12 Florida Schools Pass Anti-Evolution Resolutions 871
Several sources are reporting that twelve school districts in Florida have passed resolutions against the teaching of evolution. Out of all the arguments, however, one administrator seems to have gotten it right: "Then, the final speaker, Lisa Dizengoff, director of science curriculum at Pembroke Pines Charter School's east campus, angrily reminded the crowd that after all the carping over evolution, no one had gotten around to addressing the state's lackadaisical, last-century approach to science education. 'All I heard was this argument about evolution,' she said, disgusted that so many other problems had been preempted by a single controversy. 'The kids lost out again.''"
Fundies again (Score:5, Insightful)
-uso.
Opposed to teaching Evolution as a fact.... (Score:2, Insightful)
I suppose he should also be against teaching gravity or biology or even simple arithmetic...
All the above are based on theories that have been shown to be consistant but none are trully "facts."
When will we see an article talking about teaching alternate theories of Math?
Opposed to facts (Score:5, Insightful)
Only two options now avaliable (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A perfect argument for school vouchers (Score:1, Insightful)
But the point of a free market for just about anything is that people with different needs can find (or create!) different solutions.
I wasn't aware science and the scientific method bent to the whims of the free market. A science classroom should teach science, it shouldn't matter where it is. If the bible thumpers want their kids to wallow in ignorance they can send them to a private religious school for indoctrination into their cult.
Re:Opposed to teaching Evolution as a fact.... (Score:5, Insightful)
La la la la, I can't hear you! (Score:5, Insightful)
http://xkcd.com/54/ [xkcd.com] is appropriate right now.
Re:A perfect argument for school vouchers (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to send your kids to private school, that's your right. That doesn't mean that you get to take funds away from public schools.
Re:So it continues.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Where did you get that idea from? Evolution has been proven time after time, from Darwin's finches over selective breeding, resistant strains of diseases all the way to artificial intelligence programs. Evolution is no fact, but it is a good explanations for fact we can see all around us.
Whereas intelligent design does not explain anything, very much like the Homunculus argument.
All of a sudden parents are concerned? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A perfect argument for school vouchers (Score:3, Insightful)
The Religious Mind (Score:5, Insightful)
For all the philosophical rambling, none of them, absolutely none of them, escape this simple indisputable fact:
All religious teachings are provided to us by humans.
If God Himself appeared next to me and handed me a copy of the Bible, that would be one thing. But instead, a human handed to me. And, in fact, a human wrote every word that is in it. This notion of "divine inspiration" (which is supposed to remove the element of human fallibility from the Bible) was communicated to me by...wait for it....A HUMAN.
I can agree in principle with the presumption that faith in God is well-founded, and faith in human reason (i.e. the theory of evolution) is not so well-founded. However, to put faith in the teachings (or books) of any religion is to put faith in human reason.
There is no denial, only rationalization.
Well not exactly anti-evolution. (Score:4, Insightful)
I would have no problem with them teaching intelligent design if they just followed the rules of science when teaching it.
Simply that some people think this is how life got started but there is no proof or experiments that prove it out and many of their claims have been disproven or at least had a lot of doubt about them.
Science should be open to different ideas even if they are wrong. They must all be looked at using the scientific method. I doubt many creationist would like the way it was being taught but that is just too bad. If they can get some good science to back them up then let's see it.
All that I have seen was really bad.
Re:Blasphemy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A perfect argument for school vouchers (Score:2, Insightful)
Believe in what ever you wish, but don't expect an education system to put forth any opinion that has no basis in fact. Its bad enough with the one-sided view of history that is currently taught . . .
Re:So....... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's really what's happening. The theory of Evolution is one of the most heavily supported things in the scientific world, and passing laws against it speaks exceptionally loudly about the given parties ability to discern fact from fiction, intelligence from hand-waving, and most importantly, critical thinking from anything else. They're not just rejecting evolution, they're rejecting the process of science as a whole.
Not about education (Score:5, Insightful)
They are no doubt congratulating themselves about bringing 17th century thinking to the 21st century.
Sad. I doubt most people in Florida, or even these schools agree with this result. Hopefully, like in Kansas, it will be overturned.
Wow, education going the way of the government? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Opposed to teaching Evolution as a fact.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Only two options now avaliable (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Article posted that makes fundies look like idiots.
2. Anti-fundie flaming.
3. Anti-religion flaming.
4. Sideshow discussions about reconciliation of theology and science in one's personal life, usually reasonably posited and humbly submitted; drowned out by the by now raging flame war.
5. Sideshow flame war about the observability of evolution.
6.
7. Profit? No, everyone loses (except the trolls), the smartest stay away completely, the next tier down leaves feeling drawn in and sheepish (c'mon we've all been there), and the trolls emerge stupid as ever, feeling victorious.
8. Ugh.
9. It's Friday, everyone drink a beer or something.
What really sucks is, this isn't really religion. (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to ask those believers, is this what Jesus would do and be about? I'm working my ass off to make sure my kids can go to the finest private non-religious schools available. They can raise their kids in 3rd world ignorance, but I can make sure my kids aren't.
Re:Opposed to teaching Evolution as a fact.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't biology something we can study that's in front of our faces? We can actually watch plants growing, babies forming in a womb, organs working, cells replicating etc...
Maybe I'm living under a rock here, but I've never really seen evolution demonstrated.
i don't know how long it's been since you've been in biology, but yes, you are sort of out of it. just like gravity, evolution is just a name we give to the system of observable facts that demonstrate how there are more than one kind of living thing. it can be demonstrated to be true, again and again, just like gravity. it is NOT a hypothesis, which is the word that most people mean when they say theory.
for the most part, i think that people simply do not know what the tenets of evolution are. in most basic terms, the theory of evolution states that over time, the genetic composition of a species as a whole will shift due to the environmental pressures placed on that species.
evolution goes on to explain the ways in which a species can change, be it through selective breeding (girl dogs think short tailed boy dogs are ugly... short tail dogs get less nookie...next generation contains fewer short tailed dogs), selective predation (white bunnies are easier to see in the woods than brown bunnies... white bunnies get eaten more...next generation there are less white bunnies), environmental adaptations (goats with larger lungs can get to good food way up on the mountain...big-lung goats eat better... next generation there are more big-lung goats).
it isn't magic. it's very simple math. so simple that when it is explained, it is so self-evident that the most fundamental crazy can't honestly refute it, in my experience. but we have this growing population of people who are so intolerant to changing their minds that they refuse to learn. anything. and they refuse to risk allowing their children to learn. and they vote. WTF.
Re:Opposed to teaching Evolution as a fact.... (Score:5, Insightful)
As to evolution, of course you can observe it. We have nylon-digesting bacteria now when nylon didn't even exist before the 1930s. I was just reading about pupfish in Death Valley who have gone through a radical process of speciation since the valley dried up after 20,000 years ago.
If you wish to dip into some sort of solipsism or epistemological nihilism, be my guest, but what you're really doing is denying that any knowledge can be gathered that is reliable. You might as well deny that yesterday ever happened, and that the universe began at midnight, and everything is just fake memories. Just remember, if you want to deny or question evolution "because I've never seen it", then you have to be fair and basically call into question *all* knowledge, because everything is susceptible to such an argument.
If you actually want to learn something about evolution, then I recommend going to http://talkorigins.org/ [talkorigins.org] where there are dozens of articles dealing with all manner of evolutionary problems and explanations, with full citations so you can go to a library and check for yourself.
Re:Opposed to teaching Evolution as a fact.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course we have seen it. Its all around us. Its in the fossil record. By your logic, nobody has actually seen galaxies evolve because they are looking into the past via the fossil record of the universe - radiation (light, xrays, etc.)
Evolution can be easily traced back to the earliest creatures capable of leaving imprints of themselves behind. The entire process of developing lungs, limbs, spines, etc. etc. is all right there. Each step of the way. It is not a mystery. Just because it doesn't happen in a timespan and a place you personally can witness doesn't make it not so. The sun didn't form before your eyes did it? Did the mountains spring up so you could witness? Is geology a supposition? An educated guess?
You can demonstrate evolution in the lab with bacteria. You can demonstrate complex hydrocarbons doing all sorts of magical stuff in the lab (how life came to be in the first place.)
Tracing the biology of animals of this planet is a well known, well documented science. It is FACT, because the facts are right there in front of the entire worlds eyes, should they choose to look. Fish moving onto land, developing lungs, etc.
We have broken down the DNA code very well at this point, and can trace our origins that way as well. We can see where we differ and what we share with trees, worms, bacteria, dogs and elephants. Natural selection (the mechanism behind evolution) is everywhere as well. Look at dog and cat breeds. Cattle. Plants. Insects. You name it, you can change the creature itself by breeding.
Evolution is science. It is what the facts tell us. This is not a philosophical debate. There are no two sides. It is not a guess. It is about stupidity and blind faith. You can't reject evolution any more than you can reject combustion, or gravity. If people DO reject it, they are simply being ignorant and stupid. Plain and simple.
