Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional 3360
An anonymous reader writes "MSNBC reports that a judge in Atlanta, GA has ruled that a sticker placed on all textbooks in Cobb County stating that 'Evolution is a theory, not a fact,' is unconstitutional, and ordered that all stickers be removed."
Re:While it can be proven..... (Score:1, Interesting)
So, no. If anyone ever even calls evolution a law, they get a big idiot sticker in my book.
Re:Which religion? (Score:3, Interesting)
If I have a religion, as in what I believe in, I'd call it the scientific method. And my god would be Truth.
analogous != equivalent (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm doing no such thing. You're confusing analogy with equivalence.
My point is that Christianity (specifically, Creationistic Christianity) is going outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour by trying to intrude on other disciplines. If the converse were done to them and their bibles, hopefully they could see the error in their ways.
Unlikely, though. Christianity's biggest problem, as Joseph Campbell pointed out, was that for Christians it's more important to believe the existence of Jesus, Adam and Eve, Satan, etc. than it is to understand the meaningful significance behind them.
How can America ignore the evidence? (Score:4, Interesting)
1st Place: "My Uncle Is A Man Named Steve (Not A Monkey)"
One of my personal favorites
2nd Place: "Women Were Designed For Homemaking"
Jonathan Goode (grade 7) applied findings from many fields of science to support his conclusion that God designed women for homemaking: physics shows that women have a lower center of gravity than men, making them more suited to carrying groceries and laundry baskets; biology shows that women were designed to carry un-born babies in their wombs and to feed born babies milk, making them the natural choice for child rearing; social sciences show that the wages for women workers are lower than for normal workers, meaning that they are unable to work as well and thus earn equal pay; and exegetics shows that God created Eve as a companion for Adam, not as a co-worker.
(P.S. that site is for real)
Re:Thank God! (Score:4, Interesting)
Furthermore, evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life, only the ways in which it has changed since it began. I have never heard a remotely plausible theory regarding the origin of life. People have not yet been able to create anything nearly as complex as a machine which can produce more of itself outside of laboratory conditions, and the idea that such machines just "happened" accidentally is far-fetched at best.
Don't get me wrong here - the notion that some all-seeing, all-knowing invisible superhero created life so that it could be fawned over is even more absurd. But just because we can't figure out how it started doesn't mean we should accept "it just happened by accident". Did VCRs also spontaneously arise out of the primordial soup? A VCR is a far far simpler device than a self-reproducing automaton...
For those with brains and a spiritual center (Score:5, Interesting)
This was spot on for me, and since we're in the smart room right now with this article, I thought I'd share. It's a wonderful explanation of why critical thinkers can still have faith.
----------------
TOR NØRRETRANDERS
Science Writer; Consultant; Lecturer, Copenhagen; Author, The User Illusion
I believe in belief--or rather: I have faith in having faith. Yet, I am an atheist (or a "bright" as some would have it). How can that be?
It is important to have faith, but not necessarily in God. Faith is important far outside the realm of religion: having faith in other people, in oneself, in the world, in the existence of truth, justice and beauty. There is a continuum of faith, from the basic everyday trust in others to the grand devotion to divine entities.
Recent discoveries in behavioural sciences, such as experimental economics and game theory, shows that it is a common human attitude towards the world to have faith. It is vital in human interactions; and it is no coincidence that the importance of anchoring behaviour in riskful trust is stressed in worlds as far apart as Søren Kierkegaard's existentialist christianity and modern theories of bargaining behaviour in economic interactions. Both stress the importance of the inner, subjective conviction as the basis for actions, the feeling of an inner glow.
One could say that modern behavioral science is re-discovering the importance of faith that has been known to religions for a long time. And I would argue that this re-discovery shows us that the activity of having faith can be decoupled from the belief in divine entities.
So here is what I have faith in: We have a hand backing us, not as a divine foresight or control, but in the very simple and concrete sense that we are all survivors. We are all the result of a very long line of survivors who survived long enough to have offspring. Amoeba, rodents and mammals. We can therefore have confidence that we are experts in survival. We have a wisdom inside, inherited from millions of generations of animals and humans, a knowledge of how to go about life. That does not in any way imply foresight or planning ahead on our behalf. It only implies that we have a reason to trust out ability to deal with whatever challenges we meet. We have inherited such an ability.
