Evolution Battle Brews In Texas 916
oxide7 writes "In Texas, a battle is brewing over the teaching of evolutionary theory as the Board of Education considers a new set of instructional materials to be used in science classrooms. [Two sections of the new material] deal with the origin of life. Those sections say the 'null hypothesis' is that there had to be some intelligent agency behind the appearance of living things. It is up to the scientists proposing a naturalistic explanation to prove their case."
sad isn't it ? (Score:5, Insightful)
that we have to spend time and effort keeping creationism from being taught as "science" in the
21st century.
Do people in this country really understand that the right wing religious nut-cases are out to make this
country a theocracy ? American taliban indeed.
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:5, Insightful)
I went to a religious school which had no problem teaching the theory of evolution in science class AND teaching the Adam and Eve/Genesis thing in religious classes (of course we spend most of our time in religious classes colouring stuff in and generally mucking around, while we go to do experiments and other fun stuff in science lass). Why cant they just do this in Texas?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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I find it curious that for all the backwards stuff the Catholic Church does, evolution doesn't seem to bother them in the slightest.
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Literal bible interpretation is a protestant thing, to varying degrees among the various groups (the American flavours seem to be the most extreme in this regard). The Catholic church interprets many parts of the Bible as metaphors and they don't consider Genesis to be how it really went down (who was there to write that down anyway?). The Catholic church sees evolution as a valid way for God to create the life on Earth and an omniscient and omnipotent deity could easily make sure the universe forms as it did just by configuring the big bang properly, never mind influencing the destinies of individual parts that may need a little prodding to get right.
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:5, Interesting)
It is true that a central part of protestantism was "Sola scriptura", that the Bible contains all knowledge necessary for salvation and holiness. This was a rebellion against the power of the Pope and the Holy See to interpret and issue doctrine as very many of the practices that gave the Church massive power and wealth were not founded in the Bible, particularly the selling of indulgences. Also that salvation comes through faith alone, while Catholicism required rites performed by the priest - without the Church, there was no salvation. A central part of Protestantism was that all would read the Bible in their local language, back then only the priests and other highborn that learned Latin would even be able to read it. How could a Catholic have a literal interpretation of something he couldn't read? The priests told you the road to salvation and you followed.
To me it sounds like you are placing all of the Protestant groups on the "more literal" side of things. That is really not true at all, we are just far more diverse. That comes from that there is no one supreme commander of the Protestant churches, while if you're Catholic then you either yield to the Pope's authority or you're not a Catholic. And to be honest, the US seems to have far more issues with Catholic beliefs such as regarding contraception and abortion because the Pope is opposed to it while most protestant churches - at least around here - have accepted it. I think I can speak for most of Northern Europe when I say we consider the Bible to be just as much allegories as the Catholic church - perhaps even more so - and that teaching evolution here is not an issue at all. As far as I understand the main issue in the US are Baptists, which make up most of the Bible Belt. But they are something like 100 out of 800 million protestants.
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:5, Insightful)
"I find it curious that for all the backwards stuff the Catholic Church does, evolution doesn't seem to bother them in the slightest."
You shouldn't. A basis of all (thocratic) religions is that it explains a lot of things but demonstrates nothing.
Now, a "clever" religion (and the Catholic one has evolutioned itself in this regard as a mean to survive -as a civil corporation) can explain everything while still demostrating nothing.
Some examples:
* Some religion guru comes with the idea that his god woke up some day and decided that his almigtyness would create life, intelligence and everything; so the guru writes the Genesis and so be it.
* After a lot of years the modern gurus of that religion see that they are losing ground because science made obvious the Genesis can't be nothing but a child's tale. No problem.
What do evidences support? Well, it seems that there were a big bang. What can't science demonstrate, at least today? How it was that the big bang happened. No problem: there were a big bang and God made it happen.
What do evidences support? Well, it seems that living beings evolution by means of selective pressure on random mutations. No problem: living beings evolution by means of pressure on mutations but there are not really random but directed by God almightiness so they only seem to be random but working in accord to His plan.
What can't science demonstrate? That there's a soul that survives after death. No problem: that's God's realm: there *is* an indetectable soul that lifes eternally.
You see, if you are intelligent enough and work on a hypothese unfalsable and that doesn't demonstrate anything you can rework your model without resigning to your main tenets all you want.
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Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would like to see you explain evolution to humans 4000 years ago when they have no idea about genes.
Darwin didn't have any idea about genes. Well, he knew there was some method of inheritance, but not the chemistry. Evolution can be described, as he did, very simply, using the observations of existing animals, and how their qualities are inherited from one generation to the next, as farmers have observed, and used for breeding plants and animals for millennia. Dig up a few fossils too, and you could have made a case in ancient Greece in 500 BC. 4000 years ago? Maybe in Sumeria. They were pretty advanced then already.
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I find it curious that for all the backwards stuff the Catholic Church does, evolution doesn't seem to bother them in the slightest.
I have a LOT of relatives on the inside of the C.C. so I have some insight here.
The argument provided is perfectly valid for almost any religion. Only in the backwoods of TX would it be interpreted as exclusively biblical vs reality. If you never travel outside the TX back woods where 99% of the citizen population is evangelical christian, and 99% of the illegal alien population is Catholic, then its easy to warp your mind into binary thinking where the whole world is either christian or anti-christian, s
"Eminent scientists" rejected big bang theory ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it curious that for all the backwards stuff the Catholic Church does, evolution doesn't seem to bother them in the slightest.
FWIW, the vatican observatory does real academic research: Planetary Sciences, Stellar Astronomy, Extragalactic Astronomy, Cosmology.