Basing "science" on something written thousands of years ago by people who were so far from us in their knowledge of the world is ridiculous. It is absurd. Why not simply observe the world? Observe what is right in front of our faces, and learn from it.
The Round Earth Theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it any wonder? (Score:2, Insightful)
They know science education is important, they know that without it, the won't be competitive in the global economy. With evolution framing all of our knowledge of biology, do you really expect these kids to be taken seriously when they enter the job market? How the hell are they going to get through an evolutionary biology class in college if they are taught to believe the mumbo jumbo ID BS?
On a related topic, does anyone have any thoughts on how the US in general can start to retain more of the science talent that we have? Any thoughts from those of you in other countries as to how you retain teachers?
As much as I would like to say the problem is just located on America's Wang, its not, we have a science education brain drain all over this country. There isn't nearly enough emphasis on science/engineering throughout our school system, and adding to the problem, we wont give work visas to the foreign students who get graduate degrees here.
We know the whole US cant just switch to a service economy with everyone ironing each others shirts for money, we have to drive/design new tech to maintain our leadership.
How can we reverse this trend?
Re:The Religious Mind (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Religious Mind (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is, how would you know it was god and not some advanced life form? Ancient humans with smaller brains would consider us or our mysterious technology 'gods'.
"...and faith in human reason (i.e. the theory of evolution) is not so well-founded. However, to put faith in the teachings (or books) of any religion is to put faith in human reason."
What *isn't* human reason? The fact of the matter is, if god showed up beside you and put (x book) in your hand, how would you know the words in it aren't from humans if they are in human language?
I think the whole evolution vs design controversy, is simply about the fear of death and the death of traditional morality and culture, it's not about god, it's not about truth, it's about a way of life and community that's decaying and the old gaurd is reacting to it. Western culture today is a mixed bag when you look at the divorce rate, two-parent families, and the declining birth-rate in north america.
I think more slashdotians need to read Oswald Spenglers Decline of the west, he predicted quite a lot and is quite correct that all knowledge is in fact religious in conception, science can't escape the fact that ultimately it is merely a *description* of the universe it doesn't tell us the true nature of the universe or even what 'nature' is.
All natural laws are merely descriptions of geometry and geometric and other relationships in a metaphorical (mathematical) language. Since if you have a sphere, what are you going to use to describe it? An abstract representational system (math).
Did a human say it? (Score:1, Insightful)
Tell me, how did you learn of the doctrine of the Trinity?
Did God come down from heaven and tell it to you?
Or did you hear about it at church from a human? Did he read it from a book that was written, published, and delivered by humans?
Are you even sure that your human intellect is correctly interpreting this doctrine?
True or false, the fact is humans have taught this idea to us, and as such it is subject to human fallibility. To put faith in it is to put faith in the humans that teach it, and all the human fallibilities to which their reason is subject.
You are bound to human reason no matter what conceptual or word games you try to play.
Re:Opposed to facts (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you're just perpetuating the ignorance.
A theory can be well-supported by evidence or not. It can be proven false by any example which shows it is incorrect. It cannot be proven true, though, because we could discover something in the future for which the theory cannot account.
Creationists essentially argue that since science cannot prove evolution it is a belief system. They promote evolution as 'scientific dogma', intentionally ignoring the fact that science adapts with new theories to explain new phenomena (i.e. science admits when it is wrong). They do this (specifically using ignorance of science's use of the word 'theory' - as you note) to argue that since the theory of evolution is taught, all 'equal' theories (which neither creationism nor ID really are) must be taught as well.
Re:Opposed to teaching Evolution as a fact.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Opposed to teaching Evolution as a fact.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Opposed to teaching Evolution as a fact.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:A perfect argument for school vouchers (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want my tax dollars going to fund some fundamentalists' brain-washing clinic / madrassa. Instead of splitting the nation into private enclaves, we ought to improve the public education system to the point where there isn't any need for an alternative.
talk about sad and daft (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The Religious Mind (Score:5, Insightful)
"All natural laws are merely descriptions of
You are missing a key concept here. Scientific theories are more than descriptions, they collectively form a 'model' of the observable world. As such, they may be used as predictive tools, which is not true of religious dogma. Given a certain set of conditions, outcome X will occur.
Religion, on the other hand, is descriptive of past events, and assigns causal relationships where there aren't any. Think of miracles - they can't be predicted, there's no evidence finding for a supernatural cause, and given the same set of initial conditions, the miracle can't be reproduced.
