Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

@Lightwizard,

Lightwizard wrote:

If ID is going to stick, it has to quit with the conspiracy theory with no facts to back it up. It also has to be rational and logical to the facts of how the Earth was formed, how life came to be and stop with their fake illusion which is beneath the dignity of even the worst stage magician.

I agree, if all ID has going for it is to blatantly ignore the accumulated scientific knowledge of centuries of civilization, then it can only hope to fool a small segment of the population for any decent period of time.

But if ID were to be rational and logical to the facts of how the Earth was formed, then it would begin to be real science and would self destruct under the weight of its own irrational assumptions.

Either way it's a dead-end proposition. It doesn't benefit religion or science. It's moronic religion as well as moronic science.

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@rosborne979,

They're beating the staticism drum now in order to fool, well, other fools. Quoting out-of-context sections of old texts by anthropologists who were speculating on macro-evolution. They're no displaying staticism at all, but sciolism.

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These last five mutually stroking anti-creat posts are all posited on a version of the Hidden Prince idea. That there is inside every nutcase a "good" person struggling to get out and being held in by a conspiracy of evil shamans of one sort or another. This Hidden Prince person is held to be more genuine and more identical with our real selves than the regrettable outer shell and, it hardly needs to be said, very much like the anti-creats who have posted the aforesaid drivel. It is a seeker after the naked truth in all its inexorable and determined glory and perceives the realities without fear or prejudgment. (Except when it is inconvenient of course. As it often is.)

Hence there is no need for any perplexity regarding morality because morality is that which is in the interest of this hidden "good" self and not something imposed upon it from outside. It is "liberation", "inner fulfillment", the most "selfly self". Absolutely. The loose canon.

It likes to identify itself, obviously, with long-since vanished "reason" and such like "objective" formuli. Such words in that genre carry social cachet or at least they do when not examined critically as miltant proponents of critical analysis are usually loathe to do.

Inclinations, animal sensuality, impulses and other base aspects of our biological heritage are mere obstacles to the emergence of our shy Prince. And shy he is as we have seen when Mum's apron is utilised in the shape of the Ignore feature.

On the other hand there has been a certain vogue, as in de Sade and D.H. Lawrence, for the very opposite identification in which our Hidden Prince is a noble savage with deep, dark and authentic instinctual urges fighting the cold abstractions of "reason". Often in court rooms where the advice of Polonius- "to thine own self be true" comes up against the frosty formalities of the law.

"And how can I be sure you will turn into a handsome Prince if I kiss you? the Princess ought to have asked the giant toad. It's a reasonable question.

The psychiatrist assumes there is a Hidden Prince. It's a cash cow.

But this "true self" is identified from reasons based on the reason's idea of knowledge and what reason is. It is circular. It is the chap with big feet again who we keep meeting on here telling us once again that he takes a large shoe size. Any other parts of the self are set aside. They are not available in the identifications. They have been imposed from outside and are thus beyond responsibility. Only rationality is available for this identification of the self.
Selfish rationality.

Obviously we get a world without conflict and Darwinian theory goes up the pipe. It is the conflict of inclinations, instinctual urges and impulses which decide which features are best adapted isn't it? Reality goes up the pipe too. We are forced to be free of our animality and confined to cerebration. All integrated and jolly nice anti-creats and in harmony with each other like a bunch of lower-middle-class women at a "meet the neighbours" coffee morning complimenting each other on the frocks and hairstyles. Life conceived as an exhibition of, and attestation to, a set of rules as described by Franz Kafka.

(Reaches in pocket for onion and picks up violin.)

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One can dress up the fiddler in a tux, but he'll still play the same tired old tune.

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How do you knock the wind out of the long-winded troll? You trick him into taking an Ex-Lax and all the mind-farts end up in the toilet.

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@Lightwizard,

No answers eh LW. Just a wisecrack. What's new eh? It's anti-creat's posts which play the same tune.

Was my last post over your head?

It is very well known, so much so that I'm a trifle embarrassed to say it, that Science is value free and does not pass judgments on such things. An overt value-judgment would be a blatant contradiction of the most important and, so it is asserted, most cherished "belief" of scientific doctrinaires.

If those speaking in the name of Science, usually self-appointed dimwits who know nothing about the subject, wish to smuggle in a value judgment, which they really didn't ought to do because it insults the intelligence of their audience, they use the clinical language of science or a few key buzzwords they have rote learned which they think impresses hoi polloi, to attack its opposite so then it seems, to someone not paying much attention, which is understandable, that no normative value has been assumed. Which is false. A value has been peddled.