"With support from the Vatican government, the scientists at the Vatican Observatory have a freedom to choose research topics not constrained by three-year proposal cycles or passing scientific fashions. As a result, our research topics, reflecting the wide range of interests in our staff, can focus on long-term survey programs and sometimes risky cutting-edge topics."
http://www.vaticanobservatory.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=38&Itemid=145 [vaticanobservatory.org]
Also, the current theory for the origin of the universe, the big bang theory, was developed by a priest and it was rejected by the "open minded" eminent scientists of the day because it was developed by a priest and "smelled of creationism". The term "big bang" was used by these eminent scientists as a pejorative.
"Monsignor Georges Lemaître, a priest from the Catholic University of Louvain, proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe, he called it his "hypothesis of the primeval atom". The framework for the model relies on Albert Einstein's general relativity and on simplifying assumptions (such as homogeneity and isotropy of space). The governing equations had been formulated by Alexander Friedmann. In 1929, Edwin Hubble discovered that the distances to far away galaxies were generally proportional to their redshifts — an idea originally suggested by Lemaître in 1927. Hubble's observation was taken to indicate that all very distant galaxies and clusters have an apparent velocity directly away from our vantage point: the farther away, the higher the apparent velocity."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang_Theory [wikipedia.org]
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't believe people don't get this. Science isn't where you go "we have no fucking clue how _____ happened, so we're going to say God did it", it's "we have no fucking clue how _____ happened, so let's apply the scientific method to this phenomenon and see if we can come up with an explanation for it". The theory of evolution crosses over into biology, paleontology, and many other bona fide scientific fields. Intelligent design challenges you to watch a sunrise and claim with a straight face that some force other than God could have made that possible.
Whether you're religious or not - intelligent design has no business being in a science classroom.
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Taking tax money meant for public education and using it to proselytize? No. Absolutely not. Taxes should not be used for religious purposes. Believe what you want, but pay for it yourself and keep it to yourself.
Teaching Adam and Eve along side of Darwin, implying they're equally credible or even the same subject? No. Absolutely not. That's absurd. Creationism and intelligent design are fundamentally anti-scientific. "The only way to understand any of this is to believe what we tell you" is as far from science as you can get. You may as well teach "intelligent math" in math class and teach kids that 2+2=4, but some people believe that addition is not true, and 2 and 2 will always be 2 and 2, never 4.
Already most students will never consider the evidence for and against evolution on their own, so for them, evolution is already more faith than science. There are a variety of reasons for that. I sincerely think that teaching science and religion in the same breath will confuse them even further. We'll take a giant step back from being a scientific culture, and a giant step toward ignorance.
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Adam and Eve/Genesis creation account does have a place in the classroom. It's called mythology.
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why cant they just do this in Texas
Because in Texas religious belief is part of the "social government" and economy. People that go to church are not just "church goers", they are members of a church with all of its hierarchy included in their socioeconomic lives. The church member's status in the church is related to the respect and job opportunities they are given by other members. People not of the church have no predetermined respect for them. In order to gather respect, and underlings, people have to be made into members. This is perpetuated like a pyramid scheme. That isn't to say there isn't a benefit to this. Once a person becomes a member they are granted certain opportunities, job, job status (manager vs. grunt), etc... depending on where they fall in the hierarchy of the church. For example, a Deacon in a church is not likely to be working fast food. Children taught things like evolution, free thinking, black/gray/white vs. black/white are not as easily made into members.
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:4, Interesting)
I went to a religious school which had no problem teaching the theory of evolution in science class AND teaching the Adam and Eve/Genesis thing in religious classes (of course we spend most of our time in religious classes colouring stuff in and generally mucking around, while we go to do experiments and other fun stuff in science lass). Why cant they just do this in Texas?
I live in Texas and I can tell you that it's a bit complex. First of all, the state has a big inferiority complex. They used to be the biggest state, until Alaska came along. Now they're the second biggest. Believe it or not, that seriously galls a lot of Texans. Next, they picked the wrong side in the Civil War, er... excuse me, "the War of Northern Aggression", only a few years after kicking Mexico's ass and gaining their own independence. Going 1 and 1 in the two biggest events in your states history may seem, well, acceptably average for most states but not the one that likes to think that it has some special place in the world. So, as is often the case with folks with over-inflated egos, Texans are insecure and scared, and scared people often turn to religion for answers. Cramming their religious views down the throats of children makes them feel like they are at least morally superior to "all them states with all them states with all them intellectual elites in 'em." Smart people, even people who are confident enough to led God fend for himself in spreading "the truth", are threatening to your average Texan.
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're not of one of the faiths the school offers courses for (or you don't want to deal with what the documents say is your religion) you get what amounts to comparative theology class in that you compare how various faiths deal with the things covered in regular religion class. Again a useful thing to know since you're going to deal with people of various faiths later on even if you're areligious.
Does that mean the steeple has replaced the classroom? No, it just means that we can apply sociology to the Bible. It also means that there's little reason to mention any religious stance on anything in other classes. So it always astounds me that American schools apparently have no space for any studies regarding religion, leading both to idiot lawmakers trying to sneak in the Bible as a textbook elsewhere (hello, Intelligent Design) and to morons who don't even know how Christianity, Judaism and Islam are connected.
Yes, there is Sunday school. But I doubt that it's attended by most people, that each major faith has an equally-popular alternative and that Sunday school will teach comparative theology.
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:4, Informative)
WTF, please don't bring up the religion classes in Germany as a good example. They're not. It's all kinds of messed up. The public is paying the teachers' salaries, while the churches get to pick them and pretty much tell them what to teach. A catholic teacher recently got fired because he is gay -- from a public school!