So evolution, natural selection, species environmental dynamics, etc. as a body of knowledge can be used to predict to a certain extent. Not exactly --what-- will occur, but that change in species characteristics will occur (speciation, see here: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html [talkorigins.org]) due to selection processes over time that have as their genesis factors such as isolation, mutation, interbreeding, etc.
Science is an axiomatic, rigorous, and predictive model, whereas religion is interpretation of history to fit a non-rigorous faith-based viewpoint.
Everything is a Theory (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, I suppose if the creationists did understand this concept they would attempt to use it against the scientific community. If nothing is absolutely certain, how then do you know anything, right?
*looks around at all of the gadgets, cars, buildings, medical technology, etc.*
Well, we seem to be applying science quite well despite the fact.
Re:I Believe... (Score:5, Insightful)
Second of all, the evidence shows that we and monkeys share a common ancestor. The fossil record shows this pretty well, but the molecular record is even more clear. You may not like that (I have no idea why), but that's where it sits. We and monkeys are related. We and seasquirts are related. We and bacteria are related. The distances may be greater, but we all share a common ancestor.
And this has nothing to do with God either.
Re:The Religious Mind (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is, how would you know it was god and not some advanced life form? Ancient humans with smaller brains would consider us or our mysterious technology 'gods'.
In any case, if there is one true God, who is it? Aphrodite? [wikipedia.org] Thor? [wikipedia.org] the Morrigan? [wikipedia.org] Siva? [wikipedia.org] Anubis? [wikipedia.org] Even if there were a God, what would make you think it was Jhwh? [wikipedia.org]
Mind you, dead funny to see some of these rednecks rolling up to the pearly gates in their Humvees to find that Allah is in charge...
Re:What really sucks is, this isn't really religio (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, this sort of behavior boils down to tribalism. People have a need to identify themselves as part of a group and what better way to do that then to contrast yourselves with those who are outside of your group. This is why some people glom onto fanatacisim for professional sports teams or fall victim to fashion trends. It's all about establishing your group identity. The Japanese have a notably complex system of in-groups and out-groups and expected behaviors when interacting with people in and out of your many groups.
The foaming at the mouth evangelicals love to portray themselves as under perilous attack by secular heathens despite the fact that North America has an overwhelmingly Christian culture and it isn't going away anytime soon. This is all part of the rhetoric established from the time that Christians really were a minority group who had to withstand the oppression of other dominant groups. Just once, I whish these fools could put themselves in the shoes of a Hindu or Buddhist immigrant to realize what it truly feels like to be a little fish in a bowl of sharks.
Of course this is one of the many problems with modern Christianity: it is permeated with an air of anti-intellectualism. You shouldn't try to question the "truth" as given to you by people serving as intermediaries for God (or direct from the KJV Bible for the literalists). To do so would be to admit that you don't have enough faith and without faith you're going to hell so just shut up and believe everything we tell you to believe in. We have things like idiot Protestants claiming that Roman Catholics aren't real Christians. (WTF?) People like Pat Robertson are lionized by millions and yet he openly expresses hatred for non-Christians. Somehow these people can claim to be followers of Jesus and yet they conveniently fail to realize the core meaning his teachings.
Re:What really sucks is, this isn't really religio (Score:2, Insightful)
You'll know someone is a Christian by his or her compassion, humility, and love. Someone who hates people because of their actions probably doesn't know Jesus very well.
Give me a break! (Score:2, Insightful)
Give me a break! How many hours does the evolution theory take in the whole U.S. middle/high school science program? It's probably much less than 1% of it.
What about the rest of it?
Nobody even mentions the sorry state of the science education in school in general, besides the evolution topic. I find it almost embarrassing that almost the only things that most of the high school graduates remember from the science classes is dissecting a frog.
Re:This is not necessarily a bad thing. (Score:1, Insightful)
Religion must remain out of the ~public~ schools. Or, start teaching ALL religions in the public schools. Including Buddhism, Witch Craft and Paganism.
The fact that it always comes down to only one religion, christianity, is a slap in the face to 5 billion other people. The majority of the population in Florida don't want their children learning YOUR religion. Take your evangelical offspring to your own church for the spin cycle.
Re:Opposed to teaching Evolution as a fact.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I Believe... (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone can... state how stupid I am for not following the scientific wave of the support of evolution.
You're not stupid for not following the scientific wave. You're stupid because your reasons for rejecting evolution are ignorant and wrongheaded, and you show no interest in correcting those reasons.