But one only has to peruse these threads for a short while to see that anti-creats are impatient, not to say unskilful, with such sneaky tricks a good deal of the time and regularly, against the very basic principle of Science, resort to the crudest and crassest value judgments one will ever come across outside of a slag's shouting match in the pub. All along these threads. Non stop. No end in sight.

I did not say that anti-creats have not got a scientific bone in their bodies without the evidence being overwhelming.

Disinterest is a key ingredient of a true scientific personality and anti-creats display partial and prejudiced interest like a peacock displays its tail when it has the horn. They are condemned out of their own fingerends. 24/7/52/80 odd. They self-evidently know no better.

Why they are so prejudiced is a fairly open question but it will be related to the "selfly self" in some way and likely to do with either sex and/or money. It can't have anything to do with science.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

Sorry for the late reply, but thanks for that humorous tidbit! I wish I could have been at that meeting!

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@spendius,

Oh, you poor silly Spendi. You still think that advocacy is contradictory to being a scientist. How quaint and boring after the 44th time of seeing you spout that nonsense and run away when it's pointed out.

Make your own thread for this crap or admit your cowardice.

1 Reply

@Shirakawasuna,

It seems, on the evidence, that you have an obsession with accusations of cowardice. I presume this is in the service of broadly hinting that you yourself are a courageous person which is hardly a conclusion any sensible A2Ker could come to after reading your incoherent, uneducated and infantile blurts from your safe ego cocoon on a thread where you know in advance that I am not only on my own, like Horatio on the bridge holding back a mob of heathens, and where I have resisted numerous invitations, often couched in vituperative invective, to run away.

In actual fact you have been run away from the thread for a considerable period of time during which I have fought the good fight, single-handedly and unrelentingly and without fear of the anti-creat claque the bullying numbers of which you are hiding in and which slings sticks and stones of insult my way to the extent that they have scared off, apart from gunga and occasionally Francis, any supporters I may have.

I am well aware that the concept of the disinterested scientist, the alien visitor, is an ideal type. A myth even. But it is a myth which has, at the least, the virtue of giving expression to the need for such an ideal. To retain in mind the myth is necessary to reduce the effect of the subjective plague. I fully accept that the subjective plague is the condition in which we live but to lose sight of the myth of the alien visitor is to condemn us to confusion and to the subjectivities of the powerful.

There is nothing "quaint" about it. It has been the long-time, fundamental scientific project to counter the errors of the subjective plague. Its failings only serve to remind us to keep it ever in our minds.

As with all ideal types, the pure form is impossible in human affairs. One cannot even distill water enough to remove all contamination. We are involved in a world as a predicament rather than a spectacle. Our scientific attempt to free us from the predicament will never succeed if a bunch of wimps reject this myth of the disinterested scientist.

We are all located in the predicament of our language from which it is impossible to escape in much the same way that psychologists say we are located inescapably in the predicament of our infantile sexuality. Your posts demonstrate that sufficiently.

We can only view the world through the system of linguistic concepts and sensibilities (Sense and Sensibility) conditioned in early life. While no scientist can throw off this conditioning it is incumbent upon him to try even though he knows it to be an impossible and even a dangerous task. There is no sense than any anti-creats on here have ever dared to take the risk and least of all yourself as you seek solace in numbers and crude insults.

But it is a mistake to reject the myth.

If we reject it as an absurdity, as the alien visitor is, and as you do, there is no reason to reject any aspect of the subjective plague and then there is no escape from the confusion generated by the multiplicity of subjective power sources, which is a feature of a democratic system and especially ones with high rates of relationship breakdown, and each of these power sources will employ slick wordsmiths to retail its subjectivities in as plausible a fashion as they can manage. Haute Bullshit so to speak.

What is cowardly is the resigned and supine prostration before the confusion and the endless variations of unco-ordinated ethical principles which can, and are, constantly invoked and counter invoked to approve or condemn anything anybody wishes and from which they can choose as suits their clothing in a subjectivity orgy, and which logically outcomes in a resigned, yellow jellybaby acceptance of anarchy for its own sake, or to hide behind, and possibly leading to financial meltdown, and where any self-indulgent selections are merely little bits of the confusion pulled out like rabbits from a hat, accompanied by a wan and sheepish apology that "every case should be judged on its own merits".