Therefore, we can trust each other, ourselves and life itself. We have no guarantee or promises for eternal life, not at all. The enigma of death is still there, ineradicable.
But we a reason to have confidence in ourselves. The basic fact that we are still here--despite snakes, stupidity and nuclear weapons--gives us reason to have confidence in ourselves and each other, to trust others and to trust life. To have faith.
Because we are here, we have reason for having faith in having faith.
Wired's thoughts about Intelligent design (Score:2, Interesting)
So, by this standard, virtually everything I believe in must now fall under the shadow of unproveability. Most importantly, this includes the belief that democracy, capitalism and other market-driven systems (including evolution!) are better than their alternatives. Indeed, I suppose I should now refer to them as the "theory of democracy" and the "theory of capitalism", to join the theory of evolution, and accept the teaching of living Marxism and fascism as alternatives in high schools.
Written by
CHRIS W. ANDERSON
Editor-In-Chief, Wired
Re:Thank God! (Score:2, Interesting)
All models of macroevolution feature gradual change at some point. There's no such thing as an "evolutionary state", and I'd like to ask you where you learned that there was so I can bludgeon your biology teacher.
Evolution itself has been observed countless times in living organisms. Macroevolution has been observed a number of times in a geologically insignificant period.
Intelligent Design IS NOT science (Score:2, Interesting)
Science is developing a theory from known facts. It's called the Scientific Method. You know, Francis Bacon. Maybe you don't.
Magic, I mean Creationism, is trying to find facts to fit a predetermined theory, in this case an ancient story that everything is done with magic. *Poof*
The difference is innate, and despite what many fundamentalist think, science will never be religion. The two are incompatible. Just ask Copernicus.
Re:Yay! (Score:1, Interesting)
I do agree: Feelings like -1 free speech to me, beliefs aside.
Obligatory link to talkorigins.org (Score:5, Interesting)
Cut and paste to avoid slashdot effect.
Page titled "Evolution is a Fact and a Theory":m l
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.ht
Hence, saying that for sure evolution "is not a fact" at best cannot be proven, at at worst is downright false.
Want more ? http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html
Quote:Nothing to do with creation (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Yay! (Score:3, Interesting)
If we want to have warning stickers attached to everything that is a theory (including gravity) then we can at least have a conversation about this - but this was clearly a case of trying to confuse and influence those reading the textbooks. In order to see it a different way, simply reverse the situation. What if, in San Francisco, they started putting stickers on textbooks that said the following:
This book makes references to God. There has been no testable proof that God or any other form of supreme being exists throughout human history.
Is it true? Yes. Would putting such a sticker on school's textbooks have a motive other than the simple conveying of a fact? Yes.
Fuck the Bible-thumpers (Score:0, Interesting)
Evolution my be a theory, but scientific evidence exists that certainly supports it. To that, they say "The material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered"-- but we're supposed to accept the claptrap in the Bible literally and without question, and without any concrete evidence whatsoever?
If you ask me, it's the Bible that needs a sticker on the front: "Danger! May cause extreme self-righteousness in the weak-minded and suggestible."
Re:Creationism Bashing (Score:2, Interesting)
Correct, but finding evidence of a trilobites in a human sandal fossil and human footprints embedded in 250-million-year-old coal veins [apologeticspress.org] bring up interesting points on why the evolution theory does not change to meet the found facts, but rather the facts are discarded becuase they don't fit the theory. If a physicist threw out facts, he would be ripped apart, but evolutionists are given a free ride to say and do whatever matches their flawed theory.
Plus the discovery of cave paintings of dinosaurs and pottery with extremely realistic depictions of man and dinosaurs together [apologeticspress.org] shoot more holes in the whole evolutiontists timetables.
Re:A few simple questions.. (Score:2, Interesting)
What about "One nation under god" in the Pledge? Again, lower case 'g' would be fine.
What do people swear in on when going under "oath" in the court room again? How about the holy text of their choice?
And you're telling me a sticker that states a FACT is unconstitutional.. heh.. No. The sticker implies that creationism is a theory when it is a believe. Teaching it as an alterative to science will corrupt our education system even more.
