I wasn’t aware that country people do deny evolution. The evolution deniers in the South Bronx and in South Central Los Angeles will be surprised to learn that they are country people. Nevertheless, it seems to me that what you described was not evolution at all. Evolution is an undesigned, arbitrary process without goals that guides nothing and controls nothing. What you described is a guiding hand, an intelligence that interferes with the natural order.
It’s the “any other school” part that bothers me. If you don’t think someone else (Charlie, for example) should decide how your children should be educated, then why do you presume exactly that status over others?
This sounds a lot like that micro/macroevolution claptrap. Animals can be selectively bred because they pass on their genetic material. To say this has nothing to do with evolution when it’s plainly based on the same thing - the passing of traits from one generation to another - is ridiculous. So one is long-term and unguided, and the other is short-term and guided. That would prove nothing except that you’re not willing to draw conclusions in this case.
It is an evolution, regardless. All species have a “goal”. The goal is survival, to just stay alive. The weak die, the strong live. The strong then pass on their “desirable” traits. It does not require any thought or deliberation. A species needs no guiding hand, other than the tooth and claw of “the other critters” trying to eat it. That’s the “guiding fang” so to speak. In farming, the fang is simply replaced by the breeder and the butcher. The strong are show champions and go to stud. The weak are today’s lunch special. The wolf or the supermarket. Same basic effect. I brought up “country people” because Charlie pretends to be one, and because people who live around farms should know better, just by simple observation. Forget L.A. and the Bronx. Riddle me this. If there is no evolution, how do bugs become resistant to poisons? How does the flu keep changing every time a new “cure” comes out?
Because they sometime do want to decide. It’s happened in Oklahoma, Kansas, anywhere the bible thumpers demand that their superstitions be given equal time in science classes. To take Charlie himself as an example, he wasn’t just crying about the money he “wasted” on his son, he was whining pathetically about all schools. He was saying they all stink because they fill people’s heads with what he considers to be useless. He should get back to sawing on his fiddle and keep his ignorant yap closed.
I didn’t know anyone had ever cured the flu. But ask Darwin’s Finch whether your characterization of evolution as “the weak die, the strong live” is accurate.
And by the same token, they don’t want your superstitions imposed on their children. And they think you should keep your ignorant yap closed. You treat science with the same deferential awe that they treat their Bible. From where I sit, you’re both engaging in mindless desecration.
Liberal*
You treat science with the same deferential awe that they treat their Bible. From where I sit, you’re both engaging in mindless desecration.*
And Liberal it seems you must have some “deferentail awe” concerning science. Did the Book of Leviticus enable your Internet connection? No!
Computers, the Internet et al were brought about by those Godless scientifical teachables that those sissy perfessors in their ivory towers foisted upon thier helpless students.
Perhaps you should reject all the fancy trappings of the modern world and go preach in a field. (No amplifiers - that’s science too).
Uh huh. I’m sure you believe that science is everything conceivable plus everything that isn’t. Go preach your misunderstandings about science to starving people, people dying of AIDS, and people under the oppression of corrupt governors. Show them your technological marvels and tell them that if only they had a computer, they wouldn’t be hungry, dying, and tortured.
Wouldn’t the findings from the spark discharge experiment coupled with work being done on Proteinaceous Microspheres be a workable hypothesis? Admittedly, there is also a strong suggestion that life on earth may have been ‘seeded’ by meteor strikes. But this to me suggests that we have two strong hypotheses and no theory. Do you disagree?
Liberal
I did not mean to convey that computers are the answer to all of the world’s ills and problems.
What troubles me are all the people that condemn the evils of Godless scientific principles yet still utilize the tools that were brought about by those very same scientific laws. (As I’ve said, I don’t see Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Charlie Daniels giving up their computers, television cameras, credit card contributions, electric guitars, amplifiers, etc).
Then again Liberal, you could have replied to my posting by preaching in the middle of a field.
Bolding is mine. How many people in India are starving, while cattle roam free in the streets? What keeps them from eating? Religion. How many people are dying of AIDS, while “holy men” deny the usefulness of something as simple as condoms? What about the so-called Abstinence Training, which teaches nothing at all about birth control, disease avoidance or anything else?
Your argument is turning into nothing more than a contest of the wills - pure stubborn obstinacy.
A friend of mine, one who has a very dark view of history, thinks the current spread of stupidity is on purpose. He likens it to the time when only the nobles got an education, while the serfs/commoners did not. Keep them ignorant. Only let them know so much (enough to earn a living and no more). As long as they stay stupid, you can control them. They won’t want anything better unless they know it exists and is possible. They won’t know you are feeding off of them and using them. Knowledge IS power.
Why are you bothering to defend a shit stain like Charlie Daniels?
Each strain of flu has a specific immunization. Why so specific? The bug keeps changing (evolving). Maybe “cure” was the wrong word, but so what.
Why should I ask Darwin’s finch anything? Darwin himself already observed (asked the questions) for me. Would any finches be there, if they were too weak to survive the trip to begin with? I guess some made it. When they got settled in, they started changing, adapting in order to handle the food supply. Inability to eat would be a weakness, ability to eat then would be a strength.
My “superstitions” are subject to verification; they can be either proved or disproved. My “superstitions” don’t fly in the face of readily observable occurrences. My “superstitions” can be discarded when they are disproved or replaced by a more accurate and provable explanation. My “superstitions” didn’t come from deliberate cherry picking of a book, or from what some preacher proclaimed, or during some “revelation”. They damn sure don’t come from a has been fiddle player.
Unlike the “science” or “religion” of Charlie and his ilk, science continually questions and challenges. It doesn’t say This Is The Divine Law to obey without question or doubt.
Last, I certainly will not shut my yap. I will call bullshit any time I smell or see it. I don’t understand why you are so determined to defend such a stupid, arrogant, hypocritical fool.
While these are interesting hypotheses regarding abiogenesis, I do not see either of them rising to the level of certitude that the Theory of Natural Selection has achieved. In addition, they are sufficiently untested (with the meteorite theory sounding to me like the scientific version of “turtles all the way down”) that I do not think they belong in a primary or secondary text book. In contrast, presenting the Theory of Natural Selection (augmented by genetic drift and other agents while ignoring non-science such as Intelligent Design) is clearly something that should not be delayed until college.
Ah, I see the problem (I think). Both of those are workable hypotheses, at least as far as explaining how organic matter got to this planet. Neither is a theory. Are we agreed on that much at least?
Though, as a caveat, I do think that work being done with microspheres and the classic spark discharge experiment will lead to a reasonably sound theory of abiogenesis.
Would you oppose seeing information on microspheres in, say, an advanced biology of AP level course? It seems to me that the properties of organic molecules as well as their combinations is well within the domain of biology. What am I missing?
My problem is that many people, including secondary school teachers, cannot separate natural selection from the other domains to which it leads (origin of life, origin of the planet, origin of the universe, and existence of a deity). They will present the more speculative aspects as science, and then students have been disinformed as to what science actually is.
I was reacting more to the persistent portrayal of people who don’t believe in evolution as drooling, undereducated freaks. This is an unfair and often inaccurate characterization. I’ve known a number of bright and talented physicians and science professors who held their own personal, private opinions about the origins of life, whose credentials would put most posters on this thread to shame.
If they really cannot distinguish between “origins of life” and the Theory of Evolution, then the best that I can say for them is that they are incredibly lazy for not having read enough to know that the two subjects are separate. Natural Selection presumes that life exists, regardless how it originally came to be. It makes no observations regarding the origins of life and does not pretend to provide an explanation for that event (or those events). Confusing those two separate areas of scientific inquiry simply demonstrates sloppy thinking and a failure to have actually studied either exploration.
There is a(n equally) sloppy philosophical point in which some persons who feel threatened by the ramifications of Natural Selection attempt to jump to a not well considered “first cause” argument and attempt to claim that the science of evolutionary study is deliberately Atheistic and must be opposed on that level. (Lawyer Phillip Johnson prominently writes on this topic.) However, despite the fact that a number of biologists (notably Richard Dawkins and the late Stephen Gould) are atheists and a few (most notably Dawkins) are militantly atheistic, the science exploring evolution is, at best non-theistic, having neither anything to say about the divine nor having any interest in addressing the topic of the divine.
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My problem is that there are too many biology teachers who fall into one of the categories I have identified above and either do a sloppy job of identifying the actual evidence of Natural Selection or choose to gloss over that whole area of science. My (not systematic) reading of the various evolution debates among school boards around the country causes me to fear that there are rather more biology teachers badly teaching (or skipping) evolution than the small handful of biology teachers who step outside their realm to speculate on abiogenesis or the cosmology of the Big Bang. In any case, both groups are rather small. Given the choice between either letting two small handsful of overzealous atheist teachers and (a slightly larger number of) overzealous religious teachers spin their biology lessons inappropriately or forbidding the overwhelming number of good teachers from teaching actual science in middle and high school, I am going to vote in favor of letting teachers do their job and asking school boards to do a good enough job monitoring their employees to prevent abuses.
College courses should not have to begin with remedial middle school work just to let their students get a decent education.
I do not oppose the presentation of any confirmed science in the appropriate science classes. To the extent that we have made progress exploring microspheres, it should be presented. It should not, however, be presented as “proof” of that avenue of abiogenesis since it has not risen to the level of accepted theory.
In the context of Brain Wreck’s concerns, no biology teacher should point to microspheres and declare that we “know” how abiogenesis occurred (since that is not a true statement), nor should s/he point to microspheres and declare that they “prove” that God had nothing to do with life on Earth (since that is not only incorrect, it is outside the scope of a biology course).
It’s not a matter of smarts, Harborwolf. Parents don’t have to be smart to have the right to raise their children or to be good parents. In fact, it is possible for parents to be extremely smart and be lousy parents. Everything isn’t about intelligence. Ignorance isn’t always just ignorance of facts.
