Evolution No Longer Worth Learning, Says Government 698
Davemania writes "New York Times reports that the Evolution biology subject has disappeared from a list of acceptable fields of study for recipients of a federal education grant for low-income college students. The Education department has described this as a Clerical Mistake but others are skeptical about this. 'Scientists who knew about the omission also said they found the clerical explanation unconvincing, given the furor over challenges by the religious right to the teaching of evolution in public schools. "It's just awfully coincidental," said Steven W. Rissing, an evolutionary biologist at Ohio State University.'" As someone who made use of one of those grants to study Evolutionary Biology, I find this more than a little galling.
Perspectives (Score:2, Funny)
Clerical?
oops, can't teach that any more.
next, a berka^H^H^H^H^Hveil for all school girls (Score:2)
LoB
Religious Right (Score:2)
Any time I see that term - I smell bias and ignore the rest of whats said.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Lost slashdot feature (Score:2)
I'm looking for the button that marks the entire topic -1 Troll, but I can't seem to find it...
---
*Off-topic and coherency-free since 2004!*
New York Times, etc... (Score:2)
Reminds me of an old joke. A meteor is about to collide with earth, killing everyone. The NYT headline reads:
Meteor to Annihilate Mankind
Women and Minorities Worst Affected
Seriously though, all one needs to do is go to spring break at Daytona Beach to find out the American mainstream is completely uninterested in hearing moral admonishments from anyone. By and large the sky-magic crowd is content to tsk-tsk amongst themselves and talk loudly from time to time. But the States is far too modern to put
More Redmond influence in Washington (Score:2)
Is it any surprise they don't want you to learn about Evolution [gnome.org]?
Re: (Score:2)
But the scientific method isn't consistent: it changes over time, or "evolves", if you like. One hopes that such change constitutes improvement.
Given that the scientific method isn't written on stone tablets by the finger of Newton, but is something that exists as a "best
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm by no means against the scientific theory, but if one overestimates what it is, one will be led into all sorts of delusional beliefs. An "iron clad way to map reality" it is certainly not. Closer to the truth is that it's a methodical way of discarding half the nonsense that it gave us in the past. A very close model of the scientific method is natural
Re: (Score:2)
provided by science.
No, we just need to be able to let go of limiting beliefs when it becomes sufficiently clear that they are most likely incorrect. Subjective ethics and intuition must necessarily come before objective reality because humans aren't
Re: (Score:2)
Science classes seem to take the lazy approach too. Science is taught as being a body of knowledge when it isn't -- it's a process and a central part of that process is critical thinking.
Intelligent design lacks critical features of a scientific theory. Evolution is a scientific theory, but like all such it may be overturned
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you want to participate in the scientific process you've got to base your theories on the scientific method, not dogma. Including Atheist dogma.
The evidence against evolution has been laughably weak. The best you could do is prove the evolution is false, not that creationism is true.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps. Perhaps not. When one is caught doing something slimey, one calls it a clerical mistake, corrects it, and tries again another way. Even getting caught, it helps shore up the fundamentalist support that has been vital to this administration.
The main reason so many people here think this is most likely deliberate is simple: this administration has a track record of gutting science when that science goes against their doctrine. They d
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Pupils should not believe what they are told in school and 60% of leading scientific teachings are bogus as we will be told in 20 years - in fact the teachings which are considered bogus today were bogus 20 years ago as well. So thinking different is important in evolutionary theory. And maybe the alternative teachings are more entertaining and pupils learn something important for life: resistance against indoctrination.
Social darwinism is crap and was crap but society also fo
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Perspectives (Score:5, Insightful)
Those who believe some old book written by ignorant desert shepherds will be punished by God for their refusal to follow his story line that He wrote in the very rocks of our world.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"If atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby."
Re: (Score:2)
You were doing fine until you leaped into Social Darwinism there. "Evolutionary fitness" vs an intellectual environment? If anything, being a good social fit for an intellectual environment is an evolutionary handicap, as the #1 factor against having children is education level: the higher th
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You lost me with, This particular argument is a poor choice for an evolution debate because immunities can be attained by an individual (as opposed to a gene pool) through exposure and not necessarily by evolution.
The ability of individuals to acquire immunity through exposure is explained by evolution. How do ID/Creationi
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Meanwhile, god's existence doesn't\H\H\H\H\H\H\Hshouldn't really matter one way or another when it comes to making policy decisions.
Re: (Score:2)
We have no scientific evidence of any kind of god at all, so we have no reason to think there is a god.