Evolution is a theory and has not been proven, just as the belief of God is not proven.
Unlike God, evolution has a vast amount of evidence from a vast number of sources to support the theory. To the extent that anything can be considered "proven" in science, evolution is. In scientific terms the basic theory is as firmly supported as the theory that the earth orbits the sun.
If I'm wrong and their is no heaven and their is no hell. Then so what.
What if you're wrong, not about God's existence, but how he wants to be worshiped? What if your failure to be a good Mormon is what damns you to Hell?
That's the problem with Pascal's Wager, as you've expressed it: It takes no account of believing in the wrong God.
But what if your wrong?
If I'm wrong, and a plausible scientific theory successfully challenges evolution, then it will make no difference to my day to day life, or to my metaphysical view of the universe. My reasons for being a moral, happy person have nothing to do with either God or evolution.
I don't believe that we, just by chance, came into existence.
Evolution doesn't say that we came into existence "just by chance". See my first statement on why you're stupid.
Re:I Believe... (Score:3, Insightful)
And abiogenesis is a rather active area of research, which, like evolution, quantum mechanics, geology, climatology and every other science you care to name, does not mention God either.
As to multicellular organisms, there are a rather large number of colonial single-celled organisms which give us a good picture of how multicellular organisms evolved. That isn't even really a problem for biology, and hasn't been for decades. The real open question is how some prokaryote lineage evolved into eukaryotes. You see, you don't even know where the problems in evolutionary biology lie, because you're just aping some bullshit you've read on Creationists sites or from Creationist literature.
Oh, and get rid of the word "proof". Proof is for alcohol and mathematics. Science doesn't "prove" things in the sense that you think it does.
Re:I Believe... (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who has any understanding of evolution knows that "just by chance" is an extremely poor description of evolution. Randomness plays a very, very small role in the evolutionary descent of organisms.
I am a Christian, and like many others, it doesn't matter what you say to me
Can I quote you on that?
That simple fact indicates why your philosophy fails: it is, like all faith, completely resistant to evidence. It doesn't matter what you are shown, explained, or demonstrated: you will perist in a pre-determined pattern of belief. When you decide a belief before hearing arguments, it is philosophically equivalent to sticking your fingers in your ears and going "wah wah wah I can't hear you". Most religious people won't admit it as you just have.
Re:of course they did (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Did a human say it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Opposed to teaching Evolution as a fact.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Evolution is what it is because nothing else can explain observation. It flows from the facts. It is not a hypothesis. It is a theory. Which means it is testable with experiment, and fits all observed facts. Nothing has ever been shown to prove otherwise. Ergo, it is fact.
How so? Is all fact open for debate? This subject is closed. It is not dogma. Is relativity dogma? Are plate tectonics dogma? What did I say that was stupid and dogmatic? Because I don't question every fact?
The reasons I have given ARE scientific, because the reasons were listed as the testable, provable real things that make up evolution. Observable natural selection. The fossil record. Speciation. The DNA record. etc. etc.
Just because I say that people are stupid if they disagree with fact, does that make me dogmatic? Not at all. If you disagree with me on the cellular structure of a potato, just because, well, you are being stupid. I can show you in a microscope the provable fact of that structure. Same goes for something like evolution.
Certainly, things like quantum gravity are open ended discussions, because we have no theory to fit all facets of observation in that realm. Something like evolution is simply not debatable, unless new, before now unknown facts come to light that do not fit observation and experiment. Since these things have yet to surface, I will call anybody who rejects evolution an idiot, because they are. For whatever reason, because there is NO valid reason. Plain and simple.
You are totally confusing science fact, with belief and religious dogma. I do not believe anything about evolution or science. Belief has nothing to do with it. I do not have faith in science. I do not accept it because I feel I must to support some other agenda. I accept it because it is what reality is, it is what is testable and observable. At the very least it is the quest to understand what is testable and observable.
Re:Opposed to teaching Evolution as a fact.... (Score:2, Insightful)
To quote a friend of mine: "debate about evolution? man.. did we just go back 150 years?"
Re:What really sucks is, this isn't really religio (Score:3, Insightful)
Religious labels being applied to groups that do obnoxious things is why so many people think religion is bad.
Re:It's not about evolution...it's about God (Score:2, Insightful)
You also probably do not know how any of those apply to either cosmology, the greater field of astronomy, or your everyday life.
Finally, when you "zoom in" enough to get to our solar system, you quite evidently do not know about the early solar system, or how simple things like density gradients and angular momentum give you the right concentrations of materials at the right distances.
