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.''"
Re:Opposed to facts (Score:5, Interesting)
Gravity is a fact. The theory(s) that explain it and its effects are not facts.
Here are two links which cover this topic:
Link 1 [wilstar.com]
Link 2 [fsteiger.com]
Re:Listen, and understand! (Score:5, Interesting)
So when it goes to court, the ACLU lawyers can throw down a ton of quotes showing that the justification for this move was religious, the First Amendment rights of the children were violated, and the books are shut. Of course, it'll screw the kids over because all that money wasted by religious fanatics trying to force a public school system into becoming an organ of religious indoctrination.
Re:So....... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is not necessarily a bad thing. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Opposed to teaching Evolution as a fact.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Opposed to teaching Evolution as a fact.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Not as bad as it seems... (Score:5, Interesting)
His example was the bird flu scare. Absolutely nobody went around say: "don't worry it cannot possible evolve into something deadly to us, it was designed for birds and will stay that way". So when push comes to shove these people really do believe in science and evolution. So in the end they are really nothing more than hypocrits which, since most of them are politicians, we already knew anyway.
Educated Educators!? (Score:2, Interesting)
In my daughter's so-called 'Geometry' class in high school, planar forms were 'studied'. Formulas were memorized. The concepts of doing proofs and logical deduction or formal systems were not mentioned. When I brought this up to the teacher ( a sports coach) he didn't know what I was talking about.
Education as vocational school doesn't need this stuff, and besides isn't thinking a little suspect in America anyway these days?
Re:Opposed to teaching Evolution as a fact.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, it shouldn't have a "String Theory", but that doesn't mean it can't have "String Theory"; string theory seems to me to be a field of "theory" in the unenumerable sense used in mathematics (e.g., "knot theory"), that takes as its underlying basis the conjectures of a particular fundamental model of physics (I'm not sure its even a "hypothesis" in the conjecture->hypothesis->theory heirarchy, since I'm not sure that clear tests for falsification have yet been proposed—which would make it a viable hypothesis—much less carried out, repeatably, without falsifying it—which would make it a viable theory.)
Read Some Voltaire (Score:5, Interesting)
More of us should read Voltaire's writings. He wrote a great deal about fanaticism and religion (he was not an atheist). Some quotes:
One of my favorites:
From Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary:
Believing that the Earth is 10000 years old in the face of hard scientific evidence is like taking dreams for reality.
Methinks in these days of growing fanaticism, both religious and ideological, we would do well to learn from what Voltaire wrote.
Re:Did a human say it? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that's dead wrong.
It's actually pretty tough for our child sometimes, who we brought up to be caring and considerate of the feelings of others without the fear of a trip to hell if she isn't, when her friends invite her to go to Church with them. She goes along sometimes but afterwards, if there's a study group, she has to excuse herself because she doesn't know what to say or do. What to think even. She tells us that she pretends to pray so they other kids don't think she's a freak, but she really has no clue who she's meant to be praying to.
At least she won't go to hell for doing so, because there is no such thing of course.
Re:Opposed to teaching Evolution as a fact.... (Score:3, Interesting)
And yes, religion is very, very silly. It amuses me to tears that some people read ancient myths and dismiss them as the storytelling of ignorant primitives, and then go to church to listen to a 2000 year old book about God making the world out of mud and telling us not to eat shellfish or worship cows.
Taylor County, Florida School Board (Score:5, Interesting)
Now if the state is trying to force these people to accept evolution as an explanation of the origin of the universe, I'd be miffed about it as well. On the other hand, if they came up with this bit all by themselves, I think that they really do require someone to explain what evolution really is. I'd feel sorry for the good people of this county, if they hadn't been the ones electing the board in the first place.
Don't Hire Any Florida Graduates (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, that's unfair to some students, but these willful Luddites need to be taught a lesson.
Re:On theories (Score:3, Interesting)
(Theory defitition 1): "supposition" or "hunch". This is the use in the sentence "If my theory is correct, then
But in science, it is never truly correct to use theory in this sense, though even scientists speaking casually often use it like that. The correct word for this in science is "hypothesis".
(Theory definition 2): "a description of a process that explains observed facts". These vary in their degree of supportability, and sometimes, multiple warring theories are supported to different degrees by existing experiment. For example, there are at the moment multiple theories about what process gives matter mass. Examples: The theory that matter is atomic, i.e. not continuously divisible. The theory that natural selection coupled with variation leads to evolution. The theory that particles have mass because of their interaction with the Higgs field.
(Definition 3): "a body of knowledge and understanding that supports much other past and future work"; it describes an entire framework of internally consistent principles, understanding and data. Meanings used in this sense:
* Atomic theory (the understanding of the structure of the atom and it's constituent particles and interactions that underlies all of nuclear science and chemistry)
* Evolutionary theory (the understanding of how organisms and species give rise to one another, and the genetic mechanisms thereof that underlies all of biology)
It's instructive to note that evolutionary theory and atomic theory are approximately equivalent in terms of evidentiary support and use in their fields. Both arose as type-2 definitions around the same time (mid 19th-century), supplanting prior theories (matter is continuous, God created all organisms at one time and they have been unchanged since then). Both have turned into type 3 theories that completely underly the relevant fields (chemistry, biology).
Religious fundies don't understand the difference between these definitions, and they think evolution is a "type 1" theory, more properly called a hypothesis. It is not. Evolution is the entire framework of over a century of biological research. Attempting to understand research in biology while rejection evolution is like attempting to understand chemistry while rejecting the atom. Or attempting to understand higher math while rejecting arithmetic. It's flat-out ludicrous.