If anything, schools should teach comparative religious studies embedded in a class on ethics and philosophy and maybe even logic. No reason to segregate kids if you're doing that. If you want your kids to have a religious education and go to Sunday school, that's your business, but don't do it in school time and do it with your own money. And if your kid doesn't want to go to Sunday school, well, I guess they've made their choice?!
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Yes, but in Germany the class is clearly labeled. It's called religious education and it's an easy to understand sign that this hour can be used to do useful stuff like copying math homework or debug your program. It's like TV where shows like Wheel of Fortune or other similar ones have to display a "Dauerwerbesendung" (permanent ad show) sign during their stay so you know that you're being fed bull.
It's a bit of a difference to go into a class and know you're going to hear about a religious text or going t
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Because it would only be fair to teach all religions.
Why? There certainly isn't time for this in school, any more than there's time to teach all branches of mathematics in maths classes. At my school, religious studies classes covered:
None of them were taught as the truth, they were all examined in their social and historical context (e.g. looking at the various creation myths, comparing them to the culture in which they emerged). We also covered Norse, Greek, and Roman religious beliefs in other subjects at school.
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Go and teach faith, but call a spade a spade.
I have zero problem with a religious teacher being sent from some religious group to tell kids how the world came into existence according to their theology. But tell the kids that this is going to be a religious class and what they're going to hear has its root in some religion's holy book. Don't mix religion and science, "religious science" ranks up there with Microsoft Works and military intelligence as the oxymorons of the ages.
Re:Each theory? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder why there's this big issue with creationism in the US. Even the Roman Catholic church (ya know, the guys in old women's dresses with the inquisition and all) have no beef with the idea of a big bang and evolution. I guess they learned from their Gallileo fiasco. And even back then there were voices that said that the Bible only tells you how to get into heaven, not how heaven works, and that's pretty much their stance today: Are there parts in the Bible that seem to contradict how the world works? Yes. Does it matter? No, because it's God's word and if we understand it wrong, it's us that fail, we're mere men, we can't understand the plan and word of God. Ever. Case closed.
Why do Creationists feel the need to push their faith into science? What's the gain? I see mostly a dangerous side effect: That pupils will see that they're being taught bullshit and extrapolate that if you get to hear bull in one class, it won't be much better for the others.
Re:Each theory? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it plays well to the yokels and brings comeuppance to those high and mighty professors with their useless book-learning and fancy education. And it makes them liberals mad, which is a bonus.
And one wonders how we've gotten so royally fucked as a nation...
Actually, the serious answer to your question is "Creationists feel the need to push their faith into science because replacing science and reason with magical thinking and superstition is a necessary part of destroying a middle-class and creating a new feudal state. You have to attack all of the empowering institutions to make that happen: science, education, a reliable news media, social security programs etc. and replace them with fear, superstition, divided communities, regionalism, ignorance. And the final step for the entities pushing this agenda, as always, is...Profit!"
Re:Each theory? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to fail to see the real problem.
The majority of citizens have taken the word of their respective cults as reality, and fail to recognize anything factual. Factual evidence is passed off as garbage, and ancient fairy tales are the truth. Worse, they don't even cite their own fairy tales properly, and continue to spew more recent urban legends that have been adopted by the cult majority as fact.
It is an amazingly sad state of affairs, that the majority of the population have become so complacent in following the lies, that they no longer think for themselves.
I am now a resident of the certifiably most insane nation in the world, which unfortunately also possesses the largest quantity and most dangerous weapons in the world.
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:5, Informative)
My father loves to complain how the US has no standard for what it takes to be a priest. The Lutheran and Catholic church both have schools that one has to have gone through to be qualified for priesthood so the preachers actually know what the religion is about and how to present it properly, the TV preachers in the US are free to make up any nonsense they want without being stripped of their title.
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:4, Insightful)
>>We haven't given up, but more than 75% of the population are such cultists.
Don't confuse fundamentalists (your cultists) with mainstream religions. There's no contradiction between being a Christian and a scientist, though there certainly are problems when fundies try to become scientists.
Don't confuse cults with religions either - atheist bigotry aside, they're two very different things.
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Don't confuse cults with religions either - atheist bigotry aside, they're two very different things.
Isn't it a staple of freshman English courses at university to ask what this difference is, to discover it's only in the cultural perception, or connotation, and there is no fundamental distinction? Or did we just do that because I didn't go to school in Texas?
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> Pretty much any belief in any part of the bible
I think you are confusing belief with "literal belief" --- the difference is sometimes used as the distinguishing feature between religion and fundamentalist religion. E.g., one Christian when reading creation story believes in it as a parable for the current physical understanding of the Big Bang and its aftermath, while a fundamentalist Christian reads it and believes that the whole deal took 7 days as we know them.
I have the distinct impression that man
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I have the distinct impression that many of the atheists who attempt to aggressively debunk religion actually have little understanding of what exactly they are debunking, never having done actual research into what the majority of moderately religious people actually believe and how it affects how they behave.
Oh, please, get off the cross. We need the wood.
There isn't an atheist in America who hasn't been soaked in Christian idiocy their entire lives - moderate, fundamentalist, Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, the whole whacked out ball 'o wax. We know exactly what you tools believe in. You NEVER SHUT UP ABOUT IT. You even have 24/7 television networks spewing the stupidity 365 days a year.
Well, I shouldn't say you NEVER shut up about it, because whenever the fundies attempt to do something pig ignorant, like t
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"one Christian when reading creation story believes in it as a parable"
Still, when one Christian reads that Christ is the very Son of God and God Himself, because God is One and Three, he things that's absolutly -albeit misteriously, true.
What makes him read a phrase in the Bible stated as a fact and say to himself "that's a parable" or "that's the reveled truth"?
Quite convenient deciding 'post facto' what your corpus of believes will be but that's rationalizing your prejudices, not religion.
