I revise my position.
I say that we make a whole class dedicated to Creationism, and spend the semester covering all of the creation mythology around the world. It would be a great introduction to foreign culture.
Just have to make sure the text books aren’t 90% Christianity.
Well, I’m certainly not going to jump all over you. As a gay man, I can tell you that we do have higher rates of suicide than the general population and I’m pretty sure the same is true for depression and substance abuse.
What’s offensive about that particular person saying it is that people like her are the reason for the problem. When gays, lesbians, and transgendered people are subjected to hate speech and discrimination—especially at a young age (and that “hate the sin, love the sinner” bullshit is just watered-down hate speech)—it leads to depression, which in turn leads to substance abuse and suicide.
Er…who was this directed at exactly? Or more to the point, who are you argueing with here? Not me…I’m the one who said that belief in evolution WASN’T some liberal elite monopoly. If this was directed at ME, then you need to re-read what I actually wrote…not what you THINK I wrote.
As to politics, of COURSE its about politics. Its a hot button issue with the non-intellectual right wing, and THEY will use politics (and have used and are using) to get their agenda through. To combat that I think that whats needed is calm and competent information presented on many fronts, including those I listed in my post. Otherwise kids are going to have to wait until secondary school to get the goods on Evolution, and those that don’t go will be misinformed, like so much of our citizenry is about science.
Well, I’m not a scientist…just an engineer. I agree its offensive, but if its not done then you can pretty much write off the fight IMO, because the creationist/Intellegent Design people will keep hammering away. The only way to beat it is to allow side by side comparisons so that people can judge rationally for themselves. At least they WILL be exposed to Evolution and will have SOME information to make a comparison…instead of mis-information. Like I said, I think the proponents of Evolution should concentrate on getting the message out more, and making sure that whats taught in elementary and highschool is GOOD Evolutionary science.
-XT
I understand what you’re getting at here, in that the formulations of these models fit the scientific method and failed on their merits, while intelligent design doesn’t even meet that basic standard, but I think it’s premature to dismiss Lysenkoism too quickly. In fact, I think there’s a safe parallel to be drawn betwen Lysenkoism and intelligent design in the current political climate because of how both are being exploited for political purposes. Lysenkoism was a legitimate (if implausible) hypothesis up until it was discredited, which differentiates it from ID, but after it was discredited the Soviet apparatchiks kept insulating it and sabotaging its competition because its view of the world was useful for justifying and advancing Communist political objectives. ID is similarly discredited (though the process was different, because it wasn’t and isn’t robust enough even to get to the prediction-vs-disproof stage) and yet it’s still propped up by political operatives for their own short-sighted power-brokering purposes.
That’s one of the most appalling things about this administration’s roughshod trampling of science: that they would follow so closely a path of abject failure that looms so clearly in the world’s recent history, and that was a painfully obvious and easily avoidable mistake by our ostensible enemy, no less. It’s the old adage about those who don’t know history being doomed to repeat it; a lack of familiarity with the methods and scope of scientific discovery means our political leaders are shooting our national intellect, and in consequence our future, right in the foot. Really, it’s stuff like this that demonstrates that fundamentalists of every stripe are far more similar than different, despite the varying colors of banner under which they conduct their marches into ignorance.
Slight hijack here but with all due respect a large portion of the Democrat’s voting base either aren’t that bright themselves and probably reject the notion of evolution (if they have any notion of it all). Many minorities and blue-collar whites who vote Democratic are equally as ignorant when it comes to these sorts of issues. Witness the vote against gay marriage in Hawaii and the support amognst democrats for said bans.
Now, colour me ignorant (thank you for the links) but can anyone summarize the argument for ID and their flaws? This is something I know very little about other than the fact that creationism seems juvenille.
There was this guy in England, who’s name escapes me, who put forth a truly fascinating bit of intellectual self-buggery. Boiled down, he said this: The dinosaur fossils, geological record etc. where crafted by God with the intent of permitting us to be misled. The bones, rocks, etc. were deliberately created to appear as if they were not created of an instant, but were, in fact, the results of millions/billions of years.
A test of faith, you see. If you rejected the evidence of your common sense, you had faith. For myself, if I truly believed in the existence of such a God, I would not only refuse to worship same, but would seek out the nearest Satanist coven! There is some shit not even God can get away with!
My point (and yes, I have one…) is that intelligent design is an assumption irrelevant to science, it can be an overarching presumption that isn’t dependent on science, nor does it affect science. The difference between “made that way” and “happened that way” is pure speculative metaphysics, fairy tales for the cerebrally overburdened.