Re:The Religious Mind (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's remember here how much influence the Sumero-Akkadian religion was having on the peoples of the ancient Near East. The Genesis cosmography is clearly Sumero-Akkadian in origin, and Genesis, including the Eden story, owes at lot to that earlier civilization.
Posted Response (Score:3, Interesting)
To Rob Poole and biblethumper, excellent responses.
Also, I would like to add for clarity that "theory" in the scientific context (or any other) does not mean a blind guess, or even an educated guess...
A theory, contrary to its colloquial usage, is defined by Webster's as "The analysis of a set of FACTS in their relation to one another."
Thus, that evolution occurs is a fact. HOW it occurs is what The Theory of Evolution proposes to explain. It explains it so well that it has been used to predict much of the cause-effect relationships that have resulted in most of the medical care you receive today. Were it not for evolutionary biology, very little of today's medical expertise would exist. You cannot peruse any corner of medicine and/or science without running invariably into evolutionary biology, paleobiology, genetics, heredity and all the myriad life sciences that were, of all things, spawned unknowingly by the discovery of a monk (the aforementioned Mendel).
The problem with imagining that Creationism is anything remotely resembling a theory is that it consists of no facts. When questioned as to the facts that support it, a mishmash of suppositions are presented, but no evidence. When asked what Creationism proposes, no cogent explanation is provided. In short, Creationism/Intelligent Design fell apart upon very basic scrutiny in Kitzmiller et. al. v Dover Board of Education, during a cross-examination of ID's biggest "expert", Michael Behe, a molecular biologist from Lehigh University... The court testimony of Behe exposed that Creationism/Intelligent Design consists of no direct evidence, proposes nothing, disproves nothing, and proves nothing.
It should be noted, however, that contrary to Rob Poole's post that the Theory of Evolution doesn't have "just as much" evidence as Newtonian and Einsteinian Theories of Gravity. The Theory of Evolution, in fact, has many times the evidence behind it. Over 150 years of findings published in thousands upon thousands of peer-reviewed scientific articles.
It is useful to note that Mendel, who did not understand yet the mechanism of heredity but observed its occurrence, was vindicated three centuries later by James Watson and F.H.C. Crick's discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA, the mechanism of heredity (not unlike how Arno Penzias and Bob Wilson discovered in 1960 the Cosmic Microwave Background that Dirac predicted some 40 years earlier). It is also useful to note that modern genetic research on homeobox genes, the "master control switches" of huge sets of genes, are vindicating key aspects of Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge's Punctuated Equilibrium -- namely the abrupt and drastic periods of divergence interrupting long periods of data-backed, not gap-backed, stasis.
How does the Bible explain the interchangeablity of the Pax-6 homolog between Drosophila melanogaster and Homo sapiens sapiens? Why did the Bible not predict the structure of DNA? If two humans can do it, surely god could have proffered an explanation of his own invention.
There has not been in the history of modern science (circa the advent of chemistry and physics) a more demonstrable theory with more evidence to support it. If you refute evolution, you might as well walk off a cliff and hope for the best.
I agree with those who say that faith and science are not entirely incompatible. But whereas science does not attempt to do anything but find facts, religiion does not do anything but pursue meaning... and poorly at that. So in a way they ARE incompatible. But where science is the best system for testing hypotheses and deriving what is fact, as the scientific process is more successful than any system before it for doing so, religion is no better than a great philosophical treatise or a poignant fiction in giving human beings a sense of self-worth and meaning to find their place. The difference is that, Siskel and Ebert's cutthroat debates aside, usually
Re:The Religious Mind (Score:3, Interesting)
I cannot agree in principle with that presumption. Faith in God (zero evidence, zero logical consistency, negative social utility) "well-founded" but 'faith' in evolution (overwhelming evidence, extraordinary cross-discipline consistency, staggering social utility vis-a-vis the natural sciences) "no so well-founded"? Perhaps you're not living on the same planet is me?
As an aside, I find it absolutely fascinating that there is one non-scientific explanation of the Universe for which there is actual merit: the notion that all of our reality is a computer simulation a la The Matrix. That merit, of course, is that - unlike most other religious explanations of the universe - we at least know The Matrix explanation to be possible.
Re:The funny thing is (Score:2, Interesting)
There you go again. Atheism is not a belief system. I am very serious about logic and scientific honesty and am very serious about evangelizing atheism and making religions go away. That means while I cannot absolutely prove my position, I can defend it fairly well. That said, I get fervor only when someone doesn't understand what I'm saying or accept that we can use logic in reasoning even about religion.
You're right of course. However, some people are claiming that a god-like intelligence had something to do with creation, and might even be meddling with the world's affairs now! Such a god MUST leave behind evidence. If he does something that has a significant effect, that effect must be measurable. Because science is simply careful looking at the evidence and science does not see such an effect, it's outrageous to claim such effects still exist.
What if god created us and then disappeared? ID, you know. Well, if I designed humans, I'd make brains understand symmetry. It would be very easy to apply what I've learned about moving my right hand to my left one. A really simple mirroring. In reality, my left hand is almost useless compared to the right one. Clearly I wasn't designed by intelligence.
If there is a god who didn't create the world and doesn't have any other effect either.. Well, gee, what a god, you know. He might exist, but so what? That's not a useful hypothesis.