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What makes him read a phrase in the Bible stated as a fact and say to himself "that's a parable" or "that's the reveled truth"?
If he's a Catholic, he asks a priest (who asks his superiors, until you get to the Pope, who asks God and then tells everyone what he thinks God said). If he's a protestant, he makes his own mind up, and forms a new flavour of Christianity if he disagrees too strongly with the existing ones...
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:4, Informative)
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>>Doesn't atheist bigotry pisses you off? I mean really! The nerve of those people stepping on religion's territory.
While you get +1 internets for being the first non-anonymous coward to respond to me (I mean, seriously, people - it doesn't take a lot of courage to post as an atheist on /.), really it's just a show of ignorance when atheists intentionally (or unintentionally) confuse religion and cult, or conflate fundamentalists with mainstream Christians. It's like making a joke about "all those Ind
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>>And frankly if you are an Xtian and don't stand up and say that is bullshit every time a fundie opens their mouth`
It's "Xian", not Xtian. X stands for Christ, based on the Greek Chi symbol. Perhaps you're a Xtina fan? (Oh, you know you are!)
I do actually speak out against fundies every time I get the chance, and argue with them relentlessly in real life, or in fundie breeding grounds like The Blaze. I can't stand stupidity in any form, and so I argue against their banning of any alcohol (wait, didn'
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>>Pray tell: what *is* the difference between a religion and a cult?
When I studied it in some social science class in college, it was defined generally by having three traits: 1) a cult of personality built around a charismatic leader, 2) encouraging isolation from former friends and family, 3) generally engaging in some intrusive form of control over the members social lives and/or thoughts.
As with most things in social sciences, it's not a rigid definition (the Roman Catholic Church engages in confe
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. That's why an atheist being elected as US President would be one of the most noteworthy events in history.
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you notice, when people talk about atheism, they always bring up this question of morals. As if someone couldnt understand them without religion.
Yet what percentage of people in prison are religious, what percentage of mass murderers were/are religious, and what percentage of serial killers are religious?
True, playing the percentage in a mostly religious world is a safe bet, but the point here is that morals arent given automatically with or without religion.
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Atheists are between 8% and 16% of the US population, but just 0.2% of the prison population [holysmoke.org].
Tell that to people who question atheists' morality.
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet what percentage of people in prison are religious, what percentage of mass murderers were/are religious, and what percentage of serial killers are religious?
A more useful figure would be "what percentage of people in prison were religious before they went to prison". The numbers might say more about the parole system than about religion.
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If 75% of people were 'cultists', as you call those who follow an organized religion (of which are not all zealots), then when it comes to politics, their brainwashed masses would pretty well dictate the political discourse with relative ease.
There is more than one cult, so there is no reason to think that all cultists would be told to think the same thing. For example, some are told to help their fellow man while others are told that God helps those who help themselves. That pretty much sums up the spectrum of politics.
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's bizarre that the US is trying to fight off the middle ages and loopy religious fundamentalism in Afghanistan, but is so eagerly rushing to it at home!
Thank [insert name of imaginary friend] we don't have that sort of barking mad fundamenatlism in Australia!
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The sad truth is that most Americans aren't opposed to what the Taliban are doing, but the religion the Taliban represent. Don't believe for a second that given the chance American Christians wouldn't have their own version of sharia.
Re:sad isn't it ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Many American's already live under a Christian Sharia.
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The ultimate defense I guess is that "Faith" created it and it just "is".
Even though science has proven many points of Evolutionary theory, and even the day it gets proven beyond doubt, people will still chose what they want
This is why no one gives a shit about the "faith" opinion... because they will never change their mind and continue living in ignorant bliss, cowing behind their religion whenever it suits them, and no
The earth is round, p .05 (Score:5, Informative)
Really? It sounds like someone from the board of education had a sit down with a statistician and thought it would sound cool to throw in the null because, for some reason, ID is the default explanation for the origin of species. I mean, this isn't a bad thing considering the vast amount of evidence in support of natural selection, ultimately suggesting that we can confidently reject the null.
They also may want to take a look at Jacob Cohen's classic paper, 'the world is round, p .05' for more information about the current Fisherian statistical paradigm we currently exist in and what it means to establish a null (and ultimately reject or fail to reject it).
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Re:The earth is round, p .05 (Score:5, Interesting)
In a theology class, a respected Reverend said "Religion is simple mans way of explaining what he doesn't understand".
Over the next several sessions, he covered various cultural and religious beliefs by groups from around the world.
I had known him for years, but it wasn't until that day that I realized, he wasn't a leading member of the church to preach the word of god. He was a leading member of the church to help people who couldn't grasp the fact that there are things we don't fully understand yet. He wasn't preaching the "truth" in gospel. He was helping them from being scared of the unknown.
Unfortunately, there are too many people who take these fairy tales that were intended to help them not be scared, and demand everyone understand it as the truth.
Re:The earth is round, p .05 (Score:5, Insightful)
How the world *should be* should be based on the way it is.
Codes of Ethics are best based on psychology and empiricism. If you wish to create an ethical construct "You should be monogamous with a member of the opposite sex and faithful for your entire life." Then you should have evidence to support that the outcome of that rule results in the maximum happiness/success/productivity/etc.
Worship is based on an expression again of what elicits the maximum spiritual experience in the believer within the historical/metaphystical claims of the religion. The historical claims are subject to historical sciences and the metaphysical claims are subject to the logical/philosophical fields. Both the logical and philosophical fields also require empirical data to form their assumptions.
At its core Religion is history. It's a claim about the history of the world. Without that history it has no special authority. The authority that religion derives is directly tied to its emperical claims about the world.
