Why do people deny evolution?

we're clear now!





http://www.codyenterprise.com/news/people/article_7bb6b8d8-e270-11e2-9e6b-001a4bcf887a.html


EXACTLY what I am saying all the time. evolutionbelief IS A RELIGION!

Well, the whole of science really is!



those people who believe in evolution without any evidence are bloody mad in my eyes.

Evodelusion is indeed a much better and appropriate word!!!

says it all!

"Ignore" the troll and it will go away.

Nope, there is only one way:

Show E V I D E N C E !!!







man o man.

It's absolutely illogical for evolutionists to think that beautiful creatures such as this happened by random chance..

Of course it didn't, you can tell she's had her tits done.

First of all, you question implies a lack of understanding of human psychology, which is typical of our educational systems. The mind is only functional to the degree that principles of language are functionally resident in a mind. If you live at an evolutionary time of a species that has not yet discovered the principles of language, then every mind is probably dysfunctional to some degree. I has to be. Despite the dysfunction, the mind will paste things together as best as it can because its function is to maintain and promote the life of the body. To do its job, it will not let unneeded facts get in the way.

In Texas Textbooks, Moses Is a Founding Father

The Texas State Board of Education is studying how textbook publishers responded to the state’s ideologically driven guidelines for teaching history. The results, say historians, are dire.
Four years ago, the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) adopted new standards, known as TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills), for social studies textbooks in the state’s schools. The process ignited an international media storm. When it was done, even the explicitly conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute gave TEKS a D, on the grounds that it amounted to political and cultural indoctrination, a dash of mindless inclusivity, and brute memorization.

Now the SBOE is considering what textbook publishers have produced in response to the TEKS requirements. As a result, how students learn history in the Lone Star State is back in the news.

In June, in response to the Fordham Institute’s criticisms and to the incoherent, ideologically-driven TEKS requirements, the Texas Freedom Network, a nonpartisan watchdog organization, commissioned three Ph.D. scholars, including myself, and seven University of Texas doctoral students to study the special Texas editions of 43 social-studies online texts proposed for middle and high school adoption. After a summer of painstaking work, our analysis was released by TFN on September 10, and since then the story has gotten legs. We agreed on two big points. First, most of the publishers had tried hard to deal with the situation that TEKS presented. Second, however, dealing with TEKS at all means distortion, or worse.

The stakes are high: A Texas state adoption of a textbook means a very lucrative sale. In the case of print editions, that can mean sales outside of Texas, though electronic texts mean that what Texas wants presents less of a problem elsewhere than it used to do. Almost all the publishers submitted electronic editions crafted for Texas specifically. But even just the Lone Star market is enormous.

Critics ranging from the Fordham Institute to this writer have noted that one of the problems is the hodgepodge way that SBOE assembled the TEKS standards, without regard to either intellectual coherence or historical accuracy. In some instances, the problem is sins of omission. Thus in seventh-grade Texas history, in eighth- and 11-grade United States history, and 10-grade world history, what TEKS requires simply does not show Native and African-Americans as among history’s makers. They remain mere victims and/or outsiders.

But the investigators commissioned by the TFN also found that outright ideological agendas were at work. That problem became apparent when SBOE took public testimony on September 16.

The issue that attracted the most attention revolved around the intellectual influences the Framers felt when they crafted the United States Constitution. The new curriculum standards require students to learn about the supposed influence of individuals such as Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, William Blackstone, and even Moses on 18th-century republican thought and the American founding.

The problem began when the SBOE evicted Enlightenment thinkers from the World History standards and substituted a list that included Moses, Aquinas, Calvin, and Blackstone. Figures from that grab-bag list also made their way into the requirements for United States history and government. Never mind that Aquinas and Calvin were theologians, or that Blackstone believed all societies should require some form of absolute, unchallengeable sovereign power. The real issue turned out to be Moses.

The Texas State Board of Education wanted nothing to do with professors.
Careful analyst by Justine Esta Ellis (a scholar who was not part of the TFN group) finds the strategy of starting with Moses is aimed at presenting the United States as a unique “redeemer nation,” predestined among all others to act out God’s will. Arch-conservative David Barton, who has no historian’s credentials but who nonetheless has had a huge impact on TEKS, maintains that verse after verse from the Bible is quoted “verbatim” in the Constitution. Checking Scripture demonstrates quickly that this is just not so. The language and the ideas do not match. Any professor of history teaches history majors not to make that kind of mistake.

