RUMBLING NOISE FROM GATHERING CLOUDS
"PISSETH OFF THOU, ME NOT"
In the interest of keeping this a God/Monty Python thread, I submit the following, from "The Life of Brian". The followers have found Brian, who they think is the messiah.
Brian: I'm not the messiah.
Follower3: I say you are, lord, and I should know... I've followed a few.
Followers: Hail messiah!
Brian: I'm not the messiah, would you please listen. I'm not the messiah, do you understand? Honestly!
Folowr4: Only the true messiah denies his divinity.
Brian: What? Well what sort of chance does that give me? All right, I AM the messiah.
Followers: He IS! He IS the messiah!
--------[They prostrate themselves in front of him.]
Brian: Now f*ck off!
Follower3: How shall we f*ck off, oh lord?
Pure genius those Monty Pythoners were.
Me fella is a sound person - worked for the BBC in the seventies.
Did a lot of outdoor work - including freezing his bollocks off for a week, filming a circus.
Got back to London - had a choice between working on a nice, warm, safe soundstage on a rock and roll show (he was a muso as well) or working on ANOTHER damn circus. Chose the rock show.
A couple of months later, saw this fantastic show - first episode - you guessed it - Monty Python's Flying Circus was the "another damn circus" he knocked back work on.
He says he could still almost weep thinking of it.
Learning
from the November 23, 2004 edition
God or science?
Ninth-grade biology teachers in Dover, Pa., must include 'intelligent design' in their instruction. Observers say it is a sign of what's to come.
By Mark Sappenfield and Mary Beth McCauley
DOVER, PA. – In the boldest strike against the teaching of evolution in more than a decade, the school board of this one-stoplight farming town has tilted its textbooks against virtually the entire scientific establishment - and brought home a lesson from this month's presidential election. By mandating that ninth-grade biology teachers include "intelligent design" in their instruction, board members set a precedent last month. Never before has a school district decided to offer intelligent design, which suggests that only the action of a higher intelligence can explain the complexities of evolution. Moreover, say observers, it is a sign of what's to come.
Religious conservatives have battled against evolution theory in classrooms since the Scopes trial of 1925. Now, they are finding fresh purpose in the conservative resurgence so evident on Election Day, as well as in a new strategy of attacking evolution without mentioning God. The result is a handful of high-profile cases nationwide that challenge Darwin's place in the curriculum and presage a new offensive in America's culture war.
"We're seeing a growing number of these cases," says Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, Calif., a group that seeks to protect evolution education. "Certainly, with the greater confidence given to the religious right in the last election, we see no end in sight."
Near Atlanta, in suburban Cobb County, the local school board demanded that teachers put stickers inside the front cover of middle and high school science books. They read, in part: "Evolution is a theory, not a fact." In rural Wisconsin, the Grantsburg school board voted last month to allow teachers to discuss various theories of creation in their classrooms, opening the door to intelligent design.
Together with the decision by the Dover school board, the flare-ups point to an emerging trend - an escalating batttle against the teaching of evolution which has been building slowly for nearly two decades.
Since the United States Supreme Court in 1987 outlawed the teaching of creationism in public schools on the grounds of separation of church and state, anti-evolution activists have all but dropped divine creation and instead focused solely on discrediting Darwin.
That they are finding traction - especially in places like Dover - is not surprising.
In Pennsylvania, a state where Red and Blue teeter in an almost perfect equilibrium, Dover is clearly on the Red end of the seesaw. While Sen. John Kerry scratched out a narrow victory in Pennsylvania in the Nov. 2 election, York County - which includes Dover - gave President Bush 65 percent of its votes.
Traditionally agrarian, traditionally Republican, this is a town of small brick and clapboard houses, framed by autumnal arrangements of pumpkins and hay bales, and set amid rolling hills. It is a slice of the Midwest in the mid-Atlantic - the image of wheat-waving countryside perched on the edge of York's suburban sprawl.
