No more drugs for these people.
No, really. No drugs tested on animals, because they're completely unrelated to humans and therefore can provide no evidence for safety or efficacy in humans. So no drugs. Also, no lightbulbs. Just to piss them off. Fuckwits.
Although, we have kind of done this debate several times in recent weeks. Instead, can we talk about that shite of a professor who's locked the hobbit skeleton in his safe? I hate him.
My immediate response was going to be "That's not news..." but I didn't realize it was happening in Pennsylvania...and Wisconsin...yikes!
This makes me happy. I think that they should teach everyone who is willing to learn, all the magical powers of the bible and evolution, etc. That way, when the race wars come, I'll be better prepared than my god-fearing neighbors... And I will strike them down with fuuuuuurrrrrioussss vengeance!
Here's my thing: evolution and "Intelligent design" are not mutually exclusive, and I have actually had a few professors mention the gist of intelligent design along with the theory of evolution, but using it primarily as a supplement for evolution. What I'm trying to say is this: does it seem to anyone else that by abandoning evolution for intelligent design, the major difference is the inclusion of "Oh, by the way, God exists!" as a big neiner neiner to atheists?
AaaaaAAAAAAaaah! But it's not necessarily GOD, see. It could be aliens. It's the aliens possibility that keeps it from being unconstitutional. :)
They are mutually exclusive. Intelligent design posits that complex structures must be created by an even more complex being.
It's a belief impossible to test and isn't science, it's religious fiction masquerading as science.
It also, of course, raises the biggest objection: fine, if complex things only arise from more complex things, where'd God (obviously a complex being) come from? Oh, you say he just "exists" and always has? THEN WHY NOT THE UNIVERSE, morons? People who add the unnecessary god-level of complexity to avoid understanding the universe are contemptible.
It's called "intelligent design", yet most of us are neither particular intelligent nor very well-designed.
Discuss.
Friend who believes in Creation Science: "But Evolution is just a theory!"
Me: "So's the Theory of Gravitation, dude, but I never see you guys flying out of church."
Until I get a creation scientist who can explain why a purportedly intelligent creator endowed me with nipples, I'm sticking with Charlie.
they never seem to get around to explaining all the damn dinosaur bones, either - what's up with that?
Reminds me of the old joke: (paraphrasing here, don't remember the exact quote)
"God must be a civil engineer, only someone that shortsighted would run a sewage pipe right next to an amusement park."
they never seem to get around to explaining all the damn dinosaur bones, either - what's up with that?
No, no, you see, it's Satan tricking us... or... or... SomethingSTOPLOOKINGATME
>>they never seem to get around to explaining all the damn dinosaur bones
i thought they contend that dinos existed, but just not as long ago as scientists claim.
I think it's funny that they also never mention the now defunct appendix in humans, or the steady increase in height through the ages.
Also, with regards to the animal kingdom, the also omit the fact that whales have "leg bones" in their "tails" indicative of a life on land before venturing into the sea.
Here's part of the press release from the school district, a little different slant on the issue:
"The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life up to individual students and their families. As a standards-driven district, class instruction focuses on the standards and preparing students to be successful on standards-based assessments.”
"The statements were developed to provide a balanced view, not teach or present religious beliefs. The Superintendent, Dr. Richard Nilsen, is on record stating that no teacher will teach Intelligent Design, Creationism, or present his/her or the board’s religious beliefs. The Dover Area School District wants to support and not discriminate against students and parents that do have competing beliefs, especially in the area of the origin of life debate"
Yeah, the press release of a school district that realizes the lawsuits soon to come are going to obliterate it financially will really be completely unbiased in its reporting.
More signs that monkey-bashing is on the rise. Oh, won't someone think of us poor monkeys..?
On a more serious note (or as serious as I can be while discussing Creationism or its spawn), and to make a vast generalization and oversimplification, I thought the Creationists' claim was that dino bones, fossil records, whale leg bones, etc. were all puzzles or tricks played on us by God. In short, anything seriously challenging their beliefs was written off as a Holy Hoax, and as such only went to serve their claims of intelligent design.