USA, land of the greedy and oblivious. You're a Republician, right?
Re:Thank God! (Score:5, Interesting)
Scientists have, however, managed to zap at contained vats of chemicals that could be similar to the soup that was Earth's conditions before life and managed to get some very basic 'things' that could be the precursors to life as we know it. Unfortunately, they don't have millennia to continue to monitor and experiment on these vats of organic chemicals to see what actually happens to them.
I think that it's very plausible that amino acids and proteins, combined with a whole slew of other compounds came together and started to have different chemical reactions that built upon themselves leading to "life". Also, small, simple systems are easily mutated chemically at such a stage, so new variants would crop up in the process of dividing or chemically reacting, continuing the diversification. Over time pieces combine or split and grow in complexity, eventually joining into simple multicellular organisms, then further.
I'm an American... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: What? (Score:4, Interesting)
I believe that the official Roman Catholic view is that evolution took place as scientists believe. They add the claim that at the point at which humans became human, God infused them with souls. This isn't really inconsistent with biological theory since biology doesn't have anything to say about souls. Effectively, the official view is biology + infusion of the soul.
I agree that those Christians who believe in evolution would not agree that life evolved purely as a result of cosmic chance, but evolution in and of itself doesn't require that. A purely materialist scientist sees no need to appeal to anything other than chance, but one can hold a perfectly orthodox view of evolution and at the same time believe that a Supreme Being set the whole thing in motion.
Re:Thank God! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Yay! (Score:2, Interesting)
A little tidbit (Score:2, Interesting)
Do you agree that officially mandated textbook stickers labeling evolution as "a theory, not a fact" are unconstitutional?
*45% - Yes, it violates separation of church and state.
*11% - The stickers are a terrible idea, but they're not unconstitutional.
*42% - The board was right to put the stickers in, and the judge was wrong to take them out.
3% - None of the above.
For what it's worth, it seems like the reading audience is fairly divided. Or someone had fun with a script and their cookies...
Some people believe Newton's physics theories still explain the physics in the universe (rather than Einstein's). Some people believe everything they read in science textbooks rather than questioning things...
Re:Thank God! (Score:2, Interesting)
Wow, go back to bio class.
talkorigins.com:
"Nor is abiogenesis (the origin of the first life) due purely to chance. Atoms and molecules arrange themselves not purely randomly, but according to their chemical properties. In the case of carbon atoms especially, this means complex molecules are sure to form spontaneously, and these complex molecules can influence each other to create even more complex molecules. Once a molecule forms that is approximately self-replicating, natural selection will guide the formation of ever more efficient replicators. The first self-replicating object didn't need to be as complex as a modern cell or even a strand of DNA. Some self-replicating molecules are not really all that complex (as organic molecules go)."
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconcepti
I wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Thank God! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Thank God! (Score:3, Interesting)
Just because some scientists waste their time in journals being dogmatic assholes to protect their funding doesn't mean science is wrong or bad, any more than it's fair for me to blame all Christianity for Jerry Fallwell and his ilk.
Re:Yay! (Score:3, Interesting)
Nevertheless, that should be the general statement made before teaching any branch of science. What you are suggesting is psychological manipulation to ignore that fact. This is like putting a sticker on a math book saying "1+1=2 is only true according to some beliefs. Proceed with caution."
No, in that you are wrong. Bertrand Russell spent several years and actually proved, in the real and rigorous sense of the word, that 1+1 = 2. Indeed, it may be that only logical statements (such as those expressed in mathematics) can be proved; almost nothing in the physical world can be.
Re:Dear Creationists (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yay! (Score:2, Interesting)
It would be well to point out another development on this front:
"NEW YORK Dec 9, 2004 -- A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God more or less based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.
"At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England."
ABC News: Famous Atheist Now Believes in God [go.com]
Re:Thank God! (Score:3, Interesting)
No it's not.
Why are evolutionsts so defensive about their theory?
Because they believe strongly in it, and find it puzzling why people would dispute it. If there was a large movement in the US to label the earth as flat in school textbooks the astronomers would just as vehemently react.