But the State Board of Education wanted nothing to do with professors. More than a dozen from Texas colleges and universities volunteered to take part in reviewing texts this past summer. Almost all were turned down.

One of those historians, my colleague and former Southern Methodist University department chair Kathleen Wellman, testified at the SBOE public hearing this month. She told the SBOE that the effect of the TEKS requirement to find biblical origins for the Constitution would be to make Moses the “first American.” Some historians give that honor to Benjamin Franklin. Whoever might merit it, Moses definitely does not qualify.

The truly sad thing about the TEKS approach is that it misses the real creativity of the men who gathered at Philadelphia and wrote the Constitution. Some were Christian; some were not. Almost all of them agreed with James Madison.


“It is not pretended,” Madison wrote in April 1787, that professed religion could provide a “sufficient restraint” on individuals bent on doing wrong. He knew as well that “kindled into enthusiasm … by the sympathy of a multitude,” or even in “its coolest state,” religion can just as readily become “a motive to oppression as … a restraint from injustice.”

Madison knew directly how colonial-era Anglicans had persecuted Baptists. He had read about Europe’s post-Reformation wars of religion. Nobody who knows the tragic history of 20th century Ireland, let alone the Middle East now, could disagree with his judgment then.

Whether the Framers were ardent evangelicals, cool Episcopalians and “Old Lights,” or outright doubters, they accepted Madison’s point. They had wrestled with the problem of political religion in the original state constitutions after independence. Their answer on the national level was to exclude religion altogether from the Constitution and from national politics.

Some of the founding states did retain special religious privileges for a time, particularly Massachusetts and Connecticut. Jefferson coined his famous metaphor of a “wall of separation” between church and state in response to an appeal from Connecticut Baptists, who still were suffering legal disabilities in 1809. They knew how he and their fellow Baptists had collaborated to bring about Virginia’s Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786.

The Framers were not hostile to religion; this was not the French Revolution. But they were embarking on a path that hardly anybody had tried to trace until then, realizing both that religion needed to be kept safe from the state and that the state had to be kept safe from militant, sectarian religion. To miss that point is to miss just one of the many dimensions in which they truly were breaking new ground. It is to miss how creative and fresh and daring the Framers’ thinking was.

The SBOE wants Texas students to learn about “American exceptionalism.” It’s a shame that in this case, as in many others, what they insist be taught denies the students the chance to understand what is truly exceptional about the course of American histo

isn't what you think it is! What I mean is that the official story is very very wrong!

The official story is here to hide the real story.

That's just too bizarre, if it were not documented, people would think the entire story was made up. The author, though, missed an important point in the formation of the ideas toward religion among early Americans--the English civil wars. Three civil wars were fought in England between the King (either Charles I, who was executed by Parliament in 1649, or his son, Charles II) in the period 1642-51. Many fled England for the North American colonies--some returned to England to fight, although far fewer than those who came to escape the wars. About 85,000 soldiers were killed outright or died of wounds--more than twice as many as the entire population of English North America in that period. The Long Parliament, as it was known, relied more and more heavily on "dissenters," members of religious sects other than Anglicans and Puritans (technically, almost all Puritans were considered to be members of the Church of England). The dreaded and reviled Baptists even took part on the side of Parliament. After the end of the wars, Oliver Cromwell was effectively the "strong man" of England (the phrase in use at the time was "our Chief of Men"), and he soon took the office of Lord Protector--effectively a monarch in all but name.

He died in 1653, and in 1660, Charles and James Stewart returned to England with the acquiescence of George Monck, who commanded the Parliamentary Guard, and now had marched south from their base in Coldstream to London--it was the only organized military force in England at the time. Parliament was now supreme. In 1673, they passed the first Test Act (there were several later versions) which was intended to assure that no one but members of the Church of England would serve in government or the military. In particular, it was intended to exclude Catholics and non-conformists--those same dissenters whose courage and devotion had won the civil wars for Parliament. It was probably passed with James Stuart in mind--it was an open "secret" that he was actually a Catholic. Later on, another act was passed called the Occasional Conformity Act to prevent people from attending a few Anglican services in order to qualify for government office.