It is the armchair revolutionary position. Not a shred of fight. No real strategy. Just sitting there, safe and sound, with a silly revolution in its head the principle characteristic of which is whatever it wants, like a baby, to suit this or that subjectivity which it happens to be thinking about at the time.

The real revolutionary would have no truck with such a powder-puff, playtime, piece of piss-in-the-panties, puff-ball poltoonery.

1 Reply

TEXAS UPDATE

Quote:

Board of Education evolves into sideshow
(By LISA FALKENBERG, Houston Chronicle, March 24, 2009)

Ever seen a cat-dog? Of course not! That just proves it’s impossible for one species to evolve into another.

The human brain seems not to have changed since homo sapiens first appeared 150,000 years ago. That means evolution is false.

We don’t have every bone, so the fossil record undercuts the theory of evolution.

A few scientists have fudged proof of evolution, so that calls into question all the other evidence.

These are the brilliant observations and insinuations of a particularly dangerous right-wing fringe group: the seven-member social conservative bloc of the State Board of Education. (The cat-dog example, if you must know, is the brainchild of Ken Mercer, R-San Antonio, who seems to be incapable of understanding that it takes millions, if not billions of years for so-called macro-evolution to occur.)

If the Legislature is the circus, the Board of Education is the sideshow. And this week, they’re back in town.

The event in Austin would be laughable if the stakes weren’t so high.

The 15 board members hold in their hands the future of science curriculum in Texas public schools for the next decade. This week, after what promises to be another intense round of debate, they’ll cast final votes on how to teach evolution.

Their decision has national implications as well since curriculum changes could make it into textbooks tailored for the massive Texas market and sold across the country.

In January, creationists on the board tentatively failed by one vote to keep a requirement that teachers present the strengths and so-called “weaknesses” of Darwin’s 150-year-old theory of evolution. This week, they’ll try to restore the language, which is the latest subtle weapon of creationists and subscribers to the religion-based theory of Intelligent Design.

The effort to retain the “weaknesses” language, which ignored the advice of a board-selected panel of experts, failed last time thanks to four swing voters. They included one Democrat, Rick Agosto of San Antonio, who often votes with social conservatives, and three brave Republicans, Bob Craig of Lubbock, Patricia Hardy of Fort Worth and Geraldine Miller of Dallas.

Apparently, this group actually did their homework, listened to the experts, and sided with science over ideology. But they’ve paid a price. Agosto risks falling out of favor with board officers. And the Republicans have had everything from their party loyalty to their faith in God questioned as a result of their vote.

And just in case there was ever any doubt that this debate was essentially about politics, even the Texas Republican Party has weighed in on the issue. GOP leaders passed a resolution urging the board to overturn its decision to get rid of the “weaknesses” language.

The conservative bloc also will try and keep two amendments hastily presented and approved in January that cast doubt on the fossil record and a basic tenant of Darwin’s theory: common descent.

Board Chairman and ardent Darwin-denier Don McLeroy, R-Bryan, pushed through one of the amendments after reading aloud a long list of quotes attempting to cast doubt on evolution from reputable science publications and authoritative books by revered scientists. McLeroy never directly claimed that he culled the quotes himself. But as he held up the books he was quoting from, and talked about checking out volumes on evolution at his local library, I certainly got the impression he’d done his own research.

But blogger and Kansas biology teacher, Jeremy Mohn, revealed McLeroy’s bad clip job in his extensive blog posting, “Collapse of a Texas Quote Mine.” Mohn also provided the context and authors’ explanations lacking in McLeroy’s quote list.

Mohn discovered McLeroy had lifted much of the research from another creationist blog. McLeroy’s quotes were in virtually the same order, and he repeated a page number error.

McLeroy acknowledged to me that he had copied some of the research from the creationist site because he liked “the format,” although he said he had indeed read one of the books. He added: “A lot of the quotes I did get on my own.”

Yet another fine testament to the level of scholarship that goes on at the State Board of Education.

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@wandeljw,

McElroy didn't read "one of the books" -- he's just as much a liar as all the cut-and-paste jackasses from creationists conspiracy theory sites. Sciolism is a communicable disease in that Bored of Education.

1 Reply

@wandeljw,

wandeljw wrote:

TEXAS UPDATE

Quote:
Board of Education evolves into sideshow
(By LISA FALKENBERG, Houston Chronicle, March 24, 2009)

The event in Austin would be laughable if the stakes weren’t so high.

The 15 board members hold in their hands the future of science curriculum in Texas public schools for the next decade.

