Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

@cicerone imposter,

The Biloxy Sun Herald is owned by the McClatchy Company.

Quote:

The McClatchy Company is a publicly traded American publishing company based in Sacramento, California. It operates 30 daily newspapers in 15 states and has an average weekday circulation of 2.2 million and Sunday circulation of 2.8 million. In 2006, it purchased Knight Ridder, which at the time was the second-largest newspaper company in the United States.

What is the purpose of anti-trust legislation ci.?

It's a long way from California to Louisiana. Geographically, culturally and economically.

How do you stop teachers using "supplemental materials in their classrooms beyond state-approved textbooks" in any subject. I know--get some parrots trained in Big Media orientation camps.

It's all very well asserting that "supplemental materials" is code for YEC but we only have your word for that which is no more valid than saying that stopping the use of "supplemental materials" is code for operant conditioning of Marxism.

How many of the 40 Nobles live in Louisiana? Are any of them unhappy about how they are being used to make propaganda against Christianity, democracy and freedom. Is the Nobel Committee happy about it?

Let's have their names eh?

1 Reply

@spendius,

Quote:

How do you stop teachers using "supplemental materials in their classrooms beyond state-approved textbooks"

You repeal the idiot law. If it continues by failing to stop it at the legilature level, you know (well maybe you dont cause you are dense) that the law will be challenged ,thus causing the expenditure of much needed funding to uphold some stupid worldview of a very small minority of Fundamentalist Christians>
Dont you get it by now?? (No stupid question)

Arent you getting tired of being the borken CD on the player? You dont seem to come up with anything in this discussion except for your phony incredulity. (Actually Im incredulous that you, a professed Catholic, have adopted these Fundamentalist views)

1 Reply

@farmerman,

No I don't get it it. How is "supplemental materials" equated with the "worldview of a very small minority of Fundamentalist Christians". Except in your head and for your convenience. If no supplementals are in play in the normal classroom experience why do teachers have to submit to selection procedures and character assessments? The human face-to face experience cannot avoid supplementals except by having lectures read out in a monotone from behind a screen.

You, like the 40 Nobels, are blown away scientifically by your prejudgement of these issues. Prejudgement is anathema to science. You, and they, have used, in the worst sense, the prestige of Science to attack science. You are all sat on the Science branch and are frantically sawing it off. In fact you have sawed it off and are sprawled on the grass in an ungainly heap. Your prefix "stupid" is ridiculous from a scientist. It's an emotional flounce.

I have adopted no fundamentalist views. It is fallacious in a transitional situation, which is what we are all in due to industrialisation, to define a value, as you and the 40 Nobles do, as does Mr Jindal but he was elected to do just that, which you were not, in terms of some concrete X because you cannot question the value of X itself because you have already prohibited yourself from doing so by defining X.

And it is time you started acting like a grown up and cease calling me "dense" when it is obvious I am not dense.

Any respectable scientist asked whether teachers should be allowed to use supplemental materials in a classroom would look at the questioner as if he was a piece of ****.

3 Replies

@spendius,

I do not think that it is so much of an attack on Christians but rather an attack on mental retardation!

Try to see it like this Spendius, If we were a Islamic country {or any other religious country} and we were in this stage of the game we would not want any type of mental retardation to be taught from those religions in our class rooms neither!

We care about our kids and I would think that if Islam became the #1 religion in your country you might have a better understanding about the retardation that is able to take place in the name of God.

We are a progressive country trying to evolve, We know that you can not stop evolution but you can retard it!

1 Reply

@spendius,

Quote:

farmerman,

No I don't get it it. How is "supplemental materials" equated with the "worldview of a very small minority of Fundamentalist Christians".