But the basic idea that if someone defends something energetically then they're hiding something is just bizarre. It makes no sense. And it's a pretty open field, you can just pick up a geology textbook and see why they say what they do. As a field it's not especially incomprehensible to the layman.
Have you ever honestly looked at the evidence for a global flood of immense proportions?
Yes.
It's scary.
Not really.
That's a good call, dude (Score:5, Interesting)
And you'd be absolutely right. In the current conflict in Iraq, the death rate from battle wounds is only 1.6%, whereas in vietnam it was 3.68%, more than twice as high. [army.mil] The army, at least, attributes this huge increase in survivability to modern medical technology and improved practice.
looked at as a ratio of wounded (but survived) to killed, the current ratio is 7.6:1. Going backwards in time, counting only U.S. soldiers:
Vietnam: 2.6:1
WWII: 1.7:1
WWI: 1.8:1
US Civil War: 0.74:1
In other words, a trend consistently shows more people surviving war wounds as time goes on.
Meanwhile, the evidence is not that there has been a massive (factor of twenty) increase in religiosity in the United States since the Civil war. Certainly, available data show that people self-identifying as Christian have decreased significantly between 1990 and 2004.
So the evidence would seem to indicate, unless God has consistently increased his tendency to save the lives of wounded soldiers despite no significant increase in their faith, that improvements in medical technology are in fact a good bet for saving your life when you're lying bleeding on the battlefield.
Good call, mike260.
Re:Thank God! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Thank God! (Score:2, Interesting)
'God did it,' by being the answer to, literally, everything is meaningless. What is there to learn when you already know the answers to all the "why's" out there? Unfortunately, one of religion's major faults is basic anti-intellectualism.
Re:Thank God! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Thank God! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Dear Creationists (Score:5, Interesting)
Dear Creationists,
We'll put these stickers on our science textbooks when you put "God's existance is an untestable hypothesis that can never rise to the level of validity of a theory. Belief that 'God' created the universe is as demonstratable and testable as 'invisible pink elephants' created the universe."
Re:Creationist? (Score:2, Interesting)
- The chance of a beneficial genetic mutation is close to zero. It's much less likely than a tossed deck of cards landing neatly stacked in an order that conveys meaning. (if you didn't like that one, then go with the classic "monkeys with typewriters" comparison)
- Evolutionists keep expanding the time frame of events to explain away the infinitesimal chance of beneficial mutations occuring.
- They dig up fossils of several creatures and decide that there was some sort of evolutionary relationship between them. Why can't there just have existed distinct creatures that may or may not have similar traits, but no ancestorial relationships?
- Evolutionists have an agenda. They want to explain the world in a way that is acceptable to their athiest views. I know that creationists also have an agenda, but my point is that evolutionists are not unbiased observers.
I guess my point is that evolution is as religious as creationism is. What little observable science there is can't prove or disprove either theory. Maybe a thousand years from now, scientists will observe how much we have "evolved" between now and then, and have some scientific data to back up those observations. But a thousand years is a drop in the ocean to evolution, so it probably wont prove much of anything.Re:Thank God! (Score:3, Interesting)
The other half of this, separation of life from non-life, was most likley brought about by another set of events, codified into the so called Lipid World hypothesis.
Finally, as far as homeostatis, every cell on the planet expends a considerable amount of energy carefully regulating its internal environment. There's nothing magical about a multi-cellular organism that obsolves it from this critical role. As you sit reading this, fully 2/3 of the energy being expended by your brain is going directly to maintaining a specific Na+/K+ concentration gradient. The same is true for the bacteria on your skin, but to a slightly lesser extent.
Re:Thank God! (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I came to my faith, not early on in my childhood, but much later in adulthood. Being agnostic most of my life and growing up with science in school, I was (and still am) very interested in things like astronomy and cosmology. Frankly, I see the beauty of God's work in the heavens every time I set up my telescope.
However, perhaps unlike many baptised-at-birth Christians who knew about the teachings of Jesus their whole life, I came to faith through my own search for answers to bigger questions. To me, it simply seems to impossible to think that the universe and all that's in it, including us, is the result of some random roll of the cosmic dice.
On the other hand, I see a certain parity between science and religion. I don't think they necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. Just like science can't explain the pre-big bang universe, it also can't explain the "Why am I here question?". If you can accept that science, when pursued in a truly unbiased way, helps to explain the physical universe and the phenomenon that we see in it, then it seems natural to me to think that religion is the way to explain the "Why am I here question?".
Re:Thank God! (Score:3, Interesting)
These snakes can still eat younger cane toads, but not the ones that can kill them.
But no one's ever observed macro evolution.
Re:Evolution: both theory and fact (Score:5, Interesting)
No. "Things fall down" is a fact - an observed phenomenon. "Things fall down because there's a force called gravity that causes an attractive force between any two masses" is a theory.
As for the sticker, "evolution" means "species change over time". This has been observed, so it is a fact. "Theory of Evolution", on the other hand, says that "All species on Earth were born from a common ancestor through evolution", which may be true, partially true ("some, but not all, species developed from a common ancestor through evolution") or completely false. Therefore, it is not a fact.
It should also be noted that one of the reasons that the Theory of Evolution gained so much support was simply a counterreaction to the centuries of oppression by religion and the then-fashionable atheism; scientists, being humans, aren't any more immune to letting fashion influence their thinking than anyone else. It was fashionable to deny the existence of God, and the authority of church, so any theory that would allow people to do so seemed inherently better than it's merits might have allowed.
Re:Thank God! (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay, I've been to a few church services (Catholic, Gospel, several other Protestant sects), but I've not encountered this view. Can you show in the Bible, the associated liturgy, or transcripts of well-known prechers/ministers where one is urged to challenge conventional views (as in the Eastern religions I mentioned previously)? Or specifically where the lack of evidence (sorry, a missing body does not by itself indicate resurrection) of the Resurrection, Heaven, Hell, Satan, etc imply that these components of Christianity aren't that important to it's overall practice? Or better yet, where accepting Jesus isn't as important as helping someone more needy?
I'm not trying to denigrate you nor criticize Christianity, it's just that all of my experiences at Christian ceremonies and services focused primarily on faith and had very little to do with experience. So I am curious to know about this. I'll admit I've perhaps only been to 15 church services total, so that's a relatively small sample size. In my experiences so far, most of these services involved three basic tenets, all with a common reward or punishment - Accept Jesus, avoid sin, and practice righteousness of character. Adherence to these goals (with absolutely no evidence that is shown) will reward the good Christian soul with Heaven, failure to do these will send him/her to hell. The reward of heaven by accepting Jesus is the concept most often mentioned, seeming to permeate everything (in my experiences anyway). And quite often (most notably on the TV bible personalities) versus are quoted directly from the bible and presented as fact, or as the absolute authority on which to base your actions.
I don't see how blindly accepting Jesus and Heaven or Hell has anything to do with experience and proof, but only as blind faith. I've never seen a preacher/minister or religious Christian question whether Heaven/Hell exists or whether Jesus was really the Son of God. Neither on top of that have I seen the encouragement of challenging conventionally-established views. Once again, I'm not criticizing any of these sects of Christianity, but in my experiences so far they have not demonstrated to me any sense of experience, but instead base almost everything on faith.
I'm sure there are churches or other branches where being a "Good Christian" and helping others is more important than accepting Jesus and going to heaven, and where they discuss complicated situations and how to best deal with them (with no persuasion of heaven/hell by choosing the right path), etc. But I've not encountered any of these yet.
Re:Which religion? (Score:3, Interesting)
So what word would you recommend for someone who rejects both God and Religion if not 'Atheist'?
I'm certainly one of those people.
For believers in religions and/or gods, I find that they typically want to label me as 'Agnostic' - which suggests some measure of doubt on my part. They are a little horrified when I tell them "No - I'm quite certain that there isn't a God."
For me, God is precisely as believable as the Tooth Fairy and Santa Clause. I really, truly cannot put any more conviction into it than that. This makes it very hard to take anything that religious people say seriously. If you met an adult who fervently believed in the Tooth Fairy and modelled their life on that basis, you'd think they were a certifyable lunatic!
What I fail to understand about believers is this. If I truly believed in the existance of a being with utterly unlimited powers who could see and hear absolutely everything and who could understand everything - yet who would be prepared to accept the terrible things that happen on Earth without offering help - and (worse) condem people he regards as 'sinners' to an infinite prison sentence beyond death in the most inhumane conditions with pain and torture...would I be able to live my daily life?
To follow such a dangerous, sadistic maniac with the fervor that people do would seem impossible to me even if I believed in him. Yet to oppose such a being and risk literally infinite punishment is an unacceptable risk too. I truly don't know what I would do. Certainly, the idea of just persuing my daily life in humdrum normality making the occasional trip to church would be impossible.
Even if I could somehow rationalise the bad things that this guy permits to happen, I couldn't *possibly* risk upsetting the guy. How is it that religious people ever come even close to breaking God's rules? Yet they clearly do it all the time! I'd be terrified that I'd picked the wrong God! What the Christian God wants may be 180 degrees off what some Wikkan believer thinks is the case - the consequences of being wrong would be rather serious.
How can religious people stand to live that way? I can only imagine that they are just totally lacking in critical thinking skills...but then that's a given for someone who might just as likely believe in Santa Clause.
Welcome to my world!
Re:How can America ignore the evidence? (Score:3, Interesting)
I really don't like the way they refer to open source, i dont care about it to be communist or not, but the way they say it is intended to scare people away, and they dont see the benefits for us the community.
and if you continue reading, you will find this:
i don't know about you, but i found this extremely disturbing. I know that part of that site is old, like 2002, even so, they are not convincing young people, they are convincing someone's parents.
Re:Creationist? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wrong: Evidence [gate.net]
Evolutionists keep expanding the time frame of events
Evidence?
They dig up fossils of several creatures and decide that there was some sort of evolutionary relationship between them. Why can't there just have existed distinct creatures that may or may not have similar traits, but no ancestorial relationships?
They assume neither and both. The evidence (age, traits etc.etc.) determines one or the other based on previous evidence/conclusions.
Evolutionists have an agenda
Based on testable theories. Creationists have no testable theories.
Re:Thank God! (Score:3, Interesting)
Whats really frustrating here is.... (Score:4, Interesting)
that this pathetic attempt by religous fundamentaists to impose a creationist curriculum makes the critique of evolution and the critique of modern science even more difficult.
Science is not about truth. The measurement appropriate to science is the measurement of correctness. It is not about truth because it is personally irrelevant-ie. it has nothing to do directly with you or your actions and values-unless you are a scientist engaged in scientific activities. But the dogma of school science is about truth and pupils are by and large incapable of NOT drawing personal conclusions, conclusions about there own being, life and meaning based on what they are taught about science.
And it is indeed questionable if such is having a detrimental effect on our society. That so many adults are turning to fundamentalist christian beliefs is a an ultra hardcore indictment of our public school instruction about science. The void of personal meaning present in that which is being taught is real and tangible. It's not as if these adults were not subject to evolution in their schools curriculum....
Being against the fundamentalist doctrine of creationism does not mean that by default one endorses the theory of evolution. But this kind of situation, where the state acts to prevent an endorsement of religion in the public school curriculum, forces the issue-rendering things black and white.
The whole argument of science vs religion overlooks that there is practically little difference, in terms of conviction, between religion and science. Science is the religion of many modern day earth dwellers. It is accepted with the same kind of passitivity as is the case in most modern christians. Only a tiny percentage of people are actually scientists yet their theories, facts, and findings, translated into language which the non-initiated can understand, form the basis for much of our public schools curriculum.
Much of the religious nature of modern science is due not to science itself but due to the science (pedagogic) which has evolved to enlighten our childrens minds by teaching them about science.
Now one can argue about whether the material being taught is really science. And in the process overlook the fact that the indoctrination of scientific values and assumptions in our pupils impressionable minds is anything but scientific. To the extent to which 'science' and 'evolution' have become doctrines administered to our youth in the public school system the issues of what rightly constitutes science is no longer a decision of 'scientists'.
Evolution, an incredibly broad and overgeneral term for multiple conflicting and competing theories has become the basis of biology and the whole slew of neo-scientific adventures which have sprung up in the past 40 years (socio-biology, pyscho-biology and what not). In these scientific field there exists a degree of consensus about what evolution implies. This consensus around 'evolution'-or rather the raster of interelated theories which form 'evolution' has become so central, so pivotal that such neo-scientific adventures would vanish in a puff of logic if the non-verifiable ultimate hypothesis implied in 'evolution' where sufficiently debunked.