And today, a text known around here simply as the "panda book" has made Dover the local stage for a national drama.
The book's full name is "Of Pandas and People," and it is the newest addition to the Dover science curriculum.
It is not mandatory reading, says district superintendent Richard Nilsen, adding: "The teachers have a [different] biology book, and when they get to the origins of life, they state that if anyone wants to look at another book, they give them the 'panda' book."
Those who take it will learn about intelligent design. Intelligent design steers clear of the claims made by creationists: that the world is roughly 6,000 years old and that life was created in its present form by God. Intelligent design accepts an ancient Earth and even embraces evolution.
But where most scientists see a series of fits and starts - evolutionary trials and failures - eventually leading to life as we know it, proponents of intelligent design see the guiding hand of some greater wisdom.
For example, natural selection is not enough to explain the "eerie perfection" of the genetic code, says John Calvert of the Intelligent Design Network, an advocacy group in Shawnee Mission, Kan. Something so flawlessly "designed" could not be the product of random actions, he says.
Proponents of intelligent design make no claim to knowing the source of this order. No scientist "can use science to get to what that intelligence is," says John West of the Discovery Institute in Seattle, which backs intelligent-design research.
But for much of middle America, it's easy enough to fill in the blank.
"The book's going to be a good resource for children and parents who try to believe in God and be religious," says John Workman, whose daughter is a sophomore at Dover High. "God should always be in the country, and in the schools."
To critics, his words provoke a collective "I told you so." Intelligent design, they say, is merely creationism in a lab coat. Dr. Scott calls it the evolution of creationism: "They're trying to find a strategy that will stand up in court, and they only have a chance if it is something as far away from religion as possible."
Yet even Scott acknowledges that Mr. Workman has hit upon something deeper - a desire among many Americans that the cold facts of science not quench the spark of faith. It is the tendency of science to say, "God had nothing to do with it," she says, and for students therefore to think, "I can't listen to what the teacher is saying or I'm sinning."
Intelligent design, it seems, would at least have science and spirit shake hands. Barbara Tubbs, for one, supports the curriculum, but only because it is optional.
"[I believe] we came from God," says Ms. Tubbs, the mother of a freshman whose class is due to study evolution - and to be offered the panda book - in January. "But I wouldn't want to push it on anybody."
Yet a fair amount of pushing might be required. Even here, intelligent design has rankled school board members. At one tumultuous meeting, a supporter of the change reportedly asked an opposing member whether she was "born again." After the plan passed, two board members resigned. In Cobb County, meanwhile, several parents have sued to make the district remove the "evolution is a theory" stickers.
For their part, scientists don't feel that they can budge. Evolution is a theory only in the scientific sense of the word - like the theory of a sun-centered solar system, they say. The fact is, in contrast to the uncertainty about evolution among average Americans, scientists are nearly unanimous in their acceptance of it.
To them, teaching anything else in classrooms as "science" is an adulteration of the word.
Moved in large part by cases like those in Pennsylvania and Georgia, National Geographic recently ran a cover story headlined: "Was Darwin Wrong?" The first page of the article answered: "No."
"Science has to be based on facts," says William Allen, editor of the magazine. "When you are talking about creationism and intelligent design, there is no scientific basis." Like many others, he agrees that a discussion of different creation theories could be suitable for social studies or comparative religion - just not science class.
And to Dover parent Holly Martz, that sounds about right. Intelligent design, she says, is "intertwined with religion," and says if it is taught, the variety of religions should be taught. " If they present all the views, that's fine."
The older I become the more convinced I am that we have not fully emerged from the Dark Ages. For all our progress in science and humanism, the masses still believe in long discredited concepts and insist on our entertaining them. No wonder tales of the future so often dwell on a bleak future in which civilization has vanished. It's a thin veneer, barely covering our animal ancestry.
Quote:For all our progress in science and humanism, the masses still believe in long discredited concepts and insist on our entertaining them.
