Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

To me, it was surprising to read that as a straight news story in a conventional newspaper. It sounds like something from The Onion.

Thats the way Wal Mart started, except for the Judea thing.

That's a hefty "incentive." For that kind of money, i could get all religious my own self. This is why the incorporation of the no establishment clause of the first amendment is important. If it were incorporated, someone could take this clown Bashear to Federal court to block the disbursement of the "incentive."

" THE SACARED LAND of the HOLY FLYING PASTA BEING ". (Sauce be upon him)
I am verklempt, literally. I can feel it getting all klempted now as I read your stunning proposal.

Gotta find some land in Kentucky, and then we're in business . . .

I knowf some strip mines in HArlan.

And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

(Thanks to John Prine)

Liberals are a bit lost in a capitalist state. They are always and everywhere seeking to expand state control, their own jobs in other words, into the private domain and silly old, irrational and stupid, human nature makes them look like utopian dreamers tangled up in abstractions.

Does the team think that the imposition by the courts of the teaching of evolution to adolescents represents a further encroachment of state power into the private domain?

Lionel Trilling has written--



I wonder how many of our resident troupe of anti-IDers are beneficiaries of statism.

If the thrust by the NSCE led coalition goes unchecked how long will it be before schools have a Commissar to whom children are "encouraged" to report that their parents are saying their prayers or have pictures of Jesus on the wall. Or--gulp--smoking. The Commissar will, of course, have two assistants each with Outreach programmes in the community staffed by volunteers assigned to the various wards, and will herself be controlled by a bureaucracy headed by a Director of the Commissariat.

As all species have become extinct to 4 decimal places, I doubt it makes it less likely.
Have you decided no discussion is necessary, we all should all turn off the computers and read a book ?

I have a geo question where we can put your knowledge to use......where are the gaps in the fossil record...and we dont want an answer that anticipates where an IDer might take it.

Neither does Atheism or Theism.
I would also add that a non-personal God does have some scientific anecdotal evidence.

How many sources does it take to prove someone historically existed ? Do you think Jesus did not exist ?

It is that sort of fear that antagonises the religious fundamentalists and makes it harder to resolve these matters.

Lets face their pissed off anyway, I would be too if I had to live my life like that.
Fundamentalism.
A form of Protestant Christianity which upholds belief in the strict and literal interpretation of the Bible.
strict maintenance of the doctrines of any religion, notably Islam, according to a strict, literal interpretation of scripture.
Modern Christian fundamentalism arose from American millenarian sects of the 19th century, and has become associated with reaction against social and political liberalism and rejection of the theory of evolution. Islamic fundamentalism appeared in the 18th and 19th centuries as a reaction to the disintegration of Islamic political and economic power , asserting that Islam is central to both state and society and advocating strict adherence to the Koran (Qur'an) and to Islamic law (sharia)

That only means that for any specific order and genera, the extinction rate for species has been at four decimals. SOME DID GET THROUGH, IN most all cases, the GENERAL forms with many species in their genera were the successful ones. Thats just from sampling of continuous sequential stratigraphy. Earliest whale -like forms of precetaceans , were about 7 or 8 different genera and seveal species each all in the same evolutionary "Lab" of the present area from the ARabian penisnsula to the area that is now under thousands of feet of sediment along the Indian Ocean where India slammed into Asias belly.

There are plenty of gaps, most of them seem to occur where a species buds off ferom its common ancestor with other orders or genera.

We know that there were about 7 or 8 orders of mammals that exosted before the KT extinction. Only 3 made it through. The marsupials, monotremes, and placentals. We have fossil evidence of this "root stock" but there are thousands of species after that, that we have little or no record qat that critical time when they first presented themselves . For exampl,e, BATS, we know that bats are insectivore placentals and we have the most general placental insectivore form from the PAleocene and Eocene. After that, and until the late Miocene, we dont have any Bats fossils, then all of a sudden we see fossil bats in the stratigraphic record. The fact that bats dont have a preferred ;location and we only know them from their present configuration, weve lost any connection to stratigraphy. SOme fossils of bats were reported from The early Miocene in China but the entire section of late Eocene tthrough Oligocene is missing in sveral parts of the earth due to erosion and subduction. This often cleans off any possibility to find fossils of a species that someone is tracing


I dont think that anyones chatting on a computer constitutes lerning. I am only regurgitating from my experience and training and I dont profess to have all the information on a specific question. When I suggest that one pursue a text that specifically addresses the question at hand, I usually say THANKS A LOT (because it has saved me some useless jawbone time).
The very rules of species numbers being directly proportional to survivability of a genus has been tackled by several paleoecological mathematicians whove looked at population dynamics from fossil data and arrived at some nifty conclusions (like the 99.9999 % extinction rate for all species ever living at any time). RAup does it reall well because he doesnt get lost in the statistics and he attempts to do the teaching in a very readable form. It will really be your loss NOT to find this book and read it. Its a very quick enjoyable read, and it shows that one can be a great educator and still make the trip enjoyable .

When the Horus legend predates the Jesus story by a quarter of a millenium, I have often wondered why one spends such an inordinate time "Copying legends" if ones own was true.

Also, we dont have a lot of real evidence that highlight hom from Roman accounts. The Gospels were all written at minimum 60 years after the "crucifixion" and each Gospel is different and often unlinked tp previous. Yeh, Im at least open minded.

How about that? Who says that resolution is a goal that I subscribe to? I dont think that any Fundamentalist will be swayed even with uncontrovertible evidence staring them in the face. Im more interested in the more reasonable, open minded individual who is decideng to send theor kids to a public school that is rumored to be interested in ID as "Science".

Noone will ever budge the true believers. ( As far as spendi-hes in his own cocoon and the quality of his writing is subject to the volumetric intake of malt beverages per unit time-- ie, some days he is readibly hammered )

Actually it first appeared as a result of the Crusades, and again after the Mongol Invasion devastated Iraq, the main centre of arab learning.

Unfortunately the local Uni and I did not part friends. I even managed to have a run-in with the new Chancellor in the elevator on the way out. The local library tries hard but often takes two months to order in specific books from other libraries, and the central ref library collection involves a 3 hr drive one way.
Thank you. I will endeavour to get it. Perhaps a friend will have it or sneak it out for me.
Now THAT is a noble aim.

So everybody who takes part in a war is a fundamentalist, is that what you mean, because the Muslim response to the crusades was to fight back. So what your saying is if somebody invades your land, I.E, like the crusaders or the Mongol's and you fight back, your a fundamentalist. Is that right.?

Perhaps because the believe in one God came from Egypt. As for the legends around Jesus, he was meant to be the Messiah, the one who would pave the way for the coming of God. That in itself has been twisted to where Jesus is God.
If you wish to be accurate, you should say the language used is typical of that used about 100 yrs after. Many historians make a leap of faith and declare they must have been written when the language suggests they were. But nothing stops an earlier version from Jesus time being amended by a scribe to be more modern 100 yrs later....compare the KJV Bible with ones written nowadays.