Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

@wandeljw,

Quote:

“Darwin started out it was a theory, and by the time he got to the sixth chapter, it was fact,” Sue said Monday at a meeting between county commissioners and school officials. “Every theory that has ever been the basis of evolution has been disproven

All this from a boy named SUE.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

No, all this from an ignoramus called Sue.

It makes one wonder how religion can make them so stupid when so many facts are presented!

2 Replies

@cicerone imposter,

fm's brilliant witticism, ci., serves to snow over the fact that he has provided no answers to my posts regarding the logical, the moral and the scientific objections to evolution theory which I took some time to compose because I have respect for A2K unlike you lot who think your short-time wit is good enough for them.

1 Reply

@spendius,

It's something of a pisser for anti-ID that its No 1 spokesperson on here can think of nothing to say other than to take advantage of a man's surname to try to delude people that he has jumped my three fences when he has refused at all of them. And after claiming to be "educable".

0 Replies

@cicerone imposter,

NO, I meant what I said

2 Replies

@farmerman,

Hey, I enjoyed listening to Johnny Cash, and I stand corrected. Even like the message of that song, A Boy Named Sue, and how he fought back against those who teased him.

0 Replies

@farmerman,

Did you really have to fm?

It's a bloody awful song. Laurence Sterne did a miles better version over 200 years ago. Nobody ever did a Black Diamond Bay before though. Or an Every Grain of Sand.

0 Replies

@wandeljw,

Quote:

Quote:
Phillips asked school officials, “What can we do to get creation taught in our schools along with the theory of evolution?”

I suppose that the school board can disband , turn over its authority to some private or parochial concern and then disburse the standard state stipend , which is usually half the cost of "educating" students in a district. The private concern can take over education and all it has to do, in mpost states, is provide an education that allows a standard of proficiency based upon testing as defined within "NCLB" proficiency standards and "Race to the Top" (both of which are deeply flawed concepts). I suppose they could do that by making their entire public school system become something else that is no longer public.
In that case then, none of the case law would possibly pertain.

I know in PA where weve had a surge in Charter schools (most of which go under in three years or less). Within the charter schools, many of the headmasters and the regents have decided to advertise that they teach "American values" with Christian worldviews.
The NCSE has these schools in their sights because they are "for profit" scams in most cases and the kids therein are forced to accept , in many cases, Fundamentalist garbage.

0 Replies

I've had a drink so I'm going to get a bit hippy on you all. It's about time you creationists, and normal people kissed and made up. Maybe you're both right.

Science tells us the universe is billions of years old, and that's a fact. You can pick holes out of the theory of evolution, but you can't argue with that. Fundamentalist creationists believe in the story of Adam and Eve, but if you think about it has to be bollocks. Note Holy Rollers, I added fundamentalist, because I accept there may be those of you who are creationists, but don't literally believe in Adam and Eve and I don't want to get caught up in all that.

The Elizabethan magician John Dee conducted a series of angelic conversations with the angel Uriel. Calm Down atheists! All I'm saying is, this is what is reported to have happened. You can all research the life of John Dee and make your own minds up. And if you're atheists you've probably made your minds up already.

Anyway, Uriel told John Dee that this Universe was a bubble inside time and space, guarded by four watchtowers. The realm from which Uriel was talking existed outside of time and space.

So, in the world outside of time and space, everything could have happened exactly as it said in the bible. Then, when Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden, they were cast into time, and into space, into the bubble. As time and space do not exist outside the bubble, God could cast humanity into any time and space he wanted. So he chose Africa at exactly the same point that apes evolved into homo sapiens.

QED.

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

This thread isnt about Creationism v EVolution as a concept. (There were several other threads re: that point and they were monitored by some really great Creationist minds(I have to respect a really good argument that attempts to subvert science to obtain its own ends).

No, this thread, as one can see from its title, by design, revolved around the ongoing "culture wars" in the US and how the Intelligent Design and Creation "Science" have employed a series of "stealth arguments" to get their worldview taught in public schools as biology or earth scince. Several cases of record, including decisions from Fed district courts and the US Supreme Courts hqave stated emphatically and "from the bench" that Creationism and INtelligent Design are actually religious doctrines and not valid scientific theories.

SCience has said that for at least 100 years but its taken several decades for the US to define whats meant in the "Establishment Clause" of the 1st AMendment of our Bill of Rights.