If Jesus didn't exist then the words of Christ might be valid but Christianity had to defend their code-of-ethics based on the same criteria everyone else does: empirical studies on the cultural and personal efficacies of those rules. The only reason Religion believes it can circumvent that regular oversight is because it's been ordained by God and God is perfect therefore his commandments require no double checking.
Science is perfectly capable of saying how the world should be. In fact it's better than speculation by bronze age goat herders.
Religion: You should treat women like property and second class citizens.
Science: Women are usually equally capable of making as good of decisions as men and should be equals.
Religion bases its belief on divine ordination. Science performs tests and determines that "God" is a sexist bigot.
Religion: The world should be perfect and some day God will fix it if you sign this metaphysical document here agreeing to agree with everything contained in this book.
Science: The world should be perfect and here are some ways that have a good chance of making it better.
When atheists reduce Religion to God of the Gaps they're being generous. Because Religion not only tries to fill in Gaps, it also tries to fill in things that we're confident about--but are quite different from the religious claims. Atheists try to give the original authors the benefit of the doubt that knowing what we know now they wouldn't have written such foolish things and attributed it to God.
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No. Science might run a bunch of tests and determine that women are equal to men in whatever category it is being studied. *That* is the extent of science. Applying it to normative questions is not science, but something else. Sociology, perhaps, in this example.
Ummm, Sociology is the scientific study of societies. Sociologists use both qualitative and quantitative analysis like any other science to study societies.
But when someone makes a normative claim like "most animals are not monogamous, therefore I need not be monogamous", it just sets my teeth on edge.
As it should since that's a strawman first off and secondly not very good science. That's like saying "Fish can breath underwater therefore there is no reason to say that you shouldn't be able forbidden from holding your neighbor underwater for hours on end." If however science found that *HUMANS* were actually happier in non-monogamous relationship
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Perhaps the null hypothesis is that there are no intelligent living things (at least in Texas). I propose that we call this 'Unintelligible Design'.
Derp. (Score:5, Funny)
Not Derp, Democracy. (Score:3)
What the majority wants eventually wins. When there are no external threats, the majority will create its own scarecrows -- usually from the things they understand least. Modern science is high on that list, especially given the many "evil scientist" representations in what Wikipedia calls "modern culture".
I expect you to vote, Mr. Bond.
Re:Derp. (Score:5, Insightful)
there aren't any experiments you can do to demonstrate evolutionary theory.
Holy crap, of course there are experiments that demonstrate evolutionary theory. FFS just buy in some fruitflies or mice or feeder fish some other fast reproducing species and selectively breed them according to some observable trait. e.g. white and black mice, large & small fish etc. Split the animals into 3 groups - one where you select FOR the trait, one where you select AGAINST the trait, and a control group where you randomly select with no bias. After a few generations observe the results.
Evolution is eminently demonstrable in the lab, and in the wild, and in the fossil and in DNA. Suggesting that some "god/aliens/magic pixies did it" hypothesis is utterly ridiculous.
Re:Derp. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, and the ID folks know this. If you point to this fantastically amazing, observable phenomenon, they simply move the goalposts so that 'evolution' is defined as something you can't easily demonstrate in a lab. Speciation, for example, or the development of the eyeball in a complex species.
Even if you somehow figure out how to demonstrate those things, they'll find a way to re-define it into something even harder: like "demonstrate that modern humans can be produced from single-cell bacteria".
Point is, you can't argue with these folks, and you can't expect intellectual honesty out of a school of thought which posits the fundamental existence of some Intelligent Designer but then fails to express the slightest curiosity about who they are or how they operate.
This has actually damaged public discourse. My father recently took a guided tour of a major national park. The ranger pointed our a species of small lizard, and told the group how this species had observably changed its colors and foodsource over the past few decades, in response to some changing environmental condition. One of the group innocently used the term 'evolution' to ask a question about this, and the ranger immediately stopped him and pointed out that this is an example of 'adaptation', not evolution. His correction had an 'I'm only correcting you to cover my ass' wink to it, but it's a shame that we live in a country where Federal employees have to be so careful and explicit.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Derp. (Score:4, Insightful)
You are a creationist trying to appear reasonable, demonstrated by your ignorance about evolution. The hereditary nature of genetics is evolution. Wikipedia, our friend, has a great example of exactly what you are looking for, "documented proof of a reproducible experiment showing the evolution of a species into a new and unique species." The bacteria E. coli cannot metabolize citric acid. Except after 12 generations, this E. coli did [wikipedia.org].
Null hypothesis my ass (Score:5, Interesting)
We scientifically-minded people have had a perfectly reasonable naturalistic explanation for the origin of life for a long time. No sir, the ball is in YOUR court to show that there is evidence for your intelligent design theory.
Re:Null hypothesis my ass (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Null hypothesis my ass (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact there's currently no credible evidence for those conjectures isn't what makes them non-scientific, it's that there can't ever be.
Even if the conjectures were true, there's no way to test them. THAT's what makes them non-scientific.
Re:Null hypothesis my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
No, omnipotence is entirely illogical. For example, can God create a rock so heavy that even He could not lift it? If He can, then He's not omnipotent because there's a rock He can't lift. If He cannot, then He's not omnipotent because there's a rock He can't create.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In this case, God cannot create a rock so heavy that even He cannot lift it, because no such rock could logically exist. So God's inability to create such a rock does not diminish His omnipotence. It's as if you asked: "Can God create a white sheet of paper that is also completely black?" Either the sheet is white or it is black. Similarly, either God can lift the
Re: (Score:3)
I would demand a far less challenging test of omnipotence:
Can God create a universe that isn't hostile to life and morality?
Not from the evidence we have. The only reason there is Sin in this universe is because God saw fit to create a universe built on scarcity that was hostile to life in the very laws of its universe.