I agree on your last point, religion should affect public policy.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They are philosophical opposites that ask different questions.
There's really no good reason that they should come into conflict with each other. The reason that they do is you've got busybodies running around that like to meddle in other people's business. They're a bunch of tyrant wannabes that want to impose their views on the rest of us.
These are the sort of people that tend to discount their own co-religionists.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Evolution (Score:2)
Seriously though, if progress means anything, its that genetic "disabilities" are gradually becoming meaningless, as we can compensate for more and more of them with drugs, prosthetics, or therapy. And it's an acc
Dark Ages? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, the whole concept of the "dark" ages [wikipedia.org] as a backward period has been discredited by modern historians who no longer use the term.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The lesson is that a vibrant intellectual and scientific culture can be destroyed and its benefits lost.
Re: (Score:2)
I was hoping that the republicans would at least cut some of the more obvious waste out of the federal budget (AmTrac, Coporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts, NASA, Headstart, Department of Education, etc.) The budgets for all of these things should be zeroed out.
Also, our military spending is too high. I don't think it should be zero, but I think it is too high now. And too much of it goes t
And how about... (Score:3, Interesting)
And let's throw out corporate welfare, too. No more bailing out failed corporations (yeah, I mean you, Chrysler, and you too, airlines) to the tune of billions a year.
Re: (Score:2)
Likewise, the vast majority of liberals voted for Kerry. However, that doesn't mean that they actually liked him.
I did, and you can. One of my main reasons was that my wife is a doctor and there was no way I was going to vote for a malpractice lawyer. Beyond that, flawed as Bush is
Re: (Score:2)
One of my main reasons was that my wife is a doctor and there was no way I was going to vote for a malpractice lawyer. Beyond that, flawed as Bush is, he was closer to what I wanted than Kerry. Maybe not a lot, but a little. It doesn't mean I support him, though.
Umm.. what? You could have voted for Mickey Mouse, nobody, or some nutjob third party candidate. But, you decided to vote for G-dub. At least have the courage to stand by your choices and not try to weasel out of them by trying to have it both w
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You aren't forced to send your child to a school, you are forced to make sure they get an education. Not the same thing. If you can't manage to create a home school environment for them then you are left with pawning them off on what's left over - public school.
Home schooling and Priv
Re: (Score:2)
You aren't forced to send your child to a school, you are forced to make sure they get an education. Not the same thing. If you can't manage to create a home school environment for them then you are left with pawning them off on what's left over - public school.
Because the alternatives aren't really feasible for most people. Give them the cash that the public school would spend on their kid and let them take it to a private school -- that's an option that works.
Re:Perspectives (Score:5, Insightful)
Should parents who are offended by the idea that people of different skin colors are legally and ethically equal, be allowed to send their kids at taxpayer expense to a school that teaches racism?
Adults can believe whatever crap they want, but children have an ethical right to be presented with good information. There is a certain educational baseline, things that you are obligated to see that your children have the opportunity to learn. These things include basic safety (fire burns you, drinking bleach is a bad idea), basic ethics (skin color is irrelevant, bullying and cruelty are wrong), basic health (regular bathing promotes health, masturbation will not make you go blind, proper condom use reduces but does not eliminate the risk of pregnancy and STDs).
This basic orientation to life also includes the fundamentals of the best human knowledge about our place in the universe: that the earth goes around the sun and not the other way around, that the stars are distant suns, and that all life on Earth is related through a common chain of descent and diversified through natural selection.
The fact that some ignorant or superstitious parents may find some of these ideas uncomfortable does not relive them of their obligation to see that their children's right to good information is respected. Teaching children only creationism is no more acceptable than teaching them racism or the geocentric model of the universe.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Your solution returns to the problem right here. The problem itself is what is and is not considered "good" information by the parents. Even your own examples are littered with what are, while they may seems concrete to you, simple value judgements.
Re:Perspectives (Score:4, Interesting)
So. You can't prove that 2+2=4, but you insist that it is taught in schools nevertheless. And, presumably, if someone else insisted that schools teach that 2+2=5, then you will raise hell as well, since it directly conflicts with what you want your children to learn. So in short, you want your children to learn in school what you believe to be true, and not something which conflicts with it, depite you being unable to prove it to be true.
How can you then judge a religious parent for raising hell when his kids are taught something he thinks is a vile, contemptuous lie, instead of what he thinks is the truth ? You are no different, you simply believe in different matters.
Well, from the fundamentalist's point of view, if they quit they're surrendering to Satan. So expect a battle to the death, quite possibly literally if they are left no other alternatives.
