Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

Only if you are still getting off on creationists who think, or say, that the Grand Canyon was caused by the flood in Genesis.

It would be much more fun if Greta had followed Dr. Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, through a typical day at the office. Did Eugenie make it a condition of her co-operation , something of a must for Greta, that she could choose the stage settings. Bit of a cliche though ain't it.? Someone getting carried away with a sense of self-importance whilst making sweeping arm gestures across the wastes of barren rock of this well known wonder of the world.

From a scientific point of view it is no different from any other dried out river valley. I presume it's size is due to it having a more than usual easily displaced bottom.

The juke box in my new pub, I've moved house, plays every top 40 charter since 1956 at the touch of a button. Or two. That's a wonder of the world to even junior scientists. One has to use the brain as a microscope to get a glimpse under the skin of that juke box. It can't be seen.

One can tell a fake scientist as soon as somebody goes all woosy about a bloody silly and ueless Grand Canyon in order to primp their image and self-esteem. And there's an excursion involved. A free one. Possibly better than that. Excursions are really, really exciting for ladies. Across the "flyover rubicon". Where life consists of a bit more than what can be got onto a videotape in the posturing department.

A staged event in other words and no different in essence to those vids the atheists keep linking to prove what IDiots Christians are.

How do they know that there's no dinosaurs in Heaven? Christians teaching evolution is the way forward. How to do that is easy. And it saves everybody's face who needs it saving.

If anti-IDers say that Christians can't teach evolution properly Christians can say that atheists don't intend to teach it properly either. I mean the sort of atheist who would get past a teacher selection panel.

Hi Spendius I have been asking questions kind of like what Socrates did but I have been asking Christians in my part of the world if they thought evolution is a fact.
Most say no but some say yes but they do not think that we came from something that looked much different than a human!

My question is if they think that we looked a little different a long time ago what happened at that point was there not evolution before that or was that when evolution began? What do you think?

I think you are all completely barmy rl. That's what I think. Can't you enjoy what you've got without worrying about how you got it. The critters in evolution do exactly that.

I don't worry about such things What I am concerned with is that we have people who are not mentally advanced {mentally retarded} because they do not study things in a non bias way telling us how we were created by God and a snake spoke to our grate grandmother!

You obviously haven't studied bias in a non-biased way. So by your own admission you are not mentally advanced (mentally retarded).

You are exactly like fm in that you use terms in a biased way which results in you being able to preen and to label others pejoritively.

I suppose you have a definition of "mentally advanced" which applies to you and one of "mental retardation" which applies to those you disagree with on whatever topic happens to come up.

You don't seem remotely mentally advanced to me rl. I don't think I have read anything you have written that I haven't heard in a pub a few hundred times.

I am not perfect but I do realize that I have been influenced by my environment and that if my environment were different my understanding of many things would be different as well.
I might have a different God, values, friends, language and the list goes on indefinite. There are many different degrees of this situation.
Understanding this helps you to know that your environment dictates to you everything you think is true, but it does not mean that it is true!
Why should I impose my will on your personal life if my understanding of reality is wrong in many areas?




Not exactly but close! Spendius we are all mentally advanced and mentally retarded in some areas when compared to other people.
You are more mentally advanced than a 2 year old!
We are all different to a degree in our abilities.

When I use the words mentally retarded I do not direct them at a person but rather at a situation or a type of group thinking because I am not trying to put individual people down.
Retarded and advanced are words that are used to describe the position of something in relation to [0 ] which can represent many different things.
Retarded and advanced are words used as a position of measurement which is used in understanding the mechanics of many different subjects.




Are you saying that you hang out with allot of retarded old blokes?

Which pub's that then?

Dozens of them. When I think about it a bit it might be in the low hundreds. I hadn't realised just how many pubs I have been in, including clubs, until just then. I don't mean on pub crawls. They are an affectation.

But pubs in which I had conversations of the sort rl was beaming down on me. You wouldn't believe how many people find it ridiculous that a talking serpent tempted our Great Mother into sinning without realising how ridiculous it is to find such a tale ridiculous. As if She needed tempting. She was born with a snake in both of her fists. Dylan said so. While a hurricane was blowin'.

rl is addressing me as if I am one of those who believe an actual talking snake, which was the Devil in disguise, talked Her Ladyship into getting the better of that sap Adam. The urge that drove Adam to petition God to provide him with a softer landing was the exact same urge that drives us into pubs.