Here's the thing, edgar. Can't we have an education system which reflects the real unresolved issues of the day? Can persons of goodwill disagree about what are valid areas of instruction? Aren't there things that are accepted and propogated as acceptable in our popular culture, and in our institutions of learning, which significant numbers of people would probably not want perpetuated? I personally still think that our schools are still a little Euro-centric, but that's just me.
Don't you know of any Theists whom you respect, and to whom you don't attribute warped motives for wanting their beliefs aired?
I would like to have both sides of things like the death penalty, Roe v. Wade, the nature vs nurture debate concerning sexual orientation, bell-curve theories about race and intelligence, and a lot of other things given equal time in our schools. I don't think the thing to do with ideas like Creationism is to banish it as somehow offensive to our intelligence, or somehow beneath sentient humans. In point of fact, some very learned and quite sane people find no conflict between evolution and creation - they put forth a theory which has both of them contributing to our existence.
All too many want to make the Earth 6,000 years old and force mythology on us. These are the ones I mainly complain about on this thread, though my lament actually is meant to cover many other fields of endeavor beyond religion.
snood
Teach it or rather discuss it in courses of comparative religions or philosophy if you must. Not as a subject for a science class. It in no way can be construed as science.
I agree with Au that these issues are better dealt with in a comparative religion or philosophy class. I would add that classes like these are conducted on the college, not the high school level.
The problem is that we're still talking about this as if it is even debatable whether creationism will appear on high school curricula. That isn't in question - it's going to be there. We can discuss context and presentation, but it's going to be there.
It won't remain there if persons such as myself can do something about that, Snood. I don't intend this statement as an attack on one's right to believe, just on the imposition on education it presents.
For myself, I would be equally bothered if either Creationists or Evolutionists were successful in muzzling the other side. I don't think today's students are so weakminded that introduction of both would do anything but broaden knowledge.
After all, even if you think radical Islam, for example, is a dangerous and evil idology, don't you think we should learn as much of it as we can, to at least understand the mindset?
Just hypothesizin'
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR POLL
Should 'intelligent design' be a part of the science curriculum in US public schools?
No. Anything other than Darwin's theory of evolution has no place in a science classroom. 50.61 % (1621)
Yes. Students should be exposed to the theory that a higher power may have created life. 49.39 % (1582)
Total votes: 3203
Related story: God or science?
Good to see ya Snood . . . long time.
I think that your analogy to Islam falls down, because understanding Islam or Christianity or Judaism or Animism, or any other spiritual "ism" would be a study in comparative religions. All the component disciplines have in common that they are organized religious doctrines.
Evolution is a scientific theory, subject to testing, demonstration and modification. "Creationism" is a belief set, not subject to testing, not to be questioned and never to to be doubted by the adherents of the dogma. Apples to oranges . . .
Fredreich Willhelm Holzem von Floppen- Invented the bra
Glad to see ya back on the boards set.
The issues concerning Intell design or "teaching the Controversy" in science is the latest attempt to put a lab coat on Fundamental Christian Teaching.
In Wisconsin the lines are already drawn and its goin to court, they just need a venue.
In Pa, there is already a state statute regarding "not teaching alternative theories of the rise of life on Earth" -solely based on whether that "alternative hypothesis can stand up to testing via discovery and the scientific method. A number of organizations are willing to take this on as a case before the PA Superior Court.
Just when I was thinking that this winter was gonna be cold and dreary, up comes the ice cream man.
I guess you notice that Im a bit biased in this matter.
If standing by science in our educational institutions is being biased I am one too, farmerman.
I thought Otto Titsling invented the bra?
It wasn't Vincent Von Knockerblocker?
What I fail to understand is why schools have to be the site of religious practice. There are churches and homes for prayer and teaching religious doctrine. But that's not enough for some folks, I guess.
I can't help but think that the Creationism movement (or Intelligent Design) is part of a crusade (and I mean that word) to Christianize the schools. And I find that appalling...