And don't come posting that you're going to rise hell if your kid is not taught something you believe, and then condemn others when they do just the same.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Nobody is forced to go to public school. And in that case there would be a free state run church that constitutionally couldn't push any particular religion. I.e. a big waste of money. The situation is inherently asymmetric and attempting to plead for symmetry is a baseless argument.
Re:Perspectives (Score:5, Interesting)
The situation is inherently asymmetric and attempting to plead for symmetry is a baseless argument.
I'm not arguing that it should be symmetric, I'm just pointing out that there's a very good reason why there's an asymmetric response to an asymmetric situation.
If everyone could get school vouchers, the funds for public education would drop dramatically, the quality of public education would drop dramatically, poverty would then increase rapidly, and crime would then increase rapidly.
Evidence?
Consider the voucher bill that failed recently in my state: It would have given parents $2500 per child per year in a voucher to be spent at the private school of their choice. The state spends over $5000 per child, per year, so the net effect of the program is to *increase* the available funding per child remaining in public schools.
Further, there's an assumption implicit in your argument: That public schools would not be able to compete effectively with private schools for students. Why do you believe that? And what does that belief say about your position?
In the short term, I think that assumption is correct. I base that on my own experience with my oldest son and the private school he was in. We paid $3500 per year to put him in this private school, because the public schools simply were not working for him. For that money, we got teachers of at least the same quality as the local public schools but in classes one-third the size. My son's private school classes had no more than 10 students per teacher, vs over 30 in public schools. Not only that, the $3500 was *all* we paid. Public schools not only take our money in taxes, but if you have any kids in them, you know there are fees out the wazoo. Registration fees, book fees, field trip fees, lunch fees, etc. And the meals that you pay so much for are unbelievably lousy. Pre-packaged, not even warmed up in most cases. At the private school he got a hot lunch every day, and even a hot breakfast if we wanted. Educationally, there's no comparison; their curriculum was at least a year ahead of what was being taught in the same grades in public schools, and it was far better. It was not a religious school, BTW, and had no sources of funding other than students' tuition.
That private school was better in almost every possible way than the public school options, and for it we paid $1500 *less* than the state puts into the public schools.
However, I really don't think that public schools would lose in the long run. I think they would improve, and rapidly, once people had other options, and once the vouchers' effect of increasing the money available per pupil took effect.
Yes, school vouchers seem fair from an individualistic libertarian point of view. (Though not as fair as abandoning tax breaks on families and taxes for education in the first place). But as far as the well being of a society is concerned, it would be a terrible mistake.
I disagree, completely and utterly. I'm pretty libertarian, but I think taxes to fund education are a fundamentally Good Thing. There's not much I think government should do in the way of social programs, but that's one of them. However, I also think it would do both public and private schools, not to mention students, a world of good, to introduce some real competition between them. I expect it would make the lives of teachers much better as well. I don't think it would increase their wages much, but I do think it would serve to eliminate a lot of the bureaucratic nonsense they deal with now (nonsense that is a big part of why my wife is no longer a schoolteacher).
Re:Perspectives (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing gaurentees that the voucher by itself will be sufficient to cover the tuition at a good private school. In fact, it probably won't-- And that's before considering it would be in any good private school's best interest to raise their tuition considerably if a widespread voucher program went into effect.
If you can cough up the extra on top of the voucher to send your kids to the good public school, it works well for you. If you can't, then you are forced to send your kid to the (now horribly underfunded) public school. Thus, those who had the least oppertunities to start with have even fewer oppertunities than they do in the current system. It gets even harder to pull yourself out of poverty. The and the distribution of wealth grows even more uneven.
For those of you who don't care about the spread of poverty (as long as you're not poor) and maldistribution of wealth that increases over time (as long as you're OK), you should-- crime and quality of life issues are the primary reason. But at the extreme end, history shows that the greater the maldistribution of wealth is in a civilization the more likely it is to collapse, and the more violent that collapse is likely to be. I don't think that's an immediate danger, but education is an area that requires multi-generational thinking.
The purpose of public education is the public good. It's in the public's best interest that there be as easy a road for people to better themselves as possible, and a decent education is a key part of that. It is also in the publics best interest that the general populace be educated.