This entire huggermugger is unique to the US even though severel other countries including UK have evidenced "Creeping Creationism" in standard science classes.
A number of us have been, from the start of this thread, commenting on and kibitzing about how several states are approaching this issue and how others are just giving in to Fundamentalist Christian MAjorities to define what school curricula will be.

Its troubling and amusing at the same time.
These diversions that occur periodically (mostly surrounding one UKers incredible need for attention) are just that. THey dont rpresent anything that derails the original topic.

Most of us herein do respect the worldviews that the religious try to verbalize .We just dont share them

2 Replies

@farmerman,

Quote:

These diversions that occur periodically (mostly surrounding one UKers incredible need for attention) are just that. THey dont rpresent anything that derails the original topic.

The "diversions" as you call them are well known challenges to evolution. In the last few days I have offered the logical, the moral and the scientific objections to evolution. Asserting that they are diversions as an alternative to rebutting them is ridiculous and a type of Ignore. They don't derail the topic. They are the topic.

I also don't see why my posts represent an "incredible need for attention" and your's don't. Will you explain what you mean.

In a grown up debate people don't counter arguments from opponents as "diversions" and expressions of a need for attention. They answer them.

It is a serious challenge to the teaching of evolution that we will get an educational system run by people who only have such methods as you use. Which is, of course, totalitarian.

Quote:

Several cases of record, including decisions from Fed district courts and the US Supreme Courts hqave stated emphatically and "from the bench" that Creationism and INtelligent Design are actually religious doctrines and not valid scientific theories.

What does that have to do with challenges to teaching evolution? And it has already been made plain that those founts of wisdom did not consider the arguments I have put forward because nobody in the court had the nerve to present them.

All anybody needs to know about the legal profession is contained in the masterpiece of Francois Rabelais which you have not read and is probably banned from your schools and colleges. Possibly for that very reason. I could name a number of books in the same category.

I'm the only one on this thread who comes close to being an evolutionist. The rest are phonies on an awkward squad mission or seeking self validation on matters which the Christian project denies them.

0 Replies

@farmerman,

Thank you for that. You're quite right about creeping creationism in UK schools. By removing the authority from the Council some groups are trying to sneak creationism through the back door.

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

For the hell of it or for some reason they think justified?

Your choice of "sneak" gives you away as unblanced rather than an objective observer which is what science requires you to be.

If they are "sneaking" how come you know about it? Sneaking is a quiet and stealthy movement. So your English is a bit weak.

It's actually all in the papers and is discussed, on the rare occasions it is discussed, in meetings which are open to the public. There is no back door. It is impossible to bring creationism into schools without everybody knowing. Just as it is impossible to bring atheism into schools without everybody knowing. The only sneaky thing is pretending that evolution is not bringing atheism in its train. Which requires atheists to teach it.

On the evidence of opinion polls that would mean that all atheists would have to be recruited into the educational system and all Christians got rid of as happened in the Soviet Union and is happening in China and N. Korea.

1 Reply

Quote:

Teaching evolution
(Editorial, The Baton Rouge Advocate, May 6, 2011)

We shall let a Louisiana student speak for his peers: "Louisiana students want to be taught science that will prepare them to get jobs in today's global economy." Those words from Zack Kopplin, a 17-year-old Baton Rouge High student, should resonate with a Louisiana Legislature that has, in the past, been all too willing to bend to extremists who are opposed to science's knowledge of evolution.

The shameful passage of a 2008 law authorizing "supplemental materials" on subjects that are controversial was peddled as a protection of academic freedom. As Kopplin's research has shown, that's really a code for anti-evolution tracts.

Backers of the law even tried, and failed, to get the state board of education to reject standard science texts. We applaud the members of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education for their stand, and we hope legislators now will listen to appeals from Kopplin and others to repeal the anti-evolution law entirely.

If the appeals of that earnest young man are not enough, legislators also should consult a letter calling for repeal. It is signed by more than 40 Nobel laureates in the sciences. The Nobelists called it a "misguided law."

"Because science plays such a large role in today's world and because our country's economic future is dependent upon the United States retaining its competitiveness in science, it is vital that students have a sound education about major scientific concepts and their applications," they added. When Louisiana education is behind the curve nationally, do we continue to be the only state in the nation to promote creationism in public school classrooms? And do we want to ignore the advice of some of the world's top scientists?