So rl is insulting me when he trots out that stuff. He's just as bad as fm. He finds the sitting duck, pots it, and thinks he has potted me. What a berk eh? He thinks he has discovered a serious error in the logical reasoning in the Bible. And that he should impart the great discovery to us all. Just as I have heard many others do.

If the snake takes the blame it saves us from blaming Eve. Which is most impolite. It implies that Her nature is to tempt men into sinning. And we don't want to get into that now do we?

Now that I have relocated I have a choice of pubs.

Spendius I do not think that you believe many of the stories are literal but instead you find your own meaning to them and seem to call it an empirical understanding of how society should live!
I do not fault you for that nor do I call you stupid, I just do not agree with it! How would you like it if the majority of your community thought like me and voted the way I do and we imposed our beliefs on you and told you that you could not do certain things in your own home?

That would depend on what you told me not to do. What would you tell me not to do? I can't be expected to answer hypothetical questions like that.

And if you can tell me what not to do how would you enforce my not doing it. How would you make me feel that the thing was wrong rather than just your man-made rules as people must feel that abortion is wrong to hide the non-abstract side of it away in secret corners as they do.

If I feel something to be wrong I wouldn't do it in my own home anyway. How would you make me feel that something I hadn't to do was wrong because if I didn't feel it was wrong I would do it when you and your mob were not looking. You would need surveillance cameras in everybody's rooms.

I stopped going to pubs a lot when I got married, nothing to do with female pressure though. I met my wife down the pub. it's just that yopur focus shifts to the home. Now I've got the kids to look after. I was contemplating going out to catch the match later, but they want to see the Harry Potter film. Hooray for BBC Radio Solent.

Female pressure works by insidious routes as well as on a one-to-one basis.

I was at a stag party once and an elderly doctor advised the sacrificial lamb to continue going out every night. If he had no money he should sit on a park bench for a couple of hours. Once you stay in for a few nights you get that "where you going?" routine and ignoring that causes the hump in the bedclothes.

To save sitting on a park bench in the cold rain it is necessary to work harder. Money saved by stopping in is spent anyway and on things which are taxed at a lower rate than beer is and thus the NHS is harder to fund. And it is spent on more polluting products. A lot of the water in beer is returned to the system for re-use which is why so many people prefer to live on the top of the watershed.

From Southampton the serried bladders rise up to Wiltshire way.

I'm sorry, I don't recall permitting you to ever speak on my behalf? It IS absurd that the teaching of scientific fact in schools is being battled in public secular schools by such an idiotic philosophy called fundamentalist creationism.

I have never once, my dear, spoken on your behalf, or even attempted to do, in my entire life. Nor would I under any circumstances. Neither would I anticipate you permitting me to do so. If anything I have said has caused you to believe that I have committed the offence to which you refer I sincerely apologise and assure you that it was accidental.

For my own part I think schools, as they are constituted today, are absurd and so I am not particularly exercised about any of the minor absurdities which take place within them on a continuous basis.

I cannot comment on such an ambiguous expression as "fundamentalist creationism". If I was in my prime, which sadly is no longer the case, I would offer to come round to your place and show you just how absurd such a concept might be if it was stretched a little as philosophers are wont to do with any concept.

But welcome to A2K. With a username like the one you have chosen I'm sure you will be very popular.

Rick Perry is running for the White House with heaps of dough and a fair wind from the Flyover states and the superstitious IDjits in the south.

What do anti-IDers think of that?

I expect he will put on a good show.

There's nothing wrong with the show. Unfortunately that's not all it is.

Unfortunately it might well be all there is.

Spendi, you received a personal response from the author of an essay I posted:

http://able2know.org/topic/121621-539#post-4588256

Your response to her essay:
http://able2know.org/topic/121621-539#post-4588810

She registered with Able2Know to respond to your comment:
http://able2know.org/topic/121621-587#post-4693602

To which I have responded.

How can a debate of the magnitude of this one be called "absurd"?