There are substantial problems with our current educational system, most definitely. And they need to be addressed. My thoughts on the best way to address them are beyond the scope of this post. But I think that "moving them to the private sector" (as many suggest) is not an effective strategy, because while the market is excellent at determining some things (and more things than people might expect) it's not a magic wand that can fix everything. Long-term, public-good, infastructure issues often fly contrary to, rather than in alignment with, the private profit of those providing the services. So trying to use the market to inject accountability is using the wrong tool for the job.
Most of this post has been general, not all of it a direct response to Parent. But from Parent's post:
I'm pretty libertarian, but I think taxes to fund education are a fundamentally Good Thing. There's not much I think government should do in the way of social programs, but that's one of them. However, I also think it would do both public and private schools, not to mention students, a world of good, to introduce some real competition between them.
I would agree, if this could be done in such a matter that those with the fewest oppertunities to begin with didn't end up in the schools too lousy to compete.
What are people's thoughts on a modification of the voucher program, where in order to participate, a private school would be required to charge a tuition no higher than (regional?) voucher amount?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If 'A' claims that the Earth is round and revolves around the center of mass of the Earth/Sun system and 'B' claims that the Earth is flat and that the Sun revolves around it then one is right and the other is wrong.
If 'B' claims that your immortal soul is what makes you, you. And 'A' claims that you a
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They might not anymore but they did until they lost that fight a few hundred years ago.
http://evolution.mbdojo.com/conflict.html [mbdojo.com]
The fight over evolution is the same irrationalism and fear all over again. The only difference is that it is happening now.
Fundamentalists regard the religious writings as gospel (pun intended) rather than a bunch
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wanna bet?
You're assuming creationists are only concerned with what's taught to their children. Ask one how he feels about what's taught to your children sometime.
rj
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Science is TRUTH
Ah, the Inerrancy of Science argument. It's better to say that science *seeks* for TRUTH, by never claiming to actually have it. The moment science presumes to have found certain truth, it ceases to be science and becomes just a different form of religion. The refusal to stop questioning is what makes science worthwhile.
It's also worth remembering that science can only answer certain classes of questions. If those are the only questions you're interested in, fine.
Re:Perspectives (Score:4, Insightful)
I consider that to be a form of child abuse.
Re: (Score:2)
And nobody disputes that. People have known about selective breeding for ages.
But you don't need to believe this huge untestable historical theory of single cells evolving into all life on earth to understand that, either.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Burning a house down with a family inside and burning the house down without the family inside both have the same outcome: the house is burned down. That doesnt mean that they are equal events. Speaking of fallacies, the one you brought up would be cum hoc ergo propter hoc. "Pro-Lifers approve of war and the death that results from it, therefore they are hypocrites for being pro-life". Nice.
My first post was just to point out the obvious differences separating your examples, but you choose to work
Re: (Score:2)
No, everyone I don't agree with are morons, but "pro-lifers" are hypocrites. Well, technically I would label them as "moronic hypocrites", for the record.
Re: (Score:2)
<pdf:Author>OPE</pdf:Author>
<pdf:Producer>Acrobat PDFWriter 4.05 for Windows NT</pdf:Producer>
<pdf:ModDate>2006-05-02T09:15:53-03:00</pdf:ModDa
<pdf:Sponsor>Opus Dei</pdf:Sponsor>
OK. I made up the last one, but the rest are in the pdf.
OPE = Office of Postsecondary Education, at www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/
Pernicious effects of feel good relativism (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
They tried something like this during Vietnam, called Project 100,000. They took 100,000 men that would qualify for service if only t
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Being able to say that in a foreign language may prove to be helpful in two or three generations...
Re: (Score:2)
You'd think they'd pull something out of their collective asses to contend with the meat of this post.
Mod Parent Up!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Milking it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Countering Evolution Theory is a total short circuit of scientific method. Even assuming that evolution is untrue, there needs to be a new scientific theory that can better explain the diversity of life on earth, and the extreme coincidences that point to common ancestry. The very tightly linked genome information is really hard to just explain away with some alternate scientific theory..
Evolution is a theory that is brutally hard to poke any real holes in.. Most people try to counter with statistical arguments that skip some of the in between steps.
Anyway, the point is that rational people are afraid of whats happening, and arent going to simply look away when they see neo-theocracy coming closer.
Storm
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Government no longer worth having...
Re: (Score:2)
Sony is evil
Nintendo is great.
Apple is good at the desktop.
Java is slow.
If your actions offend anyone then that is wrong, unless the person is Jewish or Christian.
Profit == greed.
Bush and all Republicans are evil.
Protecting content is wrong.
All content should be free.
I am sure I missed a few...