I wonder what would happen if the resulting textbooks were selected, published, distributed and then deemed to be unconstitutional because of their content.

I'm guessing that the textbook publishers will not explicitly mention ID in their books, but will instead water down the details of evolutionary theory, simply resulting in an inadequate presentation of the subject material to students.

I guess it they're not careful how they write the textbooks there might be a big recall of books. They probably wouldn't be happy about that.

1 Reply

@Lightwizard,

"A few scientists have fudged proof of evolution, so that calls into question all the other evidence."

The only ones "fudging" the proof are the creationuts and it's with profound bitterness.

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@rosborne979,

I see a recall in their future, a gigantic embarrassment and a self-inflicted gaping wound to their cause that will never heal.

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@wandeljw,

Rather a fine testament to the American educational system more like wande and to its miraculous contribution to the flowering of a superpower. I cannot explain that because it is just another irreducible complexity.

Like here, I imagine very few votes will be cast on the issues herein. The political content of the board with be determined by the "It's the economy, stupid" principle and that leads quite straightforwardly to the proposition that it is the incumbent party's handling of the economic crisis which is the real decision maker in what the kids are taught. The fossil record and evolution theory are mere excuses for grandstanding and for the taking of notes to be reproduced in the spaces between the advertising. With a modicum of luck they can also get into a court-room and provide even more excuses for even more expensive procedures to accompany, but at a higher pitch, the procedures just mentioned.

But it was refreshing that Mr McLeroy was not referred to as a dentist in much the same way that people often refer to greengrocers or assistant librarians to try to suggest a derogatory aspect to the person concerned and which is an authentic hallmark of intellectual bankruptcy when coupled with a fine sense of deluded superiority.

Assuming they don't have toothache or are making a Vegan soup or have an assistant librarian across the beer crates round the back of the pub.

Obviously.

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@Lightwizard,

Lightwizard wrote:

I see a recall in their future, a gigantic embarrassment and a self-inflicted gaping wound to their cause that will never heal.

The Dover trial exposed ID as just another form of Creationism specifically intended to create a wedge into public science education. The same line of logic followed by the Dover trial will also expose "Teach the Controversy" and "Academic Freedom" as wedges for religious incursion into public education.

The Dover trial sets a virtually insurmountable president, especially in light of the harsh criticism leveled against ID by the Judge. Anyone who finds themselves in court for this again is going to have to explain why they aren't being "Breathtakingly Inane", and as we all know, they can't win that battle because they ARE being breathtakingly inane. The court ferreted that fact out the last time and they'll ferret it out again (probably without even changing their ferret). "Breathtaking Inanity" is a very hard phrase to disassociate yourself from once you've been branded with it. The Creationists and ID'ers can ignore it just like they do all the other facts of life, but they're just going to dig themselves deeper into their own grave if they keep pushing this. Eventually they're going to self destruct in a fit of irrational denial and find themselves on the same "ignore" shelf with the flat-earthers and UFO conspiracy hacks.

I have a hard time imagining what can be written into textbooks that won't get snagged on the tripwires left by the Dover trial.

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@spendius,

spendius wrote:

The psychiatrist assumes there is a Hidden Prince. It's a cash cow.

funny, that.. it's exactly how i feel about christianity.

and as usual, here we have religious zealots running around shrilling that "it's only fair to teach creationism alongside evolution in the science class". but not one of them is willing to give honest lectures on evolution in church on sunday.

wonder why? in the interest of fairness, that is ..

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@rosborne979,

Are the DI creationuts going to try and sneak a donation of "Of Pandas and People" into Texas classrooms? When the teachers at Dover first opened a box of the books, they all but puked on them. That's what the odor of garbage publishing can do -- cause nausea and cold chills. "Breathtakingly inane" was actually being kind.

1 Reply

@DontTreadOnMe,

DTOM, That's like asking them to crucify themselves on the "cross." Their fear exceeds their logic and common sense.

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@Lightwizard,

The trial was breathtakingly inane. It was manicured so that it didn't upset anyone's delicate sensibilities. Evolution has no example of any such thing as sensibilities never mind the more delicate ones.

It was posited on the infantile notion, as are anti-creat posts on here, that you can tear institutions down without bothering about what is to replace them. As street vandals do.

To try to compare Christianity with a belief in a flat earth or in UFOs is too childish to discuss. As is a comparison with psychiatry.

One has to feel very sorry for any kids who find themselves in a classroom with idiotic suggestions of that sort being put before them with the authority of the government. And repetitively too.

2 Replies

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