'Evolution' is in the first place a working tool which aids in organizing, categorizing the abundance of material gathered and explicitly casting these findings in terms of teleological causes.
As a tool 'evolution' is usefull for these scientific pursuits. As is the case with all tools- this tool will be surplanted in time by newer and more appropriate tools-as the sitution requires. 'Evolution'(eg. Maturana and Varela and the concept of autopoesis, natural drift) of today has remarkably little to do with Charles Darwins "Origins of Species".
The problem with 'evolution' in specific and 'science' in general is not that they are based on theories. Aside from the fact that everything which is not a theory is either (fantasy, mythology, mystery, fiction) or the unmittigated
shessh (Score:1, Interesting)
When you have a theory, and it, in your opinion, makes the most sense compared to whats out there, and you are working in this field, you observations will invariable support the theory you believed in unless you come up with a better one.
The evolution theory is debated - one reason is that it's basic assumption is the following:
During one lucky momemt mass, substance and energy functioning in time-space, during one incredible lucky moment combined to form a self-propagating unit and that this element by chance grew and grew and then someday up the line man stood there.
Set up in that context how good odds would this get in a bet?
Of course religous people believing a soul have a hard time with this theory since it excludes and denies the presence of a soul and as such has formed the basis for people who believe that there is no soul, that we are basically just lucky to have mutated this way from mud.
I don't believe it, not even fairy tales are this illogical.
However since the theory is prevalant and since it's the only explicitly scientific theory I agree it should be taught in schools - but stating on the books that it is A) A theory and B) should be read with a critical mind is just common sense, you should note this about almost any theory and proposed idea.
Re:Surely the sticker should be on ALL textbooks (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no such thing as absolute truth in science. Everything is a theory which is supported or refuted by observable evidence and repeatable experiments.
Here are some example of theories:
The Earth goes around the Sun
Matter is made from atoms (ever saw an atom?)
Electricity is movement of electrons (ever seen an electron?)
Evolution, as a theory, is as established as any of the above.
Re:How can America ignore the evidence? (Score:3, Interesting)
Over the pond (Score:3, Interesting)
Even most Christian preists accept evolution here, and just work it into their beleifs. Their attitude tends to be less "we have the answers" and more "there are *philosophical* questions that fall outside the realm of science, and we can help you work them out."
It seems obvious that the bible isn't supposed to be literal. It contradicts itself, and clearly many of the stories are contrived to put over moral arguments. Why is it then, that certain aspects, like the creation myth, are taken as being literal accounts? At least the stuff about Jesus' life is talking about actual events that people saw. The creation myth is clearly designed to add credibility to the bible, by giving answers to fundamental questions which are difficult to answer. Very few people here take it literally.
*IIRC, the example was moths in London, during the industrial revolution. At first, they were mostly brown, because that gave them the best camoflage against wood and stone surfaces. When people started burning lots of coal, everything got covered in soot and the air was thick with smog (pea soupa). Black moths blended in better, so after a few decades most moths were black because they had a better chance of living long enough to reproduce. When things cleaned up a bit, the moths eventually went back to being mostly brown.
Re:Thank God! (Score:3, Interesting)
given how brainwashed a mind is, as a result of religious teaching, YES, its very possible that we will raise kids that can't hold multiple ideas in their mind that weren't spoon fed to them by some high-horse moralist wannabe.
we've worked hard (as a society) to keep a separation betweeen wives-tales and superstitions of the middle ages and actual hard science.
are we soon going to allow 'doubt' that evil is caused by a black cat crossing your path? do we allow kids to throw salt over their shoulder, for good luck?
there must be a clear line drawn between the dark ages of thought and modern thought.
Re:Thank God! (Score:3, Interesting)
You've been listening to Jehovah's Witnesses. You should stop doing that. Trinitarian theology is very strongly rooted in the New Testament.
Much of the body of the Bible was written in letters by a schizophrenic who was born a hundred years after Christ's death.
