Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

That's called "freedom of religion." People are allowed to put crosses, the star of David, the Buddhist logo, or anything else of "religious" nature.

How about a few scalps?

There are crosses in all the military cemeteries including China? In India?
I see no reason to unearth them in the USA but we're slightly outnumbered by the populations of China and India. I'm not sure how they handle it an Arlington if someone is buried who is not a Christian. Do you? That's a simple question.

I know several teachers in the grades of public schools through high school -- my niece is one of them and two are close friends. They are quite well educated enough to teach evolution. My niece is qualified to teach any subject including science classes and including evolution. She is Catholic.

Good. She will know to avoid the "controversial issues" then.

So that's one classroom sorted out. How many more are there?

There's little issue in California that makes it controversial in public schools to teach evolution and not include Creationism or ID.

Ive been reading this days spendisms. I believe that spendi is laboring under the misaprehension that whatever he writes will at least be on a tee shirt someday, or will be i n BArtletts. ANswering his silly syllogisms only appears to give them respect. He is a fool who has (up to this time) displayed no knowledge of US politics, education, let alone culture wars.
He claims to be a scientist who understands the issues herein, yet he keeps dripping back onto his crutch of doctrine and .

As far as his scietific training, hes merely a liar who lives a vicarious existence through his beer mug.

I think everybody should write with that sort of thing in mind. They are being condescending otherwise. Taking the easy way out. A few of my remarks have been used as signatures on A2K and one, at least, still is being. Others have appeared in the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs and in The Spectator.

What exactly do you see wrong with such an ambition effemm? Are we all not to try so your light can shine all the brighter?



The main error there is the "appears". Answering does grant them some respect. That cannot be denied and it is a mark of somebody who can't read and write properly to qualify such a remark with a mealy-mouthed word, in this context, like "appears". Obviously, the "silly" is silly because it is a mere assertion and makes no effort to be a syllogism of any sort. The statement is also insulting to those who have answered my posts as it implies that the respect they have shown by responding to them is misguided and thus that they are fools. Which also applies to the writer of the post I am responding to now who, self evidently, has concerned himself with what I have had to say and has admitted to reading "this days spendisms" (sic) which is a mark of respect itself of some sort.

One might even argue, at not much of a stretch, that effemm's statement there is an attack on A2K itself or at least those sections of it which he doesn't approve of such as Trivia where he can't compete. It is tantamount to saying that effemm wishes to control the content of A2K and that is an attack on free speech and democracy which, I must admit, is consistent with his already well documented totalitarian outlook.



That is empty rhetoric and false and badly written to boot. The "no" is a spectacular solecism as is easily demonstrated by my question yesterday concerning the Burning Man phenomenom and my recent comments regarding the inauguration ceremony. It is also ignorant because it implies that my knowledge of American life cannot be conditioned by my knowledge of life generally and such a conclusion is asserting that Americans are inhuman aliens. One of the books I am currently studying is Sarah Pomeroy's Goddesses, Whores, Wives & Slaves and effemm's remark implies that that has no bearing, as it deals with matters before America existed, on American society today. Which is a very odd conclusion coming from a professed evolutionist which, it hardly needs saying, is the very last thing he is and viewers here will be readily led astray if they allow themselves to think otherwise.

I am also reading a beautifully produced first edition of The Exploration of North America 1630 to 1776 edited by Paul Elek, Carl Van Doren's The Great Rehearsal, The American Age by Walter LaFeber and Darwin's Origins with particular reference to Chapter VI where the great man discusses, honestly but somewhat feebly, the difficulties with his theory. I have the whole of Bob Dylan's catalogue and a raft of the voluminous literature about him and his work and one of my very favourite books is Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class. With those two at my disposal, and Larry Sloman did say that Dylan "brings the tribe the news of the hour", I predicted the financial crash four years ago and switched into gold at around $340 which is at least one decent reason to be cheerful in this weary world of woe.

At least half of my large book collection is of American origin and I try to watch any programme concerning your wonderful country which I see advertised.



That is, quite simply. incoherent. It also assumes that the "issues herein" are exclusively those which effemm determines all of which, so far, as at Dover, are irrelevant in respect of what the Texas senator called "controversial issues" and which are the only possible explanation of why these matters have been the subject of fierce debate for a century and a half.

