Chum wrote-
Quote:Boyo, you have failed to substantiate the claim that teaching of evolution is "accidental, additional, avoidable, casual, causeless, chance, dispensable, excess, exorbitant, expendable, extraneous, extrinsic, fortuitous, futile, gratuitous, haphazard, inessential, irrelevant, lavish, needless, noncompulsory, nonessential, optional, prodigal, profuse, random, redundant, supererogatory, superfluous, surplus, uncalled-for, uncritical, undesirable, unessential, unneeded, unrequired, useless, wanton, worthless". unnecessary
1-It might be said to be accidental because it was a bit of an accident that Darwin read Malthus just at the point where his theory was stuck because up to that point he had been thinking of domesticated animals only.He had no mechanism for how nature selected until he got the struggle for existence idea out of Malthus.
It was also an accident,in a way,that FitzRoy's first choice for the job backed out and The Admiralty's first choice had a wife who looked so forlorn at the prospect that he also declined.
It is also something of an accident that the Beagle didn't suffer shipwreck or some other mishap and that Darwin didn't either.
Of course someone else may have hit upon the idea at a later date.The general notion had been floating about in Europe for some time but it was Darwin noticing changes in species as the ship journeyed south down the west coast of S America that focussed his mind.
Further,if I'm not boring you,court decisions played a part and in cases of this nature the decision is as likely to be based on political considerations as on the facts,or otherwise,of the narrow issue.
It might even be said to be an accident that this one field of science is easy to understand and,as such,attractive to the teaching profession.
It is obviously "additional" because it has been "added" to the curriculum since I went to school.
It is certainly "avoidable" and, according to a previous poster (wande I think) is indeed avoided by 35% of American science teachers.
From that is may be said to be "casual".
But it is not "causeless". Which rules out "chance" in the mundane use of that word.
"Dispensible","excess", "exhorbitant", "expendable", "extraneous", "extrinsic" and "fortuitous" are thus covered.
I think it futile for young people for many reasons most of which have been done already.
The rest of your list is covered by the above except maybe "irrelevant", "useless" and "worthless". For those, and indeed for all the rest in some degree, it depends on what sort of citizens and what sort of society is to be aimed at in teaching evolution in schools which BTW is not the same as "teaching evolution".
Which Thesaurus did you copy from?
But my opposition to teaching evolution theory is based on many other things which I have previously covered and which are more important than these minor matters.
), which can in any way compare to the boxcar sentence with twenty-nine cabooses.
