Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

When I was a school boy in England, it would be safe to say that most Christians believed the earth was flat and earth was not anywhere near being millions of years old ... Now even spendiosus knows that is not so ( wonder where he learned that ????). Going by what I read here on Able2know a huge number of USA Christians don't even agree with the little that spendiosus has found out

These "wise men" are usually only recognized by history. When Wegener challenged the "facts: of geosyncinal mechanisms he was scorned. Did that deny the "facts" of geosynclines? NO, but it did was give a better explanation based upon newer technology.

All this is not unique to the sciences.

What I have against the religious is their use of hyperbole as a substitute for "fact".
No "Evolutionist" really accepts that their present facts are immutable. Only rookies and the Evangelicals do that. Where once we claimed that dinosaurs were lumbering slow witted beasts who were doomed by "God". we know now that they were mostly quick, possibly warm blooded, feather covered, good mothering transitional beasts who rose from reptile stock and preceded birdie stock. The "facts" that denied this state did not change but rather, more defining facts arose by a century and a half of brute field work.
Its nice to be able to comment from the comfort of ones office that "evolutionists do this" or "we need religion in that".

Those opportunities to think like that are never denied one in thne US, (we have lots of flat earthersand Luddites over here), its just that we dont propose spending big chunks of public money to continue teaching that crap. Our Constitutions guarantees the freedom OF and FROM religion, if you dont like that aspect, you are free to continue your bumper stickers elsewhere, I dont think that your constant one trick-pony show will successfully convince anyone here with the exception of the few remaining Creationists who only want to substitute rational thought by some form of the BORG.

As far as teaching religion in our public schools , why would we want to do this when we already have a very healthy parochial school system?What would you expect to gain besides some degree of anarchy?. We are a large country , geographically, numerically and by diversity. I would ask you,"Whose story of faith would you reccomend we champion?" Its easy for a little country like England where its been socially engineered by tradition. The US is as big as Australia, as diverse , and about 15 times the population . When you get to our size, unless as Rouseau commented,"we wish to embrace the finality of despotism" you will probably evolve to our way of governance.

Call me in 300 years.

This is rather foolish. What do you mean by "a huge number?" There may be several millions. But out of more than 300 million, that is a proportion of fools and self-deluding idiots no larger than one would expect to find in England, or in any other country. That other nations are less forthcoming about the amount of idiocy embraced by religious devotion within their own populations is not evidence that there is any more of that in the American population.

As FM has pointed out in his most recent post, this is a diverse nation. There is and can be no established religion, nor can anyone be denied service nor the opportunity to serve based upon a religious confession. There are many millions more reasonable and reasonably well-educated people of religious conviction in the United States who are not hidebound by primitve superstitions than there are lunatic fringe fundamentalist. All that you have said simply points up the squeaky wheel principle in splashy media. A headline which reads "Vast majority of Americans of religious faith accept scientific findings" is not going to sell any newspapers. Far more entertaining are stories of snake handlers and creation museums.

It's hardly the fault of Americans that people in other countries seize on the evidence of folly to castigage a large and populous nation for that folly, which is actually the province of only a few.

And might I add that many of us here enjoy the religious folly and its frequent throw-downs to sharpen our own senses of humor

Mr. Clemens was an avid devoté of that form of entertainment.

HE da man!

Off the hook again eh fm?

You wrote-



I did three for you in response to that. Where's your response? You might not do flat earth but you're pretty good at flat tyre. I've been doing various versions all along and your "pick one" says I haven't and is thus a lie designed to cod the new viewer who starts on this page. Dear me.

I had a titter at "brute field work" though. It's a good example actually how you use phrases like social workers do. Your "retraining" was another. It's second nature to you. It's called euphemism. Like with "my wife".

A special vocabulary to disguise the real nature of what it is referring to which is a process for spending taxpayer's money, mostly religious taxpayers, and which has a logistical operation of some deviousness resulting in a holiday in the sun shagging research assistants and getting pissed in local bars. All sorts of mumbo-jumbo culled from various books and periodicals is then deployed to assert what happened during those short intervals of scratting in the muck when the video camera is on.

Using such language and blurrings of reality in this professional manner renders to the unwary a tough and self-sacrificing image of the sordid reality when seen scientifially. They are what someone called "innocent somnabulistic insulation".

The best example in DNA. The acronym slips by the reader in such a way that she thinks she knows what it stands for in reality and the self-flattery leads her to an admiration of the writer who doesn't know either what the reality is which the letters are purporting to describe and mean. If it brings her to bed I suppose evolution's energy gets earthed.