The first two clauses of the first amendment to the constitution read: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . : These are obvious responses to the abuses of the established church in England both before and after the civil wars. Article IV, paragraph 3 of the constitution reads: "The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." That is an obvious response to the Test Acts and the Occasional Conformity Act.

In my never humble opinion, the aversion toward meddling in religion in the American constitution is a direct response to the causes and results of the English civil wars, more than any other factor.

Once again. Love your history lessons.

Thanks, Boss. To me, some things about history are, or ought to be obvious to anyone claiming to be an historian or a student of history. I was truly amazed that the author of the piece EB posted did not mention that crucial passage in the history of England and of the North American colonies.

EDIT: I just saw an error in my discursus--Oliver Cromwell died in 1658, not 1653.

But where is the proof??!!!

Would you mind confirming that Guido Fawkes was one of the conspirators who tried to blow up the houses of parliament, and not a pilgrim father? There is at least one poster who is confused on the issue.

I suspect that there are many more than one, but, yes, of course, i have a penny for the old Guy.

From the much abused and belabored Wikipedia:

You're right, but there was another (perhaps consequent) factor as well. Most of the 13 colonies themselves had established & forbidden religions in their founding doctrines and laws, each different from the others, Rhode Island was founded as an offshoot of Massachusetts based on a sectarian religious dispute. Only Pennsylvania and Maryland explicitly provided for fairly general religious toleration, though the enforcement of sectarian religious laws generally declined over the course of the late 17th century and beyond.

The colonies had their own legacy of religious intolerance to overcome, and keeping the new central government they were creating out of the matter was a necessary step for their unification.

Indeed, as originally interpreted, the constitution bound the Federal government, but not the states, unless explicitly stated (as in Article IV, paragraph 3, quoted above). Thus, in 1802, when the Danbury, Connecticut Baptists wrote to Jefferson about their treatment by the Congregational establishment, that old phony and typical, flannel-mouthed politician came up with fine phrases, including "wall of separation between church and state" but didn't actually do anything for them, because he couldn't. I suspect Washington would have sent them a brief note along the lines of "Sorry, my hands are tied." Another big phony of the American historical myth is Thoreau. They love to tell school kids about how he went to jail for his opposition to the Mexican War. Thoreau didn't own anything, and didn't buy anything for himself, so he wasn't paying any taxes. In fact, in New England, opposition of the war was a commonplace. Thoreau was almost jailed, but it was for not paying his church tax. Massachusetts had a Congregationalist establishment. He did not, in fact, go to jail. A well-wisher paid the church tax for him.

Pa changed radically n the early and mid 1700's as Thomas Penn was the absentee landliord. He attempted to lay out 6 of the 8 new cities as Anglican (Episcopalian) centers of preference. The religious tolerance that Daddy William had so believed in, became the centers of several religious scuffles in nascent towns like Carlisle, Reading, York, etc. That's mostly why the later Pa cities have easy English root names rather than the more "peacebale Kingdom" names like Phildelphia, Turks Head, Schuylkill Haven, Boothwynn, Media, PAoli, or Renovo.

The architectural histories of the inner Pa towns all showed the "town square" containing a mighty Anglican Church. In most towns, since then, the squares reluctantly added the churches of the Scotch Irish immigrnts who preferred the Presbyterian discipline, or the Moravin Bretheren discipline of the incoming Germans (all the rest, with the exception of Catholics who preferred Md more, were religions of "House Worshippers", (denominations that worshipped not in any church)

I agree. Even the Maryland Act of Toleration was later repealed by a new Anglican majority, but it wasn't enforced with any energy, and the whole issue declined in importance across the colonies with the passage of time.

I believe the significant principle here involves the general superiority of local government. Authoritarian rule, from any perspective, is harder to sustain over time in local government than for one that is more remote from the people. I think that was de Toqueville's central point regarding the differences between the American revolution and the French one.

My argument with today's self styled "progressives" (who claim to know better than we what is really good for the rest of us) is their remoteness from there real action that results from their, often ill-conceived, edicts. The ineptitude of the Washington brueaucrats has been demonstrated beyond doubt. Local ones get more intense and effective feedback, and are usually the lesser evil.

Those objections about "progressives" apply equally to conservatives who attempt to impose their morality on everyone else.