Because, while most of the sane world assumed that supplemental materials would include scientific and Factual evidence or even philospohical conjecture. IT DIDNT in this case. "Supplemental material" was just another code word for Creationist bullshit. AND, maybe you recall, but the Edwards v Aguillard decision , over 20 years ago, forbad the teaching or using material that was clearly religious when teaching biology in public high schools in Louisiana. Creationism was clearly shown to be religious in focus(as was ID in the Dover case).Now, if the law IS NOT repealed, its probably going to court and wasting even more money

Now your incredulity cannot be based upon mere ingnorance. What elese goes pn in tnat head of yours?

1 Reply

@spendius,

Quote:

You, like the 40 Nobels, are blown away scientifically by your prejudgement of these issues

And you're not?!

Quote:

I have adopted no fundamentalist views. It is fallacious in a transitional situation, which is what we are all in due to industrialisation, to define a value, as you and the 40 Nobles do, as does Mr Jindal but he was elected to do just that, which you were not, in terms of some concrete X because you cannot question the value of X itself because you have already prohibited yourself from doing so by defining X.

What has fundamentalism to do with industrialization? If you think fundamentalism is fallacious, why, then, do you support their view on evolution?

If indeed Mr. Jindal was elected to "define a value" why is it fallacious to define a value? (POM's reaction: Mr. Jindal was elected because of the values he holds and not to define a value.)

If Mr. Jindal's position on a scientific matter differs from that of the 40 Nobel winner, then the public should give more credence to the laureates.

BTW, that is one horrendous sentences.

2 Replies

@plainoldme,

Quote:

And you're not?!

I allow for it of course but I am not making prescriptive recommendations as to what an elected govenor should do. And I will agree that my valuation of the democratic process is also a prejudgement but we do have to do something.

If you wish to discuss the merits of a scientific oligarchy or a monarchy or some other system feel free to do so. Or even that 40 Nobels sticking their noses into Louisiana politics, probably from some great distance, is not an inchoate scientific oligarchy, also. From little acorns etc.

I did say this yesterday--

Quote:

The real question now is whether freedom is mal-adaptive because if it is oms are in the right.

Perhaps it escaped your attention or you failed to see the significance of it due to your speed reading skills. It must be one or the other because you wouldn't have asked me that question, which I have dealt with before on numerous occasions, otherwise. You would have noticed, assuming it being blatantly obvious from all my posts had also escaped your notice, that my propensity to pre-judgement is at as low a level as it is possible to get without risking anarchy.

No anti-IDer has ever said anything like that. I'm admitting that anti-IDers are right if freedom is mal-adaptive and I'll also admit that it might very well be so in the circumstances we are in. The American voter chose a president known to be less enthusiastic about freedom that the alternative. More socialist I mean.

The pre-judgement of the 40 Nobels is blatant and simplistic. Childlike. It offers no recognition that Mr Jindal might be right as I did. And it offers nothing other than a wooly and vacuous term, "supplementary materials" , which is equated with fundie YEC by those who want to, indeed look to be desperate to, as a mast upon which to pin its colours.

One can hardly get more unscientific than that in my view. Thus I think it usedScience to indulge its simplistic and ill-defined prejudgements and is therefore anti-science and, not to put too fine a point on it, Science's sworn enemy and signifying the last throes of our exhausted zeitgeist. It self-evidently having run out of any scientific ideas.

1 Reply

@plainoldme,

Quote:

What has fundamentalism to do with industrialization? If you think fundamentalism is fallacious, why, then, do you support their view on evolution?

I did not say that.

I said

Quote:

I have adopted no fundamentalist views. It is fallacious in a transitional situation.

I meant that it is fallacious in a transition, that's when we don't know for sure who we are, or what we are, hence all the counselling, to adopt any fixed view. It is fallacious in a transition to adopt fundamentalist views for that reason so I have adopted none. Because the "it is" referred to a singular it had to be the adoption of the views and not the views themselves which were in the plural. Either a cultural or a hierarchical mutual incomprehension, neither of which it is in my power to remedy.

Quote:

If indeed Mr. Jindal was elected to "define a value" why is it fallacious to define a value?