1 Reply

A view point from the other side of the world about America's
Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution and other Science subjects

http://www.youtube.com/user/Neanderthalcouzin#p/c/C7602B40FF124890/9/Z2gm9QfIzPg

2 Replies

Something to think about!

http://www.youtube.com/user/Neanderthalcouzin#p/c/C7602B40FF124890/8/ElKHeTcOPho

0 Replies

@wandeljw,

I can't see the old sweats in the Louisiana Legislature taking any notice of a 17 year old who is given to making ambiguous and meaningless statements. Or of a newspaper editor in the pocket of the Manship family who quotes him in an oped.

I think that the Louisiana Legislature bends to the will of its elected members who cannot, by definition, be called "extremists" unless democratic elections are extremist.

Quote:

As Kopplin's research has shown, that's really a code for anti-evolution tracts.

Well-- let's have a look at "Kopplin's research" then. If we take it as read we are setting aside the principles of peer-reviewing. And the principles of science in the name of celebrity worship. (Getting one's name in the paper being a form of minor celebrity). One can hardly imagine an editor insulting his readers more than that outside of him declaring that they are a bunch of fuckwits who believe anything they see in print.

Does the Advocate run any ads based on sorting out the mess caused by permissive sexual behaviour or feechewing on various types of advice to the victims of the mess which drive them towards the products and services advertised? In other words is Science its agenda or has it something else on its Manship mind.

I have dealt with the Nobels earlier. Of the 40 how many live in Lousiana? Is Lousiana to be governed from Stockholm? I bet not a one of them could pull a chick without informing the young lady of their status. Which is hardly evolutionary. It would have to plead the argument which I put on earlier that industrialism renders evolution moribund. Goodstyle.

Quote:

"Because science plays such a large role in today's world and because our country's economic future is dependent upon the United States retaining its competitiveness in science, it is vital that students have a sound education about major scientific concepts and their applications," they added. When Louisiana education is behind the curve nationally, do we continue to be the only state in the nation to promote creationism in public school classrooms? And do we want to ignore the advice of some of the world's top scientists?

The obvious answer to such utopian flannel is "Yes--it does seem to be the case." And the copied bullshit is posited on the assertion that "Louisiana education is behind the curve nationally" without any reference, and probably without any interest, in how the "national curve" is constructed, by whom and what for. Or even WTF it is.

One might think he would exercise his mind on the problem of Louisiana's share of the oil revenues of wells often too close for comfort, from an evolutionary point of view, to its shores.

The editor merely wants to get his allocation of white space covered in neat handwriting whilst expressing a viewpoint the Manship family will approve of him having been chosen for that very purpose. Owning newspapers goes to people's heads you know. They easily come to think they know all the answers. Did you ever see a newspaper regret a previous position unless forced to do by the courts? Take the Iraq war as a case in point. By the time Bush and Blair had finished with them they would have ate **** out of a Wedgewood china tureen.

I don't trust editors one ******* inch.

1 Reply

@reasoning logic,

Bloody hell rl!! Five women of the Mrs Dick van Dyke type sat around a table discussing things!! Good gracious me. It's only an audition. Hoping to get spotted and fast tracked onto CBS News instead of dear Katie who can do sorrowful empathy tinged with rays of hope better than anybody else I have seen.

You don't think I'm going to be able to watch that without risking turning into a blubber wracked with judderings. (see what fm called my Monkey Porn for an explanation.) Those ladies, delightful as they are, and carefully selected, are the result of industrialism and not evolution. It is shameful to suggest such a thing as the latter. Has industrialism altered any other species, poodles excepted, to the extent that it has the basic female of the species as painstakingly studied by Coronation Street. The male being a sort of adjunct. A tool in the strictest sense of the word.

The vestiges of evolution they are landed with are kept carefully locked away and even mentioning them is considered impolite. And I would like to see some scientific justification for the expenditure on the various closets in which they are hidden.

1 Reply

@spendius,

Quote:

I don't trust editors one ******* inch

Thats consistent with the "Spendi worldview" in which he laments the loss of faith and ascribes it to advances in technology. HAd spendi spent a wee bit more time to understand how the constitution identifies and LIMITS many of these rights and freedoms so as to protect the citizens of the US from the rampant excesses that represented lifestyles of the "Gilded Age" and "The Age of the Victorians" as well as the excesses of unbridled catechism. MOst all of these excesses were trimmed and clipped only by scholarly reviews of the law and most all of them had occured during the 20th century , or well over 100 years since the Constitution was constructed and ratified.
The remaining "fine tuning" may step on some favorite myths , sorry about that.

1 Reply

@reasoning logic,

I thank you, that post and link is more consistent with the topic in front of us.

1 Reply

Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know