If we look to video games for comparison we'll see that intelligent agents design universes in which the laws of the universe are conducive to social and moral behavior even when the point
Re:Null hypothesis my ass (Score:4, Insightful)
What if we define omnipotence as "can do anything that is logically possible"? As in, not bound by physical laws, but still bound by logical laws?
In this case, God cannot create a rock so heavy that even He cannot lift it, because no such rock could logically exist. So God's inability to create such a rock does not diminish His omnipotence. It's as if you asked: "Can God create a white sheet of paper that is also completely black?" Either the sheet is white or it is black. Similarly, either God can lift the rock, or the rock's existence is logically impossible.
So, let's cut out the middle man and worship whoever made the rules that God can't break.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not? Because you are not allowed to redefine terms just because the definition doesn't suit your needs.
Definitions of omnipotence on the Web:
* the state of being omnipotent; having unlimited power
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
Unlimited power. That means anything, there is no limit due to logic. This is fitting because you have to suspend logic to believe a lot of the bible. (Or most if not all religions.)
Re:Null hypothesis my ass (Score:4, Interesting)
Problem is that logic is based on axioms. And logic itself is not provably consistent. Reference: Godel's incompleteness theorem
Re:Null hypothesis my ass (Score:5, Funny)
The Babel fish is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy recieved not from its own carrier but from those around it, It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. the practical upshot of this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any language.
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes like this : "I refuse to prove that I exist", says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But", says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear", says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh that was easy" says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And apparently his followers in TX have mastered the same feat (suspending logic). It is a miracle!
Bert
No miracles? (Score:3)
He can't break his own laws
Breaking his own laws is what's called a "miracle".
But regarding omnipotence there's a question that has been unanswered for so long that there's a special name for it: theodicy [wikipedia.org]. If god is both infinitely powerful *and* infinitely good, then why does he allow suffering to exist?
Re: (Score:3)
You can falsify the existence by attributing predictable, rare and unusual events typically attributed to supernatural powers, such as solar eclipses. This has been done countless times throughout the history, and is still being done albeit on smaller scale then before.
Though modern "God's miracles" are usually more among the line of self-suggestion and plain fraud.
Short, simple explanation: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Short, simple explanation: (Score:4, Funny)
They also breed and vote a lot.
But presumably they don't evolve?
My null hypothesis ... (Score:3)
This is not ok (Score:5, Insightful)
Democracy can only work with good education. The people voting are supposed to be able to make intelligent decisions.
This kind of thing is going to undermine our ability to govern ourselves and I cannot imagine something more insidious than corrupting children toward that end.
This must be stopped.
Re:This is not ok (Score:5, Interesting)
Education has never worked particularly well. For example, there was a huge effort in the second half of the 20th century to educate people and wean them off superstitions in the Soviet bloc. Since religions were largely suppressed officially, and high-school education with emphasis on physics and math was compulsory, it should have worked reasonably well. However, public education could not overcome superstitions, and there has been a steady presence of various magicians in public life -- from people who would heal you with magic, to politicians who would solve political problems or build nanotech industry with magic. Currently most if not all ex-Eastern bloc experience some sort of revival of religion, especially as a badge to counter the "Islamic threat".
And I doubt if education has worked very well in the US in the past 50 years as well -- IMHO the advances of science in the US were mostly due to brain drain, when the best brains from all over the world moved there to enjoy the rich life post WWII, and by the bias towards making better killing machinery that gave the said brains a little more money than is customary in the typical human society.
But when the knowledge is so much and so advanced that it is too hard to even grasp the basics without spending 10 years in higher education doing hard work and producing nothing obviously "valuable", it is no surprise that most people will find a simplified model of reality that helps them go on with their lives. It is even less surprising when they choose a model that is, on the face, largely compatible with the world they see every day and their way of thinking is deeply rooted in their past.
Reminder (Score:5, Informative)
Evolutionary theory has fuck-all to do with abiogenisis.
Re:Reminder (Score:5, Informative)
In short - once you get back to the amoeba most of the religious objections to evolution are there regardless. So a God which created an amoeba is as unChristian as a God which doesn't exist.
They aren't wrong on this point. Once you eliminate the Adam and Eve story you no longer can place the blame for our fall on humanity. And when humanity isn't at fault for our suffering then the only person who can be blamed is God.
Once God is responsible our imperfection and exact design (through evolution) then he's evil since he designed us to evidently suffer.
If you assume that he evolved (through death and suffering) the human body but it was then (unlike the rest of the species on this planet) perfect and then corrupted by a Satan figure then again it's Satan's fault and not our own and once again we're not responsible for our defects.
You need literalism to maintain the viewpoint that we're responsible for our own suffering and God really really would like to help us but can't since it's our own fault--not his.
Essentially Christianity says that Humanity voided its warranty when it ate the apple. If you say that God started Abiogenesis then he's still responsible and we're all still under warranty. That doesn't fit within the saved/condemned view of the Christian church.
Fucking Luddites (Score:3, Insightful)
As far back as I can remember, I couldn't wait for the future to arrive and dreamed every night that I would wake up in the 23rd century. So here I am decades later, living in the 19th.
Re: (Score:3)
As far back as I can remember, I couldn't wait for the future to arrive and dreamed every night that I would wake up in the 23rd century. So here I am decades later, living in the 19th.
No, you're in the 23rd.
BC.
The null hypothesis is that we were always there (Score:3)
Why wouldn't the null hypothesis be "people have always been basically the same as they are today"? Surely that was the null hypothesis that both evolution and creationism attempted to supplant?