Re: (Score:2)
Mono-what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mono-culture? Is that International Whine Language for "anyone who doesn't agree with me?" Guess what? Freedom of speech does not guarantee you the right to be respected for what you say. Or even believed. And insulting your target audience is not likely to get them to agree with you.
Saying that everybody who posts on slashdot thinks the same is just a thinly veiled insult. It's basically implying that (unlike the 'free thinking' poster) no one here can think for themselves. It is implying that only easily-led sheeple would hold that particular opinion, that no one could have arrived at that opinion through logic or introspection, only through surrendering to the hive mind.
It's a very hypocritical stand to take. It's trying to get everyone to agree with you by saying that if they don't, they are somehow not individuals, but mere pawns. Face it, you aren't upset that "slashbots" are pawns. You are upset that they're not your pawns. You don't want free thinking individuals, because you aren't one yourself. You project your own inadequecies onto others. You've bought a certain line of thought hook, line and sinker, and when anyone questions that line of thought, it can only be because they aren't a "free thinker" like you.
How droll. It's like the counter culture kids who rebel by all dressing alike.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You make quite drastic un-substantiated claims about me. Why so rude? Is it because you are /. drone #1352?
Well??
If you want to, shall we look at the way /. culture tends to normalize rather than diversify? Have you noticed that the majority smothers the minorities? What chance would a Christian have on slashdot? What chance would an outspoken republic
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I've noticed he's been pretty close-lipped about the whole thing for the past couple of years. The nerve of some people...
Re: (Score:2)
Wow.
Ok, there's a lot wrong with that statement. Evolution is a name describing the method by which self-replicating entities adapt. It can't be created; it's an action. So, -1 point for using it as a noun.
Next: If you're worried about why we keep killing our fellow man, I would suggest reading up on social evolution, and specifically cultural adaptation in chimpanzees. We know it's something wrong with our psychological makeup; we evolved from somewhat violent apes. Slowly, surely, as society i
Re: (Score:2)
As for a lot of your "fundamentals of the human mind", many of those very behaviors are based in biology. Violence, stealing, self-promotion at the expense of others, and trying to screw everything in sight... before the advent of society, these things made you better off, enhanced your standards of living, all
Re:Perspectives (Score:4, Funny)
Stupid clerics. "Oh, I can't use an edge weapon nor cast spells like fireball! WAA! WAA! WAA!"
Re: (Score:2)
I think it would be an *excellent* idea to teach kids a little of the philosophy of science because it's not done at all as far as I can see. Not in public schools, and, for most, not even in college.
I had an interesting discussion with my wife about this, just a few weeks ago. She loved science, took every science class her high school offered, went on to receive a BA in biology, and then taught science in high school and junior high. While teaching, she taught the scientific method every year to hund
Re: (Score:2)
Says you. And so long as anyone disagrees with you, you have no right to force your beliefs on others.
THAT is the antithesis of all this damn moral posturing about whether it's murder, whether the fetus is a baby, blah blah blah. You have no right to force me to accept your belief that a mother cannot choose to terminate her pregnancy because of arguments over when life begins.
Let the mother decide if it's ending a life or not - let the mother grapple with the moral and philosophical qu
Re: (Score:2)
So, if a piece of valid, well-supported scientific research disagrees with your personally held beliefs, it's a competing religion. Right. How about checking your definition of 'religion', 'kay?
Yeah, sure, evolutions's a theory, but then, so is relativity. Evolution is actually better-tested than general relativity. It's testable; the only thing we can't test about it is scale, but there's no evidence supporting the idea that genetic change over time is not scalable. Meanwhile, being testable kind
Re:Perspectives (Score:4, Funny)
Awesome....
Re: (Score:2)
A long living scientist has a box full of evolving lifeforms, and represents the whole eco-system. Evolution takes place as usual, eg. interspecies competition, inter-sexual and intra-sexual competition, etc.. the whole bit.
Now the scientist, in one corner of th
Re: (Score:2)
I much prefer describing evolution as "survival of the good-enough". Evolution is all about whether a particular species has genes that are sufficent for
Re: (Score:2)
The roman catholic church at least doesn't think so. It is their official doctrine, and they still are the biggest denomination.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Perspectives (Score:5, Interesting)
Science and religion are both belief systems. Science bases all beliefs on knowledge and has rigorous ways of determining fact from fiction. If science cannot answer a particular question it doesn't attempt to guess. If it does guess, the guess is based on available evidence and is called a theory. Religion on the other hand bases beliefs on faith and (typically ancient) teachings.
But science, if anyone's noticed, doesn't try to intrude on religion.
