well known, fm wrote-



The answer is no it isn't. And the assertion being in the form of a question does not alter that it is an assertion.

Then--



An assertion which is not only applicable to me but to every believer from the Pope and the President down. And all the Popes and all the Presidents. Plus the 90% Americans who are not atheists.

Then mysteryman, and fm can't even be bothered spelling the man's name properly, is asserted to not understand and be dead wrong.

Then we get this washed out rubbish about "SO many of the"ID brotherhood" ". What this invented category of persons has to do with me I can't imagine. Or to do with the argument I made. I'll be being lined up with Hitler next because I wear trousers the same as him.

I am on the record expressing my contempt for the Discovery Institute. I even went so far as to accuse it of furthering the atheist cause by presenting a deliberately weak, and silly, case at Dover. It has nothing to do with me. And it is false and devious to try to connect me with it. I don't know if its staff and supporters feel "put upon". I don't feel put upon one iota.

And I don't know about the law of the land. From CBS and Fox I get the impression that federal judges are an aggregate of loose canons on an ego binge. USSC member Alito has announced his rejection of the next State of the Union address and is reported (on CBS) to have shook his head all the way through the last one. A homosexual judge in California overturned Prop 8 ( a democratic decision) and a crowd of homosexuals rushed down to the civic buildings to demand to be "married". They were shooed away and none of them have yet been allowed to be "married". There are other fusses going on between judges and an elected administration. On drilling for oil and on DADT. And Judge Jones heard a very partial tale in Dover and seemed quite happy to do so either out of ignorance or some less innocent motive.



That's incoherent. First it's "silly" saying that the NSCE has one goal and then it goes on to define that one goal as "being in business" to achieve it. My view of the NCSE is based on the PR handouts which wande has quoted none of which would ever go out with my name signed on the bottom. Not that anybody does sign their name to them mind you. They are anonymous and posted from behind locked and guarded door in big cities in the N.E. of the US miles from the situations in Louisiana and Texas which they show no understanding or tolerance of and which are being dealt with by people who have stood on the hustings and been elected. Nobody in the NCSE has done either. It is a self-appointed, self-selected and self-validating body of lobbyists which, as with all such bodies, is anti-democratic, anti-free specch, insidious and treacherous. It is de-stabilising. It insults elected officials. I support them. A Rhodes scholar is talked about and written about as if he is a moron. And a freely elected Rhodes scholar. And what do we know about those who engage in that sort of talk and writing?



If fm is tired of stating the obvious (another assertion) he is free to take a rest. That very post is contrary to his statement. He subscribes to the NSCE. My world view is not just my own. It is subscribed to by the majority of the population and by almost every elected person. If it is "silly" (an assertion) all the others are silly too.



Another self-validating and self-comforting compound assertion with no meaning.



We all know what the Ignore function is for on these threads. Setanta said recently that he has nobody on Ignore. Notice the present tense in that. He could cancel his Ignore list, say he has nobody on Ignore, and then reinstate the list and he hasn't told a lie. Big Deal. He has stated he has had me on Ignore. Boasted about it too as if it is an intellectually superior position when it is actually infantile. I have nobody on Ignore. Never have had and never will have. Then he pretends that scrolling past a post is somehow different from formally ignoring it when the effect is identical.



Here we go again. The opposite of the statement that " most intelligent people here dont subscribe to any of spendis dislocated arguments". This version labels anybody who thinks I have a case as "less informed". I don't assume such elitist, self-comforting and insulting attitudes to A2Kers. My posts assume the opposite.

I'm shocked and astonished that Americans can sit on their hands and allow the two replies to my post earlier from fm and ci. to stand without objecting to them. Maybe it is some misplaced loyalty to other Americans of the sort Sam Johnson accused James Boswell of exhibiting in relation to Scotsmen. A sign of the anti-intellectualim Mr Hofstadter wrote about and which I have a hardback copy of and which I have read.

The "less informed" category which fm uses to compliment himself, it implying he is well informed, includes Mr Obama, Mr Biden, Mr Blair, Mr Clinton, Mr Bush, Mr Jindal, Mr Cameron, Mr Putin, The Pope and H.M. The Queen to name but a few of the very large majority which rejects atheism and all it stands for with its assertions, insults and crass, unjustified elitism.

You have missed out between "taught" and "because" the words "to kids in schools". That you do so implies your failure to understand the post of mine you are referring to which I fully accept might be my fault as much as your's.
I have no objection to evolution being studied, it hardly needs teaching so simple it is to understand, by people old enough to vote and who are specialising in related matters.

And I have no version of intelligent design. That you think I have is nothing to do with me or the argument.

The post was written to point out, among other things, that cicerone imposter used emotions to make an argument on an economic thread despite his refusal to accept that emotions are an important aspect, perhaps the only significant aspect, of this debate. That he speaks with forked tongue. And no matter what insults and assertions he puts out, none of which mean anything, the evidence is not contestable. It's written on the threads. And we are being asked to put the education of 50 million kids into the hands of people who resort to meaningless assertions and insults to prop up their position.

I think teaching evolution to kids represents a danger--yes. And I explained why. I don't mind my explanation being questioned. I welcome it. But it wasn't questioned. It was simply insulted with assertions. Which not only admits being unable to question it but discredits the side stooping to such ridiculous tactics.

I do think the Christian religion is the basis of Western civilisation. I cannot see how that can be disputed.

I want tax dollars to be used for the benefit of taxpayers. Technicalities and pedantic and partial positions are nothing to do with it. And I want the administration of the tax dollars in the hands of those who are elected by the taxpayers whose intelligence I don't underestimate. Not by self-appointed, self-selecting, supposedly "non-profit" (what a lie that is) bodies of lobbyists who have contervailing arguments on Ignore and who can be seen regularly with a one-way megaphone and who never had to win votes in their lives.

I don't see how the separation of powers argument applies except as a mere word formation. Mr Obama's offering of "our prayers and thoughts" for the miners in Chile was a fact. The Christian religion is built into the very language of the Constitution as are its morals and ethics.

I'm not up for proceeding on the basis that the evolution lobby has science in mind. It's useless science is there for all to see in every pronouncement it makes. It has set itself up to undermine Christianity, and particularly the Catholic Church, using half-baked science, on behalf of a coalition which wants to set aside the Church's teaching on sexual matters and for reasons too obvious to state.

And your use of "troglodytes " says all we need to know about you.

I think some states will secede from the Union rather than have their educational establishments taken over by atheists. And I can't see your side having any other objective.

That won't do em. I dare say some said something similar about Einsten's ideas. It's just too easy and should be suspected on that ground alone.

I'll bet it was said about those Americans who wanted to come into the war in 1939 to fight fascism and save the Jews. Facebook is what you want for that sort of nappy soiling not a science thread on a prestigious US debate site. It discredits the site. It makes it look like any Tom, Dick and Harry is welcome like those pubs that sell cheap beer.

Hi Spendius, I thought that I would share a view point with you and others that came to my mind.

From what I see it appears that the difference between a creationist and a evolutionist is that they both have studied creation but they have not both studied evolution.

Now do not get me wrong as I do know that many christians have studied anti-evolution but there is a big difference between anti-evolution and evolution.

Now I need to take it one step further and say that there will be some no matter what they are taught, "they will still believe what they believe. example the pilots that flew the planes into the twin towers were told by someone in their lives that there are no virgins on the other side of the twin towers but the pilots had more faith than most reasonable and logical people do.

You don't know that. It's possible that only the pilots were intending suicide. It's possible their wives and children were being threatened. It's possible their families were getting money. It's possible they simply hated the West enough to derange them. It's possible too many people like writing the word "virgins" a lot or enjoy denigrating Islam.

I don't know what you mean by "creationist" or "evolutionist". Some might think that creationism has the best stories and the most utility. If the evolutionist thinks that he should look at evolutionist's literary confections and the absence of any arguments from utility for a nation of 301 million people rather than for his own career and attention seeking.

It may well come down to a choice of style. I don't fancy the evolutionist's style and nor do I fancy the logic of its utility. If you do go get it.

I do not disagree with you when you say that the pilots were intending suicide! I do find it odd that you used the word possible as it seemed to be obvious to me! Your quote:{ It's possible they simply hated the West enough to derange them.} This seems obvious as well!

I said that "It's possible that only the pilots were intending suicide. "

I meant the other terrorists on board might have been thinking they were just showing off to New Yorkers. That they didn't know the pilot's intentions. That's not obvious. Had I missed out "only" I would have been stating the obvious. Obviously.

And it isn't obvious that hating the West was the motive either as I pointed out. The four pilots could have been terminally ill and were on a suicide by spectacular mission.

It's possibly also that they had been conditioned to think their reward was to be an eternity of virgins as you suggested and which many millions of pub life have suggested also. And a not inconsiderable number repeating it so often as to be wearisome. But guys who did what they did are unlikely to be of that type I would have thought. They are much more likely to be fanatics in the cause of fundamentalist Islam and prepared to die to futher it and become posthumous heroes in their homelands.

I would say that underestimating such people was a contributory cause of the utter disaster.