Yes, it fails because of all the reasons we know life wasn't always here throughout an infinite history and that time is not cyclical over the timescale of human existence. That's why it's the null hypothesis that the theory of evolution disproves and supercedes. Creationism also seeks to supplant it by positing some creative event that put into place the current ecosystem, whose basis comes from, essentially, old books and traditions, with maybe the occasional misunderstanding of probability and the absolutely grand scales of time and space involved.
It must be falsifiable (Score:5, Informative)
A null hypothesis must be falsifiable, and therefor "it must be a wizard that did it" cannot be the null hypothesis.
Q.E.D.
I'm no Richard Dawkins, so... (Score:5, Interesting)
More like the Samuel L Jackson version of Dawkins (although, I'll admit I'm not nearly as cool as either.) And yes, I'm just letting of some steam here.
What?!
What the fuck?!
Those sections say the "null hypothesis" is that there had to be some intelligent agency behind the appearance of living things. It is up to the scientists proposing a naturalistic explanation to prove their case.
Since motherfucking when? I'll tell you, motherfucking never. How much more fucking evidence must scientists throw before your motherfucking ugly fucking face before you fucking get it?
Sample says the "null hypothesis" is such because the old experiments that attempted to produce "building blocks" of amino acids failed to do so. In addition later experiments that produced other precursor chemicals, such as DNA and RNA, required very specific conditions in a lab, and aren't he said. Necessarily reflective of what the early Earth was like. Therefore, he said, the odds of making life from non-life seem too small for a naturalistic hypothesis to work.
Well, what the fuck do you call this [wikipedia.org]? And very specific lab conditions? Well, guess what motherfucker, the early Earth have very specific conditions [wikipedia.org] that resemble nothing like what we have today, so yes, those conditions have to be specific in the laboratory. This doesn't even touch the fact that the early Earth was a much bigger fucking laboratory than some fucking room at a university.
Sample says it isn't stealth creationism - he says the intelligent agency might just as well be aliens. But he emphasizes that he wants students to learn to think critically, and that unlike the physical sciences, there aren't any experiments you can do to demonstrate evolutionary theory.
Firstly, observational evidence that can be repeatably confirmed is just as valid as repeatable experiments with observation in a laboratory. And this is yet another case of "What the fuck do you call this [talkorigins.org]?":
While studying the genetics of the evening primrose, Oenothera lamarckiana, de Vries (1905) found an unusual variant among his plants. O. lamarckiana has a chromosome number of 2N = 14. The variant had a chromosome number of 2N = 28. He found that he was unable to breed this variant with O. lamarckiana. He named this new species O. gigas.
Do you see what year is in there? 1905! Speciation was observed in nineteen o'fucking five. That's 23 fucking years after Darwin's death. Can't fucking demonstrate evolution in the lab my ass.
To paraphrase [youtube.com]:
Does the idea that there might be knowledge frighten you?
Does the idea that one afternoon on Wiki-fucking-pedia might enlighten you frighten you?
Does the idea that there might not be a supernatural so blow your Christian noodle that you'd rather stand there in the fog of your inability to Google?
Isn’t this enough?
Just this world?
Just this beautiful, complex
Wonderfully unfathomable, NATURAL world?
How does it so fail to hold our attention
That we have to diminish it with the invention
Of cheap, man-made Myths and Monsters?
(Watch the rest, you won't regret it, promise.)
I get the idea that it's scary to think that this is all we have, but that's not an excuse to just start making things up to make yourself feel comfortable. If we truly want immortality, the only thing that can possibly deliver on that is science. And we can't continue to be held back by people whose only goal is to advance their favorite fairy tales in spite of the consequences. And yes, science can answer question [youtube.com]
Re:I'm no Richard Dawkins, so... (Score:4, Informative)
Can't fucking demonstrate evolution in the lab my ass.
Okay, so you've got speciation. How do you get from there to evolution?
When two populations no longer interbreed, the mutations within each population become uncorrelated, build up separately, and ultimately result in two unlike phenotypes.
Or maybe you should explain what you mean by "evolution".
vacuous (Score:3)
If we're the result of the efforts of some "intelligent agency", that just replaces the origins question with "Where did the intelligent agency come from?"
Of course, their answer is "God", who, unlike everything else, they claim does not require an explanation. You regularly hear creationists argue that God must exist because "everything has to have a cause", but when you ask what caused God they're suddenly willing to make an exception.
But when offered the hypotheses of and uncaused God and an uncaused universe, the uncaused universe is the economic explanation; assuming an uncaused God is a bigger assumption, because you're assuming the existence of something that's more than the universe.
Great news for China & India (Score:3, Insightful)
If I were Chinese or Indian, I would be loving this. Imagine, my biggest competitor, ensuring their next generation is superstitious and ignorant. Perfect!
Null hypothesis? (Score:3)
A null hypothesis is falsifiable.
Creationists: Come up with a real, actual experiment and a plausible outcome of it that will disprove the existence of an intelligent creator in your eyes. Sign a binding statement to shut the fuck up about God if that outcome occurs. Then people will stop laughing at you, at least until the experiment shows you wrong and you start whining about interpretations and ineffability.
You could be honest with yourselves and reject the scientific method outright - "don't trust your eyes, trust your faith." It's slightly ridiculous and nobody will take you seriously, but at least you'll be left alone. You want to play at being scientists? Then you'll play by the rules of science.
Good for me. Good for Europe. Good for China. (Score:5, Interesting)
The less scientists there are on the world, the higher my salary. Please go on teaching your students that scientific theories are stories about how it could be, without making any testable predictions.
That strategy and mind-set will be very helpful when doing fault-finding in semiconductors. In case the fault rate goes to high, please don't look for testable reasons, but invent a story how a higher intelligence planned out that a race condition or some glitch on the laptop sold to a specific customer is the will of god. The claim that it is very unlikely that a complex processor exists by coincidence and declare any working processor to be the work of a higher intelligence. Don't forget, you cant loose this argument - you cant be proven wrong, unless the stupid guy who tests one process gas after the other for purity - he is wrong all the time.