That's not true. Some people like to point out clear evidence that some religious beliefs are false. The whole evolution debate is one such example. I'm not critizing people for pointing out evidence, but to say that science doen't try to instrude on religion is not true. The science belief system (like all other belief systems) would not survive if it didn't not make some sort of an attempt to say that it's the only valid belief system. As far as I know, there hasn't been a single court case in the U.S. where a group of scientists have tried to dictate what can be taught in any church.
This is an invalid comparison because the church is a private institution. It is funded by people who choose to take part in it and therefore they get the right to decide what's taught. The public school system is funded by the tax payers. Many tax payers have religious beliefs and feel they should have some say in what is taught there.
Re:Perspectives (Score:4, Insightful)
If anyone hasn't noticed, there is no law, custom or anything else forcing, literally or in practice, anyone to send their children to church to be taught whatever they're taught there. There is, however, a law forcing people to send their kids to school to be taught whatever they're taught there. Therefore whatever is taught in church and whatever is taught in school are not equivalent matters, and your argument is, while technically not a lie, quite misleading.
A church is a private organization, while elementary school is a branch of the government. They cannot be considered equal in what is appropriate to be taught in them. A bunch of scientists (or anyone else) trying to make a court tell a priest (or anyone else) what he can or cannot say to a bunch of people who voluntarily came to the church (or his own home - remember, sermons don't need to be held in custom built churches, it's just practical to do so) would be an outrageous violation of the most basic right to free speech; a bunch of people trying to get the court to tell a teacher who's paid from public (tax) funds what he can or can't tell their kids who were forced by law to come to a public (built or bought with taxpayer money) school is simply business as usual.
This is not an argument for or against teaching evolution or anything else in schools; just that your argument is deeply but subtly flawed.
Re:Perspectives (Score:5, Insightful)
But religion doesn't reciprocate, and the whole "debate" about evolution isn't the first time various churches have tried to force their religion to substitute for science in the classroom.
That's because many religious ideas are so weak that they do not survive well in the "free marketplace of ideas." Consequently, they require special isolationist protections (an identifying characteristic of cults and brainwashing, BTW). You must isolate your flock else they find out how nuts your ideas really are. Movement to institutionalize religious protectionism I think effectively demonstrates just how bankrupt some of these religious ideas are. As Benjamin Franklin said:
"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not do so, and God chooses not to do so, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
When someone finds something "offensive" to their religion, it simply underscores where that religion has no logical counterargument for that thing-- it cannot rationally justify it's problem with the offence, so it must attempt cover up the idea by crying religious "foul," as if we are all playing with a set of rules that claim that no idea can be too baldly irrational as long as it's source is someone's religion
If a truly free country does not include freedom from religion, then the reverse must also be true-- religion is also not free from criticism, contradiction, ridicule or any other forms of irreligious proclamation.
It is this very sort of religious protectionism that is at odds, less with evolution than it is with the concept of a public or common education. Such forms of education are fundamentally incompatible with the arbitrary constraints of foolish superstitions.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Bullshit, it's an untested theory. There's plenty of those in science, and they're all extrapolations from current knowledge, not whole-cloth fabrications that must be taken on faith.
Re:Perspectives (Score:5, Informative)
The main objection to macroevolution is that no one has actually seen one species of macro-fauna spontaneously transform into another. This is true, because the process takes thousands of years. We just haven't been looking that long. But there are examples where the intermediate stages still exist in an unbroken chain between two species. Richard Dawkins mentions the Herring Gull and the Lesser Black-backed Gull, which cannot interbreed and are therefore seperate species. Both exist in Europe. But if you follow the population of Herring Gulls westward around the north pole, to North America, Alaska, Siberia, and back to Europe, you encounter all the intermediate stages leading to the Black-backed Gull. In each area around this ring, the gulls in that area can interbreed with their neighbours. Only when you get to Europe do you have two seperate species.
The objection that nobody has actually observed macro-evolution in action is based upon a complete misunderstanding of science. By this reasoning, nearly all of cosmology would collapse because nobody can actually see most of the celestial bodies in question, only measure their emanations. It's analogous to saying we have no idea how far away the sun is because nobody has a tape measure that long.
Re:Perspectives (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry you haven't been paying attention, but this happens all the time. It's called mutation [wikipedia.org]. You can get point mutations (affects just one base pair), deletions (a chunk of DNA is accidentally removed, and the remaining ends are stitched up), insertions (a new chunk of DNA added where it doesn't belong, sometimes smack in the middle of an existing gene), transpositions (a deletion at one site, and an insertion somewhere else), repeat errors (a segment of DNA trips up the cellular machinery and gets duplicated multiple times, like a skipping record), and many others. Combine these, and the result is new DNA.
Most mutations are generally caused by errors in the cellular machinery, although there can be other causes (radiation, dormant retroviruses, etc.). Machinery errors are caused by entropy [wikipedia.org], so raising the temperature increases the number of errors. This means it's quite easy to induce mutations in the lab by controlling the temperature of a cell culture. (Incidentally, the temperature-error connection is the reason men have a scrotum. If the testicles are too warm, too many of the resulting sperm cells have lethal mutations, leading to reduced fertility and a higher rate of birth defects. Just ask any fertility doctor. Mutations are an everyday fact of life, even within our own bodies.)
Most mutations do nothing at all. Those that do something are usually harmful. However, as one example, our ability to see the difference between red and green probably came from an insertion mutation (in this case, one gene accidentally turned into two genes for the same protein) followed by a small number of point mutations (leading to two genes for two separate proteins, namely Photopsin I and Photopsin II). The intermediate point mutations would have been harmful if they'd happened to the only copy of the photopsin gene, but they were beneficial when they happened to a spare. Many times, if a gene is duplicated by an insertion, one copy can go on to mutate dramatically while the other copy remains unmolested, sometimes resulting in two very similar genes with nearly unrelated roles. (This is because just a handful of changes in the amino acid chain can radically alter the tertiary and quaternary shape of the protein, and the shape of a protein determines what it does. Unfortunately, computing the folded shape of a protein is fiendishly difficult, which is why massively distributed projects like Folding@Home exist.)
Really, mutations are quite heavily studied and, in contrast with your claims, there's some very direct evidence for them. Even the Creationism/ID folks generally don't argue with microevolution (changes within a species), and mutation is required for microevolution to happen. Your position is really out on a limb. What's more, if you don't accept duplication plus point mutations as DNA "being generated/created", then you're essentially faulting God for not magically snapping His fingers for you and instead doing it the boring, step-by-step way. God has more important things to do than please your sense of aesthetics.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Huuuuuuh? You're not a scientist, I hope. What do you think of the theoretical sciences? Many things we know about Space and Time we know without being able to OBSERVE them. Many things we know only because physics/mathematics tells us that it HAS TO BE SO. A good example would be the gravitational lensing of light as it passes massive objects on its way to earth.. That is exactly how we can detect the "black holes" and other super-massi
Re:spanish-no (Score:5, Insightful)
Not after the next election there won't be. Illegal immigration is the number two annoyed topic that people will be voting on come november(the first is the stupid interventionist war). Globalists seeking to second world the US will be voted out, and those illegals will be *going home* as their employment dries up.
Wishful thinking. There is a reason your sort called themselves the "Know nothing" [wikipedia.org] party seven or so iterations back.
Face it. Every attempt to eradicate or exile a given group within a population of humans has failed since the dawn of history*. And thank God because diversity is the greatest strength a population can have. It is one of the main reasons the United States has prospered. It gave us victory over our enemies (The Axis poorly utilized their resources when they refused to let women work and relegated swaths of their population to extermination or forced labour. We on the other hand allowed people of all stripes to work freely and were victorious).
The furor over immigration is just as useless as the other smokescreens thrown by our government to distract us from the fact they are not doing what they are supposed to be doing about the things they can actually work on. It's a canard that gets us all riled up, allows inflammatory discussions involving racism and such to take up time that should be spent discussing what we can do to make our nation better and win / end the war we seem to be fighting. Gay Marriage, Abortion, Obscenity, and Mexican immigrants are all wedge issues that they know will divide us, and which for the most part the government has no business dealing with (and really cannot).
When it comes to the specific issue of immigrants from mexico (because let's face it, for all their talk the Minutemen sure don't seem to care about patrolling the Canadian border which is the only border crossing Al Qaeda has been known to use), there have been migrant workers for centuries and the presence of "undocumented" workers is a simple reality. There's no sense in trying to send 7-25 million (depending on who you believe) people back who are currently working and contributing to our economy. The fact they are outside the system is simply further proof our system does not reflect reality in terms of our economic needs.
The whole system of registering immigrants and control based on quotas originated from provably racist legislation which has since been tweaked but retains its roots. Originally anyone who could come here was allowed to come here and could apply for citizenship after proving they'd lived here a couple of years. If you want control I say you may as well go to the simpler model that anyone who has a job in this country can come here and stay and apply for citizenship after a time; if we're going to keep quotas we're going to need to make them large enough to match the true rate of immigration into this country and speed up the process to match the digital age we live in and again the needs of society.