It is not in his case because that is what he is elected to do even if it is fallacious. He isn't in an argument. He's running a State.

Quote:

Mr. Jindal was elected because of the values he holds and not to define a value.

A point of some subtlety which can never be resolved but it is generous of you to allow that he might be a man with principles and the public elected him because it agreed with him. There are lots of values. And in a transition it is fallacious to fail to transvalue all values, as Nietzsche said.

Quote:

If Mr. Jindal's position on a scientific matter differs from that of the 40 Nobel winner, then the public should give more credence to the laureates.

I trust you don't think I wrote that. It is not only horrendous it is ridiculous. I couldn't write such tripe even if I was a screenwriter composing the part of a complete idiot laboratory assistant or a starry-eyed wannabe scientist. I could only hope to overhear it and remember it. The public is not going to forget the Mad Scientist stereotype in the foreseeable future.

1 Reply

@reasoning logic,

It is not an Islamic country rl. You might plausibly speculate upon the results of a nuclear holocaust.

Quote:

Try to see it like this Spendius, If we were a Islamic country {or any other religious country} and we were in this stage of the game we would not want any type of mental retardation to be taught from those religions in our class rooms neither!

That lot rl has all the authentic hallmarks of mental retardation imo.

Quote:

We care about our kids

Oh yeah!! What a facile assertion. Why are you fastening debt millstones around their necks then? You should be seeing that they have a good start in life. As good as you can make it too. They can't afford decent accomodation when they get married unless they both go to work. They could once you know. You're frantically busy, as we are, dropping them in the **** for your pleasures. Get their noses to the grindstone to fill the hole you lot made. Some "care" that is.

Quote:

We know that you can not stop evolution but you can retard it!

What? Me? Little old shagged-out has-been retarding evolution. Good gracious. This is not about evolution. How many times do you need telling. It's about shafting inhibitions on sexual promiscuity. No newspaper editor would give the time of day to evolution otherwise. Promiscuity sells wood pulp. Have you not noticed? The editors will have. You can bet on that. Evolution is not dramatic. There are not many things you can't see because they go too slow but evolution is one of them. Can you think of another? I can't. Even the fossils have ribs and teeth and holes in the pelvic bone.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

Quote:

IT DIDNT in this case.

Which case? One swallow does not make a summer. What can I do about a "this case"? And you go from that specific to generalise, which is, again, unscientific and what peer-reviewing is there to remedy.

I'm not sure that it is possible to waste money. Do you mean to allocate money to recipients you don't approve of?

There is one sure way to get the law repealed. It is to put up a scientific materialist at the next election in Louisiana and get her elected.

0 Replies

@spendius,

You are correct you do not live in a Islamic country but if you did do you think that there could be a push for ideas that you may think are retarded if Islam was your country's major religion?

Please try and be intellectually honest with yourself!

1 Reply

@spendius,

Quote:

Perhaps it escaped your attention or you failed to see the significance of it due to your speed reading skills. It must be one or the other because you wouldn't have asked me that question, which I have dealt with before on numerous occasions, otherwise.

I seldom read beyond line two or three of your posts.

0 Replies

@spendius,

Illogical. Every era is a transition.

2 Replies

@plainoldme,

Every building is tall. Every era is short. Or long.

Modern philosophers consider your view "comical" or even mystical but there is no point in explaining that to you as I have run out of the short time which your attention span is capable of embracing.

0 Replies

pom wrote--

Quote:

I seldom read beyond line two or three of your posts.

I suspect that behaviour, inexplicable on Able 2 Know, is fairly typical of anti-IDers.

0 Replies

@reasoning logic,

Look rl--I have no idea what I would think if I lived in an Islamic country. And I don't think you have.

Quote:

Please try and be intellectually honest with yourself!

There are two reasons why intelligent people take exception to such sneers--

1--They are too easy to do and are on the same level as an infant banging on a pan with its mom's baking spoon.

2--They don't mean anything beyond noise for noise's sake.