Where I grew up, this was the most common belief about fossils. This and many similar poisons were spread freely by most public school teachers.
Isn’t that the theory Jack Chick tried to push with “Big Daddy”?
That was Philip Henry Gosse. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_hypothesis. He wrote a book in 1857 called Omphalos, which is Greek for navel. His hypothesis was that Adam had a navel. It’s not so ridiculous if you consider it this way: Your navel is a relic of your birth – but everything else about your body is also the result of past stages of growth. Gosse believed that God chose to start the universe as a finished product, but bearing signs of all the developmental stages that otherwise would have been required. Thus Adam had a navel as a relic of a live birth that never occurred, the created trees in Eden had growth rings that might be taken as relics of past seasons that had never happened, and the fossils are relics of an evolutionary process that never happened. God wasn’t trying to deceive us, he was only trying to save time. This is, of course, a classic example of what scientists call a “nonfalsifiable hypothesis”: It would be impossible to discover or even conceive of any evidence that would conclusively disprove it.
Darwins Black Box (long)
“Intelligent Design” teaching in schools… (long)
What exactly is intelligent design? (shorter, with good links)
I don’t disagree with you here. I have never claimed as much.
The evolution debate is in a pretty unique niche, as it is one of the only active spots at the present where religion and objective science come into direct opposition. The objective evidence is sufficiently complex to make it non-obvious. It is very similar to the anti-geocentrism debate a few hundred years ago, where some of the main arguments made against a heliocentric theory was that the Bible (in some readings) said that Earth was in the middle. At least people like Tycho Brahe and others did come up with alternate geocentric theories to fit the objective evidence, instead of dismissing it out of hand like most of the ID and creationism crowd does.
The problem is that it is too easy to dismiss the evidence out of hand, because the vast majority of it (things like convergence of evidence from paleontology, taxonomy, and genetics) is subtle and non-obvious. If there was a whole semester devoted to evolution, I would agree that we should spend a few days on this. But when you are spending a week on it, you need to hit the facts and not dally around. Questions about validity should be dismissed, because there are no questions about the validity.
I took two years of biology (advanced placement) in high school. I didn’t start getting a handle on evolution (except some high points – natural selection, convergent and divergent evolution, radiation of species, maybe we touched on gradualism versus punctuated equilibrium during Bio 2) until I took a class on it in college. It is a very difficult theory. I would say it is far more subtle and challenging to get a good handle on the subject than it is to get a reasonable knowledge of other areas of biology, for instance genetics or cell biology. I say this as a geneticist. I say this as a 4 year member of this board, who has answered many GQ threads about both. The ones on evolution are usually based on an utterly wrong conception of the theory. You are setting your goals too high if you think that a regular high school education will give people the tools that they need to make a rational decision, based on evidence, on which theory is better.
Yeah, it’s a little like mind control. But that’s kind of what school is. Nobody clamors to teach alternate takes on history (like holocaust revisionism). We don’t teach alchemical principles in chemistry class. Limit biology class to what actually is biology.
Lochdale
I forgot the last sentence off of my reply:
Like I said, it is just a coincidental overlap between the evangelical wing of the Republican party and those who rail against evolution. I would be surprised if the debate weren’t coopted into political terms, given what we have just been through in this country.
Harumph! I thought that was a prerequisite for posting on the SDMB. :mad:
:D. glad you noticed! Although I must say that republicans of reason could use Lysol Cleanser (the Thick Formula) after getting in bed to get the votes of ID believers.
So far, but I think this administration will make moves to ensure that less teachers like that, will get within hearing distance of the “moral majority’s” kids.
Well no, but do you really believe that the republicans will ignore the religious right on this subject after the party got their votes too? That was an important part of the Bush victory. I don’t think only the liberal elite has a lock on rational thought.
I think the moderate and rational right has a bigger responsibility now to stamp out ignorance like this one.
The religious right will demand a payment for their support to the Republicans, they would never give a hoot on what the left thinks on this and other controversial (but IMO important) scientific endeavors, the Republicans thought it would be nice to get their vote, the reasonable Republicans have to deal with them now. What I am saying, is that this goes beyond politics and the future depends on what the current administration concedes to them, and how damaging all this will be, will depend on the tacit support or opposition from moderate republicans.
I do see that capacitor, I also see that on the new report from National Geographic, it is clear to me that now this anti-evolution rhetoric affects now the development of new medicines. I am not kidding when I think this is the new Lysenkoism.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/bigdaddy.html
Hi Guin! It seems that Jack does not dwell much on the young earth ideas, only for a few panels does Jack attempt to discredit the fact that many rocks are millions of years old. I found a good criticism of the track here: