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Evolution is a Myth in Kansas
Posted by
Hemos
on Wed Aug 11, 1999 05:58 PM
from the i'm-gonna-cry dept.
from the i'm-gonna-cry dept.
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Evolution is a Myth in Kansas
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Re:extreem right wing == fundamentalcase christian (Score:3)
You're not from the South, are you? _Historically_, ever since the end of the War Between the States, Southerners have voted Democratic. Hell, there usually weren't even Republicans on the ballots in most places. Lincoln was a Republican, and a Republican-strong North moved in on us, and this caused about a hundred years' worth of resentment down here. Back then, the Republicans were more of a liberal party and the Democrats were more conservative. They've since flip-flopped.
The South finally began to vote Republican when Nixon was campaigning in the late 60's. The civil rights movement, which was also not all that popular among a goodly number of Southerners (and very popular among others) had some strong ties to the Democrats. Nixon realized that Southern voters were being ignored, and engineered an amazing Republican turnout down here. So your 'history' only seems to go back about thirty years, IMHO.
Defining "evolution" and "natural selection" (Score:3)
Please distinguish between these two phenomena:
Natural selection could still be considered "theory." There are several variations on the theme. There is not, as yet, a single theory of natural selection that has achieved massive concensus. This is a topic of much ongoing research.
Evolution, on the other hand, could only be labeled "fact." There is a large body of fossil records that have been studied, and indicate clearly that the Earth is billions of years old and that new species have come and gone over this time. (If you disagree with this, then I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree, and this discussion is over.) The next thing is to consider that all known forms of life come from previous life forms. For example, you came from your parents; you didn't just appear one day. This has been observed time and again, and indeed is common sense. There are no observed exceptions to this rule. If you accept both of these premises, then the conclusion is that evolution occurs: new species appear over time, and they descended from previous ones. If one witholds the label of "fact" from evolution, then nearly no observed phenomenon would qualify.
Natural selection theories are one way of explaining the observed fact of evolution. There is much to recommend them, but they are not so well established that no dissenting opinions is possible. As has been mentioned, natural selection is somewhat difficult to observe in action.
Another theory of explaining how evolution occurs would be divine intervention. It's not a theory I favor, because of the scarcity of any physical evidence to back it up. But many hold it to be true.
In any case, please be more precise when discussing evolution and natural selection. There are few that would truly dispute evolution, except when they mistakenly confuse it with natural selection.
John Dawson
Evolution vs Creation (for nerds)... (Score:3)
about the origins of Linux. What will be taught in computer science history classes? Did Linux
evolve from Unix or was it created?
The creationist will point to crufty old documents that prove that Linus created Linux for his own
PC in his spare time. The evolutionists will point out that this is highly unlikly and point to
the similarities between Unix and Linux and postulate a missing-link/release that will prove
their point, but not find one.
Look how BSD and S5R4 have a clear evolutionary tree from Unix, they will cry. Why should be
believe Linux didn't do the same, they will question. Why believe in creation when evolution
is much more plausible.
The creationist will stand firm, these FAQ documents tell all the fact. No-one should question them.
Strange how these arguments can always be used in the same way. You may laugh about it now,
but this is exactly how all these kind of debates get started...
btw, I believe in evolution
Everyone just calm down. (Score:3)
I live in Kansas, about 30 miles from the capitol, where all this happened.
I live in Lawrence, Kansas, which is about as liberal as you can get in the Midwest.
I was also raised on a farm, in the 'boonies'.
I am not a Repubican (nor a Democrat, for that matter). I believe that the 'Religious Right' is wrong most of the time. I am not currenly affiliated with any religious group.
It appears that once again, 'crap' journalism has arisen to take a pretty tame fact and blow it WAAAAAAAYYY out of proportion.
Here's the deal: In the passed proposal, it does not ban, decry, condemn, or pass any type of judgement on evolution. It simply does not make it a subject that the state school board recommends that students *have* to be tested on. That's it. Nothing more. Here's [ljworld.com] more information, a few paragraphs down.
Are there religious undertones for this vote? Sure! Are there private agendas here? Sure, on both sides of the fence. But this is NOT a ban on evolution or a proposal of creationism teachings. It simply does not require evolution to be a state assessment test subject. Schools are NOT required to follow this and may teach the subject any way they wish.
What really offends me, are the several articles I found (MSNBC, CNN, etc) that basically mention the vote, and then spend the rest of the article talking about other states efforts to pass creationist laws. They mostly ignore the nature of the proposal and immediatly start yelling about the "Scopes Monkey Trial" and separation of church and state. I find it interesting that they mostly interview scientific "experts", who talk about evolution as a fact-theory, and then real 'christian' cretins who are about as reasonable as Fred Phelps [xmission.com]. What about just plain old normal people who don't have any axes to grind? This is really CRAP journalism.
I'm a Kansan, and for the most part, this decision doesn't really hold much interest for me, one way or the other. I'm home schooling my daughter, and this doesn't really affect me. (And yes, when she is old enough she will learn about the "Theory of Evolution", but not about the "Fact of Evolution").
Check your facts before you start make REALLY offensive remarks, okay?
jf
The Scientific Age (Score:4)
That fact is that, despite widespread belief that we live in the "scientific age," we actually are little better off than we were in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the formal techniques of modern science began to, if you will forgive the expression, evolve. Back then, a handful of very scholarly men began to apply the rigors of Aristotle's logic to direct observation of the physical world (with the first result being the complete desruction of Aristotle's own ideas about natural systems!). These handfuls of men began to develop rigorous methods for forming hypotheses, constructing experiments, carrying them out, collecting data, and analyzing results. They also made a clear distinction between hypothesis, theory, and fact. The only facts in science are logic and mathematics (and even these are only marginally facts as Godel proved centuries later) and that the data gathered in an experiment were the data gathered in the experiment. Take Galileo's little experiments rolling balls of differing weights down slopes of differing angles and measuring the time it takes the ball to go from one end of the slope to the other. He made literally thousands of observations and derived the first universal "law" in the history of science: All objects accelerate towards the earth at 32 feet per second per second. Even this, which gets labelled "Galileo's Law" is not a "fact." Tomorrow we might observe that things accelerate towards the earth at 29 feet per second per second (it would make a lot of us who are a bit tubby like me rather happy). That we know of no possible cause for such a thing and that we know it has never happened between Galileo's time and ours doesn't mean that it won't happen tomorrow. All scientific "facts" are provisional. Scientists must be prepared to re-examine and possibly refine or reject theories when new evidence is found contrary to theory.
Science is a form philosophy that is characterized by logic, experiment, observation, empiricism, skepticism, and materialism. Science and religion cannot co-exist in a classroom or a laboratory because religion (Judeo-Christian anyways, I'm certainly not an expert in world religions) has spiritualism in its philosophic base. Religion requires one to believe in non-empirical knowledge and science requires one to refuse any non-empirical evidence. Note that this does not mean that person cannot believe in both religion and science. If a religious person merely accepts that his knowledge of, say, Christ's death and Resurrection is non-empirical (but no less true) and therefore non-scientific and accepts that evolution by natual selection is empirical and therefore non-spiritual they can co-exist. This isn't mere semantic argybargy. I think that it is perfectly okay for a profoundly religious person to practice science through the very real fact (there's that word again!) that science inhernetly excludes from consideration an entire source of evidence, an entire way of experiencing the world called "Faith" or "spirit." That means, from this point of view that Science has a blind spot. A person can regard science as the more limited view and view it as a tool for getting behind the nature of life, while keeping their faith at the fore for exploring the meaning of life. If you ask any person of deep faith, I suspect you will find that they consider their non-measurable experience of faith to be more compelling and "real" (whatever that may mean) than any measurable empirical experience they have had. Who are you or I to say they are "wrong?"
Now, this is a problem for the handful of people today versed in the sciences. Most of us are very unscientific and know precious little about science. Even NPR's "Talk of the Nation Science Friday" program continually mistakes technology for science and they could not be more different.
The vast majority of people on the plane with you the next time you fly will have no idea whatsoever what makes the plane fly. Most people do not know how a battery works. Most do not know a proton from a neutron. More to the point, most do not know why science regards things as true. The evidence for evolution is every bit as strong as that for Galileo's Law, and yet many perfectly sensible people reject it utterly. That's because most of us (even scientists) are creatures of habit and predjudice. The reason we are not all scientists is that science is hard and demanding and completely foreign to the way humans make descisions about what is true and false. We use technology and we think "Boy, the wonders of science," but very few of us has even an inkling about the fact that electronics (a technology) required discovering quantum meachnics to come into being. Most people know who John F. Kennedy was, but very few know who Max Planck, Paul Dirac, Enrico Fermi, and Pauli (forgot first name; see?) were.
We accept the products of science in the form of technology in much the same way we accept the eucharist, as a blessings from the priests of science, but with much less appreciation for the mystery. We do not live in a scientific age, but in an age of scientists. An age where the power of the knowledge discovered by science is valued by all, but the value of the knowledge itself and more importantly, how it was obtained is as mysterious as holy communion.
Seen in this light, very few of us should feel as free as we do to make fun of the "hicks" from Kansas. Believe me that average intelligence is Kansas is not significantly different from that in any other state in the union. Ignorance is bliss and America is a very happy country. All of it, not just Kansas.
A hick nerd from Minnesota...
Evolution non-existent in Kansa (Score:3)
TOPEKAIn a discovery that has shocked biologists around the globe, a team of anthropologists and geneticists discovered today that evolution does not function in Kansas.
"It was a shock, but when we examined the facts, all evidence suggested that Kansans are in the exact same evolutionary state as they were 4 billion years ago." Exclaimed Dr. Rajeev Papshigali, professor of anthropology at UC Berkeley, "The evidence was undeniable, low sloping simian foreheads, the inability to make and use simple tools - everything suggested that these people, if we may even call them that, appear to be genetically identical to Neandertall man. This challenges everything we've believed about evolution."
Scientist first began investigating Kansans after noticing that a majority of them believed the existence of a gaseous vertebrate of infinite heft to be more probable than the accumulation of favorable mutations over geologic time.
"It was amazing," explained Dr. Greg Hay, "we found that Kansans did not have sufficient mental capacity to understand the concept of evolution. That's not all, we found that they engaged in a primitive ritual where they would twitch on the ground uttering complete gibberish and then claim that they were speaking in tounges. We recorded the noises made, and found that they were identical with those of the spider monkey." Scientists had previously believed that humans and spider monkey had diverged in the evolutionary tree some 11 million years ago. "We may have found a species of primate that has existed unchanged for all that time, against all probability."
Some scientists have criticized the findings of Doctors Papshigali and Hay, saying instead that the explanation lies in the fact that Kansans still use lead based paint on cribs, and that the infant Kansans tend to knaw on the bars of their cribs while teething. As pediatrician Dr. Ray Middleton argues "All the mental deficiencies of Kansans can be explained by brain damage due to lead poisoning. The idea tha evolution has stopped is ridiculous." Middleton, who is not a native Kansan is leading a drive to have lead based paint banned statewide.
--Shoeboy
Neatherthal Defence League (Score:3)
No Neanderthal ever made, or supported, a law that flew in the face of established science.
No Neanderthal ever made, or supported, a law to restrict the peaceful use of strong cryptology.
No Neanderthal ever made a claim that the sun stopped in the sky for a day. (What's a day when the sun has stopped, anyway?)
But us Neanderthals are damn tired of you comparing us to the dredges of your own gene pool. It's YOUR people who are bunch of drooling idiots. It's YOUR people who fight the teaching of evolution in biology classes. It's YOUR people who keep buying Microsoft products. (This is slashdot, after all!)
Get over it.
We don't have enough fear of god for our own good! (Score:4)
I demand the right to a solid platform upon which I can support my dignity. How can I feel good about myself if I am reminded that I share common ancestry with ape-brutes? I've been to the zoo, and I decline to write of the horrid, disgusting things I have seen the creatures do.
With our sense of self-worth at stake, supporters of science will talk of 'emprical evidence', 'facts', and 'logic'. Take a moment and reflect on the innocence lost the day our world left it's prominent spot at the center of the universe. And now they would have us force feed this, their evil-ution, to our kids.
Does a man who is doing his utmost to get into heaven benefit from filling his head with theories? Do we want our teachers questioning all that is good and decent, twisting things around with their fancy words? We must shift our focus back to something which is never used in an evil fashion: religion.
Kansas State Board of Education (Score:3)
I am from Kansas (I just go to school in Massachusetts) who has a little bit of insight into this situation. The board of education is a powerful governmental institution whose members are elected by statewide ballot in Kansas. Unfortunately, this is an election that noone pays any attention to. The Christian coalition noticed this and proceded to find very very right wing candidates to run as republicans for the open seats several years ago.
Kansas is predominantly Republican (that's an understatement) and on the ballot you can just pick a straight ticket as one of your options, so many people just picked the repulican candidates and WHAM! half of the state board of education has a very fundimentalist viewpoint.
I'm not surprised at all with this latest move by such an esteemed body, next they'll probably require creationism to be taught and physics to be banned. I'm glad I got the heck out of that state.
talk.origins FAQ (Score:3)
FAQ [talkorigins.org]
Not that it will help. sigh.
Nobody's loss but Kansas .. (Score:3)
That's it.
If you state that such changes are "only a theory", you are lying through the skin of your teeth.
When most people speak of "evolution", they are typically talking about "common descent", which is the application of evolutionary biology to explain the biodiversity of life on Earth through slowly-developing twin-nested hierarchies descending from common ancestors.
This is what chaps the asses of fundies. It is in direct conflict with their literalist interpretation of the Bible. And since they learned long ago that they're not going to get creationism taught in public school, they shifted their focus to attacking the scientific bases for evolution, even though their attacks are ridiculous. They shout nonsense like "Evolution violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!" And it plays pretty well to the pew because, by golly, it sure sounds "purty scientifical!" After all, what do Mr. and Mrs. Johnson in the third row know about thermodynamics?
See, here's the thing: "Creation scientists" are full of shit, and I'm willing to bet that almost all of them are fully aware that they're full of shit. But most of the masses that phone in large cash contributions to the Trinity Broadcasting Network don't know this. It doesn't mean that they're stupid, or that they're not good people, it just means that they are uneducated with regards to the issues at hands. "Creation science" is a despicable, deceptive field which relies on repeated lies and misrepresentation of science. It does fairly well today because its adherents either aren't aware that it's lies, or they don't care.
I certainly understand why fundamentalists don't like evolution and common descent. But that doesn't matter. Scientific theories and facts do not stand and fall on the basis of whether everybody likes them or not. There are lots of things that science teaches us that I don't particularly find comforting. I don't like the notion that the Earth could be, at any moment, struck by a large asteroid which would wreak global devastation. I don't lose any sleep over it, but it's not a comforting notion. However, it does me no good to stick my fingers in my ears and run around screaming "IS NOT!! IS NOT!!"
So evolution is no longer part of the standard curriculum in Kansas. Big deal. It doesn't mean that it can't still be taught. All it means is that children who graduate from a Kansas high school that decided to forego evolution education are going to be less well-rounded than those children that graduated from schools that have no qualms about teaching things that have been discovered since the Bronze Age.
Finally, to those who would like to see fundamentalist Christian creationism taught in public schools "as a theory", you might want to consider that creationism is a myth
If creationists would like to see creationism taught as a theory in our public schools, then they should present the Theory of Creationism. If they are unable to, then they have no right to teach my children that the universe, which looks as if it is billions of years old, was "poofed" into existence by God six thousand years ago.
Re:Question for the Darwinists (Score:3)
-AS