I certainly don't recall my recourse to any "doctrines". That is another false assertion which relies on his audience being stupid which, of course, as with all totalitarian time-servers, lickspittals and lackeys, he assumes it to be.



Once again we have the A2K audience being grossly underestimated. US spending on alcohol in 2006 was $115 billion. What that remark tells me is that effemm is a reformed alcoholic who has the need to continually denigrate boozing because he had to come off it for the simple reason that he couldn't control his usage of it to moderate and socially acceptable levels. It also suggests that he is scared of pubs precisely because vicarious experiences are the very last thing they provide as real life is up front and in your face when they are in full swing for the last hour of the day which is the only time I am ever in one.

And I can write the silly old ****** off the face of the map, piss all over him and send him off howling with his tail between his legs, whilst doing handstands. Any day of the week come rain or come shine.

So put that in your pipe and smoke it dickhead.

Would you buy an educational system off this man?

Well--Geoffrey Gorer, a fine biographer of the Marquis de Sade, did say, in The Americans, that a new form of human being was being invented in California. That was in the thirties too.

I can't see how teachers and school boards with a Christian indoctrination ( monogamy, lingerie, care for the weak, table manners etc) under their topknots can avoid inculcating the essential features of ID in the minds of their little charges no matter what over-simplified bullshit they spout about fossils and blood clotting cascades in chiclids. I would imagine that their recruitment is entirely based upon their Christian outlook and etiquette.

COMPETE??? Is that what you call, thinking up alphabetically arranged words of things that you dont wish tofind in your living room? Is that really trivia?. How bout we engage in some history, or microscopic organisms, or even record lyrics that refer to specific historical events, or garden plants , . Maybe even "famous" cricket players or Victorian watercolorists, maybe thai cooking. THAT would be trivia. What you engage in is like counting license plates from different lands. Not a lot of creativity required, IMHO.

. Talk about incoherent sentences. I dont make comments on anyone elses moats when Ive got my own beams, but I really dont think you should play "editor" unless its a lame attempt at humor (like my very own self assignemnet as the "proofreader" for A2K).
By the bye, The Tejass issue is sort of dead there spendi, try to keep up. ANyway, this thread is the proprty of Wandel not me . I merely try to respect his piloting skills. You apparently havent ever learned simple manners and I believe you were one of thos babies who was always yelling"Mom look at meeee" , Cmon mom looook at meee"



Nice try, when will you begin all this excellent writing? Im anxious to see these skills in practice. I enjoy well written posts. I love to read Edgar and Joe NAtion and Endymion. Are you saying that you are a better writer than any of them? If so, Ive got some really bad news for you.
We must see these threads differently, I expect to learn and exchange ideas, many times I disagree and sometimes I get impish. You have never given a positive statement on anything . Youve never engaged any issue in the terms that the thread meister is seeking. I just consider that to be the summit of poor manners.
.
When you can compose some scientifically relevant posts on just about any of these threads you infect, please send me a memo, so Ican begin to bask in your self proclaimed "brilliance". Till then, you arent wearing any clothes your majesty.

Im glad Ive given you a Sunday PM brace spendi. My wife read your post and remarked that you have no idea how much therapy you require.

Try it then. It won't hurt.



No it isn't. And why the "sort of". That's as mealy-mouthed as that " appears". Are you not up for saying it is actually dead but wish to give the impression it is with a rhetorical trick?



I don't consider the threads as property. Monger started the prestigious and creative Acronym thread an he hasn't been seen for years. And even if a thread is property if you had "kept up" you would know that wande handed it over to me.



My Gorer, who I mentioned in my last post to LW, deals fully with the "Mom" issue in The Americans. So does Ms Pomeroy. The absent father problem. An ancient Greek and American phenomenom. And it is natural for a son to seek the approval of his parents. Have you a guilt complex about it? It isn't the first time you have harped on about it.



Everybody knows that childish trick. And this one too-





We all know what wande seeks. Is challenging it not engaging him? Or do you mean engaging him exclusivly in a manner which supports his views? That fits the general totalitarian outlook of you anti-IDers. And anyway--wande rarely has anything to say for himself as others have commented upon.

BTW- watching the football I got to wondering what a "silly syllogism" is? Could you explain? A syllogism is a discourse in which certain things having been stated, something else follows of necessity from their being so.

For example--All "a"s are "b", all "b"s are "c", therefore all "a"s are "c". They are deductively valis arguments and cannot be "silly". Imperfect syllogisms require an inference to be made in order to make clear what necessarily follows. The perfect syllogism requires two premises, as above, and a conclusion. An example of an imperfect syllogism is-- From all "b"s are "a" infer that some "a"s are "b". If you say that, say, all women are devious you might infer that deviousness is a feminine characteristic. Even when seen in biologically defined males.

Which leads me on to-



I admire her loyalty but suspect she was smoothing your ruffled feathers to avoid the risk of you kicking the furniture or that ugly dog of your's.

I will give further consideration to this last quote in my next post.

I wil also place your first paragraph on the Acronym thread so that the witty and scintillating participants therein can better appreciate your intellectual standing.

If I'm to take you seriously, that's a completely wrongheaded and ridiculous conclusion. Teachers with topknots and lingerie -- you mean male teachers? What does either of those, care for the weak or table manners, etc., have to do with the teaching of evolution? They teach from textbooks and none are available which cover evolution and creationism nor ID.

Texas is the only state with a controversial mandate and the vote dropping the references to creationism, not even under the guise of ID and that argument lost in federal courts, and the outlook looks strong that the antique provision will be taken out of the curriculum. California teachers who are given the textbooks through high school and California state colleges do not teach outside of the textbook. They make no references to creationism or ID and if any of them did, it would be nearly impossible to keep it a secret. It would end up in the news before you could shake one of your wooden legs. The Texas case is updated here in the New York Times:

In Texas, a Line in the Curriculum Revives Evolution Debate

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: January 21, 2009

AUSTIN, Tex. " The latest round in a long-running battle over how evolution should be taught in Texas schools began in earnest Wednesday as the State Board of Education heard impassioned testimony from scientists and social conservatives on revising the science curriculum.

Harry Cabluck/Associated Press

Clare Wuellner attended a hearing of the Texas Board of Education on Wednesday in Austin in support of proposed changes to the science curriculum.

Dick Neavel also attended the hearing in Texas. Legislators in six states have considered legislation requiring classrooms to be open to “views about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory.”

The debate here has far-reaching consequences; Texas is one of the nation’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are reluctant to produce different versions of the same material.

Many biologists and teachers said they feared that the board would force textbook publishers to include what skeptics see as weaknesses in Darwin’s theory to sow doubt about science and support the Biblical version of creation.

“These weaknesses that they bring forward are decades old, and they have been refuted many, many times over,” Kevin Fisher, a past president of the Science Teachers Association of Texas, said after testifying. “It’s an attempt to bring false weaknesses into the classroom in an attempt to get students to reject evolution.”

In the past, the conservatives on the education board have lacked the votes to change textbooks. This year, both sides say, the final vote, in March, is likely to be close.

Even as federal courts have banned the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in biology courses, social conservatives have gained 7 of 15 seats on the Texas board in recent years, and they enjoy the strong support of Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican.

The chairman of the board, Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist, pushed in 2003 for a more skeptical version of evolution to be presented in the state’s textbooks, but could not get a majority to vote with him. Dr. McLeroy has said he does not believe in Darwin’s theory and thinks that Earth’s appearance is a recent geologic event, thousands of years old, not 4.5 billion as scientists contend.

On the surface, the debate centers on a passage in the state’s curriculum that requires students to critique all scientific theories, exploring “the strengths and weaknesses” of each. Texas has stuck to that same standard for 20 years, having originally passed it to please religious conservatives. In practice, teachers rarely pay attention to it.

This year, however, a panel of teachers assigned to revise the curriculum proposed dropping those words, urging students instead to “analyze and evaluate scientific explanations using empirical evidence.”

Scientists and advocates for religious freedom say the battle over the curriculum is the tip of a spear. Social conservatives, the critics argue, have tried to use the “strengths and weaknesses” standard to justify exposing students to religious objections in the guise of scientific discourse.

“The phrase ‘strengths and weaknesses’ has been spread nationally as a slogan to bring creationism in through the back door,” said Eugenie C. Scott of the National Center for Science in Education, a California group that opposes watering down evolution in biology classes.

Already, legislators in six states " Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri and South Carolina " have considered legislation requiring classrooms to be open to “views about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory,” according to a petition from the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based strategic center of the intelligent-design movement.

Stephen C. Meyer, an expert on the history of science and a director at the Discovery Institute, denied that the group advocated a Biblical version of creation. Rather, Mr. Meyer said, it is fighting for academic freedom and against what it sees as a fanatical loyalty to Darwin among biologists, akin to a secular religion.

Testifying before the board, he asserted, for instance, that evolution had trouble explaining the Cambrian Explosion, a period of rapid diversification that evidence suggests began about 550 million years ago and gave rise to most groups of complex organisms and animal forms.

Of the Texas curriculum standards, Mr. Meyer said, “This kind of language is really important for protecting teachers who want to address this subject with integrity in the sense of allowing students to hear about dissenting opinions.”

But several biologists who appeared in the hearing room said the objections raised by Mr. Meyer and some board members were baseless. The majority of evidence collected over the last 150 years supports Darwin, and few dissenting opinions have survived a review by scientists.

“Every single thing they are representing as a weakness is a misrepresentation of science,” said David M. Hillis, a professor of biology at the University of Texas. “These are science skeptics. These are people with religious and political agendas.”

Many of the dozens of people who crowded into the hearing room, however, seemed unimpressed with the body of scientific evidence supporting evolution.

“Textbooks today treat it as more than a theory, even though its evidence has been found to be stained with half-truths, deception and hoaxes,” said Paul Berry Lively, 42, a mechanical engineer from Houston who brought along his teenage son. “Darwinian evolution is not a proven fact.”

Other conservative parents told board members that their children had been intimidated and ridiculed by biology teachers when they questioned evolution. Some asserted that they knew biology teachers who were afraid to bring up theories about holes in Darwin’s theory.

Business leaders, meanwhile, said Texas would have trouble attracting highly educated workers and their families if the state’s science programs were seen as a laughingstock among biologists.

“The political games we are playing right now are going to burn us all,” said Eric Hennenhoefer, who owns Obsidian Software.




In Texas, a Line in the Curriculum Revives Evolution Debate

Article Tools Sponsored By
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: January 21, 2009

AUSTIN, Tex. " The latest round in a long-running battle over how evolution should be taught in Texas schools began in earnest Wednesday as the State Board of Education heard impassioned testimony from scientists and social conservatives on revising the science curriculum.
Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image
Harry Cabluck/Associated Press

Clare Wuellner attended a hearing of the Texas Board of Education on Wednesday in Austin in support of proposed changes to the science curriculum.
Related
Times Topics: Evolution
Enlarge This Image

Dick Neavel also attended the hearing in Texas. Legislators in six states have considered legislation requiring classrooms to be open to “views about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory.”

The debate here has far-reaching consequences; Texas is one of the nation’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are reluctant to produce different versions of the same material.

Many biologists and teachers said they feared that the board would force textbook publishers to include what skeptics see as weaknesses in Darwin’s theory to sow doubt about science and support the Biblical version of creation.

“These weaknesses that they bring forward are decades old, and they have been refuted many, many times over,” Kevin Fisher, a past president of the Science Teachers Association of Texas, said after testifying. “It’s an attempt to bring false weaknesses into the classroom in an attempt to get students to reject evolution.”

In the past, the conservatives on the education board have lacked the votes to change textbooks. This year, both sides say, the final vote, in March, is likely to be close.

Even as federal courts have banned the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in biology courses, social conservatives have gained 7 of 15 seats on the Texas board in recent years, and they enjoy the strong support of Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican.

The chairman of the board, Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist, pushed in 2003 for a more skeptical version of evolution to be presented in the state’s textbooks, but could not get a majority to vote with him. Dr. McLeroy has said he does not believe in Darwin’s theory and thinks that Earth’s appearance is a recent geologic event, thousands of years old, not 4.5 billion as scientists contend.

On the surface, the debate centers on a passage in the state’s curriculum that requires students to critique all scientific theories, exploring “the strengths and weaknesses” of each. Texas has stuck to that same standard for 20 years, having originally passed it to please religious conservatives. In practice, teachers rarely pay attention to it.

This year, however, a panel of teachers assigned to revise the curriculum proposed dropping those words, urging students instead to “analyze and evaluate scientific explanations using empirical evidence.”

Scientists and advocates for religious freedom say the battle over the curriculum is the tip of a spear. Social conservatives, the critics argue, have tried to use the “strengths and weaknesses” standard to justify exposing students to religious objections in the guise of scientific discourse.

“The phrase ‘strengths and weaknesses’ has been spread nationally as a slogan to bring creationism in through the back door,” said Eugenie C. Scott of the National Center for Science in Education, a California group that opposes watering down evolution in biology classes.

Already, legislators in six states " Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri and South Carolina " have considered legislation requiring classrooms to be open to “views about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory,” according to a petition from the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based strategic center of the intelligent-design movement.

Stephen C. Meyer, an expert on the history of science and a director at the Discovery Institute, denied that the group advocated a Biblical version of creation. Rather, Mr. Meyer said, it is fighting for academic freedom and against what it sees as a fanatical loyalty to Darwin among biologists, akin to a secular religion.

Testifying before the board, he asserted, for instance, that evolution had trouble explaining the Cambrian Explosion, a period of rapid diversification that evidence suggests began about 550 million years ago and gave rise to most groups of complex organisms and animal forms.

Of the Texas curriculum standards, Mr. Meyer said, “This kind of language is really important for protecting teachers who want to address this subject with integrity in the sense of allowing students to hear about dissenting opinions.”

But several biologists who appeared in the hearing room said the objections raised by Mr. Meyer and some board members were baseless. The majority of evidence collected over the last 150 years supports Darwin, and few dissenting opinions have survived a review by scientists.

“Every single thing they are representing as a weakness is a misrepresentation of science,” said David M. Hillis, a professor of biology at the University of Texas. “These are science skeptics. These are people with religious and political agendas.”

Many of the dozens of people who crowded into the hearing room, however, seemed unimpressed with the body of scientific evidence supporting evolution.

“Textbooks today treat it as more than a theory, even though its evidence has been found to be stained with half-truths, deception and hoaxes,” said Paul Berry Lively, 42, a mechanical engineer from Houston who brought along his teenage son. “Darwinian evolution is not a proven fact.”

Other conservative parents told board members that their children had been intimidated and ridiculed by biology teachers when they questioned evolution. Some asserted that they knew biology teachers who were afraid to bring up theories about holes in Darwin’s theory.

Business leaders, meanwhile, said Texas would have trouble attracting highly educated workers and their families if the state’s science programs were seen as a laughingstock among biologists.

“The political games we are playing right now are going to burn us all,” said Eric Hennenhoefer, who owns Obsidian Software."

End of article

As a matter of fact, my niece has borrowed DVD's from me with Carl Sagan and other scientists on evolution and cosmology to show a sixth grade class.
She has never heard from any parent regarding teaching the science without reference to any religious doctrine including ID.

Sorry for the duplication of the cut-and-paste -- not sure how that happened!

Did she fail to say that I should get a life? Or get out more? Or increase my medication? Thank her for me effemm for being so considerate.

Anyway- as you know, I am reading Prof. Pomeroy on and off. And everybody knows that Aristotle is a most important and highly respected founding father of science. So I thought I would quote Ms Sarah B. Pomeroy, who is said to be a "distinguished professor of classics at Hunter College and at the Graduate School of the City University of New York", on an occasion she mentions the great man.



It is Veblen's witty and dazzling improvisations on the word "emblem" which I find so amusing and one might, without the need to stretch one's imagination too far, use "sandwich board" or "display cabinet" for this particularly important function of the woman in states with leisure and property. In fact Schopenhauer alleges that the phenomenom is the reason the poor will always be with us because there is no limit to the extravagances involved and it can retain the whole of the economic surplus for its purpose as Madame de Pompadour actually did. And Nero's little darling Poppaea.

One can easily stretch a little further and trace the roots of the financial crisis to this source if one were to seek to enhance Aristotle's wonderful scientific reputation. One might also, on his say so, and that of many others, the unhenpecked of this world, ignore anything women say and bend one's energies to taking them in hand. Without the nerve for that bail-outs look to be a sort of headache powder and Mr Obama hardly the man to think of any other solution what with Mrs Obama breathing down his neck and Mrs Clinton on the warpath at his shoulder. And Media whipping up extravagance all day long year after year with ladies glued to it.

But all that is really a side issue regarding the topic here. If Aristotle was right, as I believe him to have been, that woman's deliberative capacities are impotent and that they need constant and careful supervision, how come, in a mere 100 generations or so can they have evolved into a creature much different from how Aristotle saw them, great scientist as he was. Evolution theory requires unimaginable numbers of generations to bring about even miniscule changes as Darwin often reminded his readers. And going from deliberative impotence and the need of careful supervision to them running loose and making decisions is hardly a miniscule change.

The best Christianity has been able to do is to mitigate these natural affectations and now that it is in decline it is hardly surprising that they are coming more and more to the fore in our lives.

Such is one of the non-sexual aspects of the "controversial issues" which the Texas senator declined to elaborate upon as he might not have dared gone home had he done so. The gentlemen of the Discovery Institute may well be educated enough to understand all this and the ramifications of it but they also might not dare go home if they came clean. Of course, they may well be complete idiots as they are commonly said to be on here. It is impossible to say and thus it is unscientific to declare them idiots without the required amount of evidence. Doing so constitutes a belief. A self-reassuring assumption no proper scientist would countenance. And Judge Jones has grown up daughters as well as a wife to say nothing of aunties, nieces and other crustaceans in the family tree.

I'm afraid boys and girls that Harriet Martineau gave the game away at a very early stage in this long-running aspect of yin-yangery but the scientific fraternity put her on Ignore a long time ago as they did with the other famous ladies I have mentioned. And theit ilk .As well they might if they know what's good for them. (Don't cry for me Argentina).

It is the main reason, sociologically and intellectually, why priests need to be celibate and why women can never be trusted with care of the theological principles which underpin our way of life. (see Vicar of Dibley).

BTW- a misogynist is a man who fears women. Any man who doesn't is a male chauvinist pig because he badly underestimates them which Aristotle didn't. He patronises and manipulates them.

I recommend effemm that you don't allow your wife to read this post. Tell her I have apologised and recognised your superior wisdom. I don't mind.

Does that explain why my Footballer's Wives posts were on topic?

Rewriting the dictionary again?

mi·sog·y·nist (m-sj-nst)
n.
One who hates women.
adj.
Of or characterized by a hatred of women.

Dictionaries are complied by all sorts of people working in teams. PC is very much to the fore these days and especially in cheap ones prepared for hoi polloi



Professor S.B.Pomeroy.



Professor S,B. Pomeroy.



Professor S.B. Pomeroy. And Euripedes is known as a serious misogynist.

And here are the last two sentences in her famous book.



Fear breeds respect. Condescension breeds contempt.

And using women, like those strange dogs in shows, as display cabinets and sandwich boards for their owner's ( a word Veblen employs) success is male chauvinist piggery of the highest order as is expecting them to pretty themselves up in order to arouse sexual ardour.

I am proud to be a misogynist. I am in good company. Hatred doesn't come into it.

I have seen no soldier from Afghanistan who has expressed hatred for the enemy. They fear and respect the Taliban. Only those ponces sitting in warm media offices express hate.

Read Stendhal. Read Flaubert. Read Rider Haggard. Women are terrifying . Read Ted Hughes. Tamed ones are not so bad and it was Christianity that did the taming.

These journalists are doing your heads in. They are sales reps.

(This may encourage you to not refer to yourself as a misogynist in the genteel company in a pub).

Not many people have DVDs of that type LW. Are you politicised on these matters in any way?

All the other stuff in that long post, which I apologise for not addressing earlier, we are over-familiar with. The mantras are seared on my brain.

Schools, as institutions, have religious and political agendas. It is what they are for. To create useful Americans out of little monsters. So the question is really, when you cut all these adult games out, is evolution theory useful or not for that purpose?

They are by no means the only source of information kids are exposed to. Even within schools these other sources are operative.

And I don't see split votes as oracles of wisdom. In such things many other factors are in play. It is naive or disingenuous to think otherwise

It is of no real consequence what she is to the words she produces. Or whether she was legless with drink when she wrote them.

I didn't say that misogyny is defined as fear. It is an attitude to women which is grounded in fear. A man who doesn't fear women does not know them and has them under his control. That is why misogyny is the opposite of male chauvinism.

The sort of women I like enjoy misogyny. They can hold their own--you needn't worry about that. I fear tigers but I don't hate them. Like women, they are what they are. Hate is a useless emotion.

It makes no difference to me what Merriam Webster says.