0 Replies

@plainoldme,

I see that spendi's jumped on yet another of his idiotic premises and is riding it to ground. For anyones information, the Governor of any state is not elected to "Support or project a value". The governors are only there to uphold the constitutions of that state IMPARTIALLY. Here is the governors oath pof office for Louisiana

Quote:

OATH OF OFFICE STATE OF LOUISIANA, PARISH OF_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ I,_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ do solemnly (Print or Type Name) swear (or affirm) that I will support the constitution and laws of the United States and the constitution and laws of this state and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent on me as: ___________________________________________________________________ according to the best (Title of Office) of my ability and understanding, so help me God

There is no wording that the governor is to only uphold the opinions or rights of a very small select few. Spendi has his head up his ass again.

Thi is getting someoehat tiresome, always calling 911 so we can send for an ANAL-CRANIAL EXTRACTION for the dear boy.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

The Constitution is as out of date as a muzzle loader is compared to a drone missile fired into Gadaffi's bathroom window.

Does Mr Jindal have the power to veto a repeal of the legislation in the event of such a repeal being passed?

Your sod-busting mentality is but a trick, a spurious pose, which won't take in anybody who knows what's what in 2011. It's a crude anachronism.

If it is getting tiresome then the solution is obvious. In fact you have had recourse to the obvious solution on a number of well-publicised occasions but here you are unable to resist coming back. One can only conclude that you have a fascination with "head up arse" situations. How such a perversion came about is of interest to all intellectuals. It cannot be uncaused.

2 Replies

@spendius,

In your opinion the Constitution is out of date. I love the irony. Dont ever change, youre precious.

You know he can veto it, and you also know they can override his veto. If he vetoes it he might as well kiss national politics bye bye.

They say greatness is often thrust upon men. Id like to see his attempts neh?

1 Reply

Quote:

What fossils teach us about human evolution
(Tim Radford, The Guardian, 25 April 2011)

A fossil discovery is improbability squared. First, to become fossilised, human remains must survive the normal process of decay that returns flesh and bone to dust and ashes.

On the African plains, a carcass will be torn to pieces by vultures and hyenas. Perhaps a skull, or thighbone or jaw is dragged apart, perhaps carried into a depression or dry river bed where, white and bleached, it will be carried away by the next flash flood.

Most probably, it will decay but a freak set of circumstances might carry it to peat or quicksand or other anoxic conditions that preserve the bone. Then, over millions of years, as the sands gather above the burial site, minerals in the bone will leak away, to be replaced by rock crystals that precisely copy the bone's shape. Conditions will change; water, glaciers and wind will erode the terrain.

Then comes the next highly unlikely event: just as the bone is exposed, but before it can be eroded, a skilled palæontologist must just happen along, precisely at that point. The surprise is not that there are not more fossil remains, the surprise is that there are any at all.

Sometimes, there are no human fossils, but there may still be other evidence of ancient human presence. At Laetoli in Tanzania, there is a set of hominid footprints preserved in volcanic ash, 3.6m years old. Stone tools found in Happisburgh in Norfolk show that humans must have passed that way more than 800,000 years ago. At Boxgrove near Chichester there is a human shinbone 500,000 years old, but there are also animal bones and flint chippings to show where an axe-maker must have worked.

Animal bones provide clues: if there are hyenas and rhinos in the same stratum we're not talking about the ice age. If the bones of a deer show neat striations, chips or cuts, the conclusion is that a human butcher with a stone axe has used the site. Researchers in Ethiopia have detected evidence of cut marks on fossil animal bones dating back 3.2m years, which pushes the first use of stone tools back almost 800,000 years. Pollen, too, turns up in fossil sites, and provides a guide to bygone temperatures and humidity.

And although DNA degrades with time, human bones can still yield evidence: analysis of 30,000-year-old bones can show whether the owner chose fish from the Palaeolithic menu, or meat.

2 Replies

Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know