It's a trivial aspect of Orwell's Newspeak and Ingsoc and Doublethink. The idea is to not only provide a medium of expression for the approved worldview and mental habits proper to the cadres in the lower levels of the party bureaucracy but also to make all other modes of thought impossible. It functions to destroy meaning. It insulates the mind from reality including the reality of what the habitual users of it are saying and doing and prevents them from experiencing that reality. It names things without calling up any valid mental picture of them. It separates words from objects and produces structured hypocrisy of the sort V. S. Naipaul fleshed out in A Bend in the River.

But--hey--who cares? It gets one up the Party ladder a bit I suppose.

Your posts, fm, are exercises in euphemistic control-talk and that you don't know it is only a mark of how bad you've got it. Going to see the whales spouting or constructing an authentic currach are euphemisms for what are, in reality, quite complex psychological manifestations. Lying on the sofa watching telly is a straighforward natural physiological disposition which every animal will get into as soon as its necessities are provided for. Except for domesticated dogs of course which are an evolutionary aberration.

PErhaps all you say may have merit. You seemed more obsessed with your own genius than you are with making any cogent point. So Ill defer to someone who may actually give a rats ass about your "insights"

Head in the sand again fm.

At your request I did three "controversies". You have not commented on any of them. All you have are insults. All I made were cogent points. You answer nothing. And my seeming "obsessed" with my own genius is a catch all argument which can be applied to any position you are unable to deal with.

It was a cogent point that you can instantly recognise the music, the architecture, the dress, the art of other cultures derived from non-Christian beliefs.

It is a cogent point that you deploy euphemisms on a grand scale as a substitute for facts, for reality and for thinking.

It is a cogent point why the senator from Texas left his remark in the air.

It is a cogent point the schools create consciousnesses and they derive from a blend of subjects which are themselves difficult to separate except for convenience.

It is a cogent point that mass incarceration of 50 million kids to be sat in classrooms listening only to science is a controversial issue.

If you don't give a rat's ass about those points why are you here at all?

Why can't you argue that modern economic (inc.military) activity in a competitive world has reached a point where unthinking automatons with a narrow expertise on the end of a tool and rigidly stratified in a highly refined hierarchy are what are not only needed now but are necessary and that religious beliefs and emotions are unsuitable for the purpose and must be eradicated.

At least that would be honest and I don't know for sure how I would counter such an argument. I would have a go though despite my respect for such an argument and knowing full well that I'm an old-fashioned sentimentalist clinging on to outdated ideas subjectively.

Is that the anti-IDer's equivalent of the senator's unspoken position?

Silly, that is because you have argued for the existence of such a modern culture but you find that religious beliefs are capable of yoking people into their circumstance and fear an educated worker who would be impervious to religious propaganda and throw off the yoke of economic oppression.

Funny, that the real fight of the Reformation was about wresting control from the Vatican, who like you wanted to deny the spead of written knowledge because they, like you with admonishing the teaching natural selection driven evolution except to a select few, feared that educated followers would not continue to support the Church, clergy, and current political structures.

You don't really give a **** about people. But at least you are egotistical enough to recognize that you have to be circumspect about it. That doesn't make you profound, it just makes you one in a long line of sociopaths that inhabit conservatism.

Kuvasz da man.

I can't understand what he's on about ed. Maybe he, like the rest of you anti-IDers, is scared of putting on stage the logic of your position as I outlined it in the post he failed to answer and is trying to disguise his half-bakedness in a cloud of empty platitudes. None of you have the courage of your convictions.

Science knows no diversity. It's a rigid structure of axioms.

I doubt he understood my post. Your post is pitiful.

( to Spendius )

Hey! That was going fine until that very last word!

I would have substituted 'fundamentalism.'

There's nothing fine HS about somebody who tosses around words like "sociopath" everytime they are short of something to say but have a need to say something. If you're a conservative he means you as well. But it's okay--you're no conservative.

It's kuvasz who is the conservative because "sociopath" is a bourgeois term and derived from bourgeois control mechanisms beginning in the 18th century. Which is a good enough reason for my never using such a word if my natural politeness didn't exclude it sufficiently emphatically.

He probably would like to see me incarcerated in a panopticon thingy where I could be kept under surveillance.

Paraliptic phrases are a style font of conservative politics.
"I wont talk about You science guys being sociopath .Unlike my opponent "

I refuse to stoop to the gutter tactics of my opponents.

This why I support the Theory of Evolution but to be a fact.... it must have ALL detail correct and demonstrable. If the detail changes (very high probablity our knowledge will improve and refine and change the main aspects of the theory) then it cant be considered a fact. Unfortunately this argument is now so heavily tainted by the religious nut element that "scientsists" leap to its defence when proper science dictates calm acknowledgement of some truth to what the nutters say.