The fundamental difference between evolution and ID is that evolution tells me what should happen if i put bacteria in a nutrient and change the nutrient compostion slowly over 100000 generations of bacteria. ID doesn't.
How long does it take to teach ID? (Score:3, Interesting)
How long does it take to teach Intelligent Design anyhow? Would not a lecture lasting more than ten minutes run out of material?
IMO what these people really want is not to teach evolution at all. Darn kids are smart enough see which concept holds water when placed side by side.
Neutral (Score:3)
Evolution does not address the divine. God may well have deliberately created evolution and for all we know God, Himself might have evolved from a lesser state or continue to evolve today. It is only a few oddball church groups that have a problem with evolution. Creationism has a place in world religions course but should not be mentioned anywhere near a science class. Hopefully students might be able to tell when they are actually in a science class.
What the "null" hypothesis actually is (Score:4, Informative)
One often hears cranks of one sort or another insisting that their view should be the "null" hypothesis.
This reflects a widespread misunderstanding of what the "null hypothesis" actually is.
Cranks imagine that the null hypothesis is somehow a privileged hypothesis that doesn't require evidence--it is just assumed be true until proven false--which is why they want their own particular notion to be considered "null."
In reality, the "null hypothesis" has a very specialized meaning, which is not general to science, but rather limited to statistics.
Basically, when you are asking if two things are different, or if something has changed, one does this by exclusion--by showing that the evidence does not support the assumption that there is no difference. That's what the "null" means--"no difference." This does not mean that one starts by assuming that "no change" is correct, or even that the null hypothesis is more likely to be true.
Of course, a creation myth, like the theory of evolution, is an account of change, so it cannot possibly be a null hypothesis. A null hypothesis of the history of life--that nothing has changed--is not going to be very appealing to those who look to nature to justify their religious beliefs, because a universe that has always existed, unchanging, does not have much need for Gods. Scientists are more open to the notion; at one time, a steady-state theory of cosmology was popular. It's just that the evidence, both cosmological and earthly, does not support the null hypothesis of an unchanging universe.
Re:You Gotta Be Kidding Me (Score:5, Insightful)
That would imply that all theories, regardless of any evidence or factual basis, should be taught.
Use of a book, commonly referenced to as "The Bible", which there are currently 190 modern versions of that I'm aware of, which all rooted from various oral traditions handed down over years, noted down, translated, re-translated (repeat ad nauseum), to which ever of the 190 modern versions you may have read an ancient fairy tale in.
If it's truly necessary to discuss every unsubstantiated creation theory, all sides of the story should be taught. Not just all 190 versions from the "bible", but all creation legends according to all religions and cultures.
Or we could stick with teaching substantiated facts. Nah, that would make way too much sense.
Re: (Score:3)
> That would imply that all theories, regardless of any evidence or factual basis, should be taught.
no - read it again:
> "In 2009 the Texas Board of Education said that students should be taught "all sides" of current scientific theories."
creationism is not a current scientific theory.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
creationism isn't allowed because it's religious. I'm so confused.
Why are you confused? You said it yourself: creationism is religious, which means it's not scientific, which means it's not a scientific theory, no matter how much creationists try to dress it up as one.
Re: (Score:3)
As a missing link it makes sense. As a finished product it does not
But then how do you explain ClearCase? Wasn't it intelligently designed?
Re:Evolution is no more proven than Creationism. (Score:5, Insightful)
>UNKNOWN REASON,
It's not unknown. It's errors. DNA does not copy exactly every time. And sex is merely a way of being able to get more variation in DNA. More variation = more chances to survive (up to a point).
And if you want to get down to the actual reason why DNA copies are not always true, it's because of physics. Physics and probability. Nothing more and nothing less. We've been testing the probability part of the physics for nearly 100 years.
And since your argument fails on its premise - that we don't know where the randomness comes from, all that shit you typed was for naught. The attempt to pull science down to "we just don't know" failed. Indeed, your entire argument is "Argument from incredulity" which isn't an argument at all, but simply a lack of imagination on your part.
Your argument is typical of creationst screeds. It tries to paint scientific arguments as "we just don't know either" when in fact that's not true. Science has done a pretty good job of explaining how the universe operates and we've created some nifty technology based on those rules, which in itself is a test of those rules.
Creationist arguments are not testable. They are not science. Evolution is testable. In fact, we run experiments on evolution all the time with antibiotics. Such experimentation by society nearly killed me with MRSA.
Keep religion out of the classroom unless you want to teach it as a cultural studies course. But then you have to teach other cultures to put things in perspective, and I don't think that the christian taliban behind this bullshit are quite prepared to have the Quran, Mahabharata, Tibetan book of the dead, the writings of Zoroaster, et alia to young minds. They might find their kids might learn something.
--
BMO
Re: (Score:3)
If Evolutionists can't provide sufficient evidence to disprove the null hypothesis then why should should Evolutionism itself not be considered just as much a matter of faith as Intelligent Design? Arguing that the existence of a process proves the non-existence of the process engineer is no better than saying we were all created as we are in an instant. Neither argument carries any logical validity and can only be considered as statements of "faith".
Apples fall because of gravity - along with God's help.
Combining hydrogen and oxygen produces water via a chemical reaction - along with God's help.
We get rain because water vapor in the atmosphere condenses into droplets - along with God's help.
My car moves because internal combustion is converted to rotary power with a crankshaft, and the rotary power is transmitted to the wheels via the drive train - along with God's help.
I can compose this message on my computer because...
You can read it on the internet