I assume you're talking about Paul. The hypothesis that the Pauline epistles were written years after Jesus' death has been largely discredited by the finding of numerous copies dated around 65 AD, very close to the time the scriptures place themselves. We also have a few copies of the gospels from the same time period. As it is, we have more historical evidence for the correct dating of the New Testament than we do for the epic of Gilgamesh. Or so I've heard; don't take my word for it.
Re:Surely the sticker should be on ALL textbooks (Score:2, Interesting)
Have you ever read the Epic of Gilgamesh? The Flood story in there is nearly identical to the one in the Bible. The names are different, there's a few different secondary items, but it's basically the same layout: God(s) decide to flood the earth, God tells guy to build a boat and put all the living things of the world on it, world gets flooded, guy ends up on top of a mountain.
There's a nice summary here. [wsu.edu] (Look at Tablet 11.) Interestingly, Utnapishtim (the story's Noah) is immortal when Gilgamesh meets him (well after the flood), very similar to Noah's unusually long lifespan.
We aren't talking about "Hey, there are two flood survival stories in ancient writings!" we're talking about "Hey, the Hebrews seem to have inherited a flood story and then adapted it to their own use."
An interesting quote from the actual decision (Score:3, Interesting)
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In this case, the Court beleives that an informed, reasonable observer would interpret the Sticker to convey a message of endorsement of religion. That is, the Sticker sends a message to those who oppose evolution for religious reasons that they are favored members of the political community, while the Sticker sends a message to those who beleive in evolution that they are political outsiders. This is particularly so in a case such as this one involving impressionable public school students who are likely to view the message on the Sticker as a union of church and state
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Re:Statistically Everything is possible (Score:2, Interesting)
Then you have to think about why you are who you are rather than why weren't you born as someone else (IE born in 1500AD vs 2500AD) then you are just stumped on how you even begin to exist.
Well the matter is that the universe has infinite time and infinite variants so you had to exist sometime and this was just that time. I have no idea what makes someone exist or even have a soul to begin with, but all sorts of combinations have existed. Perhaps our planet is a fluke and the on average most planets are dead.
Secondly, I would have to ask you: What if you were born into Islam? Would now that be the truth for you? What about other Christians now? Is their book still "the truth".
I'm not stating an answer for anything or saying that you are wrong. I could be very well mistaken. Just something for you to think about.
Re:"Creationist"? (Score:3, Interesting)
Which is why it doesn't belong in "Science" class
but it does make claims about what the world is like, and I believe that its claims fit reality
So would saying "The world is really an illusion created by robots who have enslaved us (a la the Matrix)". Remember, I can invent any story to explain how things are... but it it isn't testable or falsafiable then it is not science!
You think that evolution is the true explanation of why we are here, but why do you care if I believe something which you think is false?
You are making 2 common mistakes:
1) assuming people who believe in evolution do not believe in God
2) Believing the absence of God implies the absence of morals. It is entirely possible to believe in objective morality.. where morality (just like mathematics) can be discovered through the application of reason
The reason for your pursuit of these things is that you are made in the image of God,
Or, because curiosity gave our ancestors an evolutionary advantage by allowing us to gather knowledge and manipulate our environment.
One last thing..
Basing a scientific theory on predictions seems like sketchy reasoning.
This is most certainly not 'sketchy reasoning' and only serves to bolster my argument by showing your ignorance about the scientific process. Very often in science a theory is tested by saying something like this: "If the theory of relativity is true, we should expect to see light bend around gravitational objects". Then we make observations. If our observations match our expectations then it bolsters the theory
Keep in mind, in my previous examples, as well as in all of science the theory is just a model. It might very well be that the reason we see light bend around gravity is due to God, magic, or pixie dust and it just so happens that the theory of relativity lines up with this magic. The model we use to describe what we repeatedly see is called a scientific theory
Now, as a follow-up question (that I sincerely hope you answer). If we are not a 'bag of chemicals' and have a soul... what happens to our soul when we get drunk? If our thoughts and actions are effected by alcohol, then how is our soul affected? If it is not affected, then our soul is not responsible for our thoughts and actions (as these are affected by alcohol) or our soul is responsible for our thoughts and actions.. and therefore our soul can be drunk.