You also are using an outdated model by which early organic molecules and polymers may have been formed. There are many potential models right now, and we are currently refining our data on early Earth before we start to claim definitive superiority for any number of models. What we have observed in the laboratory, however, is that certain reducing atmospheres with electrical discharges can produce amino acids and other organics. It so happens this was probably rather unlike early Earth's atmosphere, but we admitted that a while ago. Didn't you get the memo? Or were you too busy ignoring what scientists said?
And what is life anyway? You certainly have never given a good definition of it. Probably too busy blindly claiming your 2000 year old book was better than the 3000 year old stories of other cultures. And of course, much better than current-day science.
Your argument, as many others that are based around the claim that scientists live with a "religion of chance" seems to rely on the fact that its debaters have no concept of probability or of how mind-bogglingly big the universe is, or how long 14.7 GYr really is. But you have no problem in believing an invisible perfect being existed before the universe, was uncreated, more complex than the universe, created the universe, and in this one tiny tiny tiny tiny pocket in this completely average star 2/3 out of a more-massive-than-average galaxy a little bit off a main arm on a relativley small planet either imperfectly created human beings, who happen to be the three-dimensional representation of this mystical thing, or, directed some special little fatty chemicals and sugar chains over 3.6 GYrs to get to these amazingly imperfect beings.
Oh man, and I'm not even touching the morality argument.
Re:What really sucks is, this isn't really religio (Score:5, Insightful)
Religion is what you do religiously (Score:3, Insightful)
Science does require faith for the same reason that accepting the Bible as describing spiritual events requires faith: people do not, for the most part, directly experience the things they read about or are told. Sure, in theory, you could reproduce the Michelson-Morley experiment, but have you? Did you witness the Gettysburg address? Or do you just accept that someone has? Even if you are very skeptical, you cannot ever verify ever bit of scientific knowledge you depend on. People depend on a structure of reasoning and a framework to put those bits of knowledge into so that they *could* be tested, but practically, we trust each other (most of the time). Yes, they *are* different, but there are fundaments that are the same, and, even with religion, one should not blindly trust everything one is handed. That is why it is important to study and explore, to figure out what has meaning to you.
I am not saying that scientific reasoning and religious reasoning are the same. They are not. But in the end, meaning is where it is at; the rest fills time.
Kids get shafted; need to make their own choice (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Religious Mind (Score:3, Insightful)
Now I'm curious, what do you think evolution is?
Re:talk about sad and daft (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:of course they did (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a real, urgent problem - we are lagging behind other countries and losing our competitive edge, and we wonder why this is when our attitude towards science is: "The Bible is as good at scieence as peer-reviewed journals." As long as this attitude persists, we'll see people like George W. Bush and other anti-science evangelicals shaping our government's science policy, and that affects us all.
It also has to do with the kind of thinking this attitude promotes. Why critically analyze something when you can just think what you've been told to think by your elders? That's not good for democracy, that's not good for anyone.
How to fix? Just aggressively answer every anti-evolution statement, and help sponsor and support people fighting to keep evolution the ONLY scientific theory of the origin of life taught in schools.
Re:of course they did - correction? (Score:4, Insightful)
While there are a significant number of people in the USA who honestly believe in Bible-based fundamentalism (in various ways personal to themselves), many are pandered to by corrupt portions of the ulta-moneyed class in order to maintain their power.
Put it another way, the Bush/Cheney crowd don't honestly care about evolution, stem-cell issues, anti-gay histeria, etc., but if by putting up a good face to these issues they can get votes from a base that helps elect them to allow them to cut taxes to the ultra-wealthy, deregulate just about anything where a big buck can be made, eliminate the inheritance tax, give our social-security to Wall Street to manage, get a pointless war going to do god-knows-what in the second-biggest oil producing area on the planet and provide unsupervised billions of $ in free money or no-bid contracts to buddies, squash education and heath care spending, (etc.), they will gladly pay that price. And we see that they do.
Re:Religion is what you do religiously (Score:3, Insightful)
So while, yes, I take it on a kind of faith that various scientific theories are accurate models of reality, there are some pretty damn good reasons that I trust them. Religious people have, by definition, no reason to trust god. There is no evidence, and what evidence some religious people might dig up would never be reproduceable or verifiable. Or if someone were to say, "the evidence is all around you," their model of reality still offers no logical explanation of why or how.
Anyway, I (once again) no longer use the word faith with regard to science because faith implies belief without evidence or reason.
--Ted