We need immigrants. They are our only hope of paying off the national debt and social security, and they are the only way we will currently retain the level of population we have. They inject new blood, new ideas, and enrich our cultural experience. The fact that the best people from every country and every field can choose to become Americans, and the fact they often do, makes us all that much stronger. Confucius said that if you treat your population properly people will flock to your country with their children on their backs. That's part of what he described as the ideal state and that is essentially what the United States, for all its faults, became. That's the America we should be protecting.
But again, getting people like me to argue with people like you about immigration is a distraction that keeps you and I from spending time focusing on the things we might agree on, like the fact we are involved in potentially endless conflicts
Re:spanish-no (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, we're having a rather heated immigration debate in the UK too, at the moment. Actually, there's a stronger argument against it in the UK because this island is incredibly overpopulated already, whereas the US isn't. However, my main problem is the language barrier. I'm of the strong belief that it's a good thing for everyone in a country to speak one language; ideally, i'd have everyone in the world speaking one language. Immigrants coming in and speaking Spanish in the US sounds like a bad idea. The language barrier is, IMHO, the biggest barrier to human interaction and telling most Americans to learn Spanish is a really stupid way to solve the problem rather than vice versa.
I've spent the better part of my life in places with a heavy influx of hispanic immigrants, legal and otherwise. And I have never ever found a hispanic person who did not agree, as every other immigrant to the US agrees, that learning English and getting a good education is the key to success in the US. The immigrants themselves may not speak English and might have difficulty learning it, but they make damn sure their kids learn it because they don't want them to have to be labourers like they are.
No one is making Americans learn Spanish. There's no way they could; it seems that even with High Schools often requireing one or two foreign languages practically no one manages to learn and hold onto anything other than English. The official language of the United States is English and always will be. All of our laws and signs are written in English and it remains the primary medium of instruction in our schools. Yet politicians want to get people riled up over the issue and try to pass laws declaring this and make speeches as though we might have to speak another language than English. It's the same as the French politicians who try to scare their constituents into thinking that they might be made to speak Arabic as a new primary language just because there are so many (French-speaking, mind!) immigrants from places like Algeria.
And like another favorite topic of these same politicians, prayer in schools,* politicians are using this canard to try to outlaw speaking any other language. You see currently we have programs in public schools ostensibly designed to teach children English so that they can understand the rest of what is being taught. It's somewhat less than optimal and effective because they are taught everything else in English while attending classes on how to understand English, but it is what we have. There are people who want to do away with these programs, supposedly on the basis that only English should ever be spoken and tax dollars spent on teaching the subject are wasted, but the whole idea makes no logical sense unless your goal is to close what little door is open for the children of migrant workers to learn our language and become skilled workers.
It is annoying to me that people whose entire basis for law is supposed to be religion and morality are such damned liars and clearly hate their fellow man. And they claim Jesus is their leader and favorite philosopher. Clearly they were sleeping in class.. or else it was conducted in Aramaic. :P
*(where they claim praying is currently not allowed in school -- a lie because it is curently illegal to prevent people from praying -- in order to pass laws that force everyone to pray to their God in their way)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I honestly wish there were a way to mod you up. More people need to realize that those people who "oppose evolution" do so because, at a fundamental level, they just don't understand it. You statments say more than you realize, and they say you don't know what you're talking about.
As a hint, evolution concerns itself with neither of those things... other theories and fields
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok wait...if religion is rock and science is paper what's scissors?
politics.
Actually, no. It's reality.
Re:What the HELL is going on? (Score:4, Interesting)
ANd like I said in a previous post its happening in Canada too. Right now only a few churches really love Harper but as the Canadian branch of the 700club and focus on teh family get their act together on Christian radio and TV you will see more of a shift of Canadians voting conservative thinking they are getting pro family candidates.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I said, "guaranteed" by the constitution.. not granted or given. Please read more carefully before you rant. Of course a right cannot be given. Otherwise it is just a privilige.
And ultimately, you either believe that a woman's right to PRIVACY exceeds an unborn child's right to LIFE, or you do not.
Privacy??? You think that forcing a woman to
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And that isn't any different than the fools who say "God did it 6000 years ago". You've just given a little ground, retreated further into the "nobody knows" of it.
Re:Perspectives (Score:5, Funny)