But I could be wrong. I can't take Creationism seriously, so I tend not to pay too much attention.
Fes: the nipples were a shortcut. But you like them anyway.
dino fossils are actually bones of the demons slayed by angels in the war between good and evil. go angels!
i can't wait until i have a kid and i have to tell him or her that the teacher is lying to them about creation, and why. then i'll have to teach them about evolution myself. stupid fucks, as if parenting wasn't hard enough already.
Petebest: my liking them is not the point.
tweak!
I for one, would like to go along with the dino bones being the remains of slain demons. I'd put a big raptor skull in the kids room, and whenever he misbehaves I'd beat him with it, and tell him Satan is making me do it.
dino fossils are actually bones of the demons slayed by angels in the war between good and evil
My recollection is that that particular war took place in Heaven, culminating in Lucifer's rather abrupt termination of Satanly duties and subsequent departure for warmer climes. What'd the bones do, fall out?
Also, I'm not sure that, theologically speaking, angels and demons, as eternal beings, can be killed. As supposedly pure spirits, though, I'm fairly certain they would eschew bones.
tweeakity-tweak!
Anybody read the National Geographic article? My dad has a subscription, and I stole his copy to read it. It was classic: big cover question WAS DARWIN WRONG?, and inside, after the article cover page, you flip over to find in 72 pt type,
NO.
The evidence for evolution is overwhelming.
And then it goes through all the stuff about what the term "theory" means in science and debunks the old "can evolution be observed in the lab" (yes) saw and many others.
I bet they get letters.
Seriously, they do every time they even mention Darwin. This is throwing down the glove in some ways.
Damn.... I got to get a copy of that...
What I don't understand is how people think that evolution is "only" a theory. If that's the case, what does that make intelligent design? There's no evidence for intelligent design, though there's a mountain of evidence which strongly suggests that evolution is a real phenomenon. Intelligent design isn't even a theory, it's a complete refusal to deal with the world.
I bet many of these people use electricity. Some of it must come from coal or natural gas. How could they explain its existence?
The National Graphic article with many links and resources.
*sigh* "Geo" omitted above to save space
People who beleive in 2000+ year old mytrhs should live like it. No god damn penicillin for you. Or television for that matter.
In all honesty, i think this whole literalism/fundamentalism is really a result of the scientific era. If you look back at history, people never really thought that the bible was literal truth, especially the old testament. Now that the major metaphor for understanding is a scientific sense of understanding, the rigourousness of science has been brought to bear on religion, and people, understandibly are both firghtened by it and drawn to it's certainty. It's why you see people attempting to justify creationism with pseudoscience. If they really beleived, pseudoscience would be unnesseccary. But they don't. Science has won. And these people are trying to use their misunderstanding of science( particularly the idea of falsifiability) to allow for a scientific religious worldview that is hopelessly contradictory, yet uses the metaphor of science and it's great shining beacon of nigh-certainty and predictability to mask their qualms about their beleifs.
Huge cognitive dissonance going on here.
If you want to talk about faith, fine, but don't even try to begin to mix in science, and vice versa. The scientists learned long ago the futility of listening to faith. When will the religious? Soon, unfortunately, won't be soon enough.
The most disturbing part of the article is the way it was written. Did they have to paint the school board member who was trying to be reasonable and open-minded as a strident wacko? And why does the writer indulge Creationists by constantly referring to it and framing it as Creation science. Science is not a term open to ambiguous interpretation. Creationism is not science, as we have discussed before. At best it is 'science'.
If I call myself a nonviolent protester, then go around murdering people, will the paper refer to me as a nonviolent protester rather than a murderer?
i can't wait until i have a kid and i have to tell him or her that the teacher is lying to them about creation, and why. then i'll have to teach them about evolution myself. stupid fucks, as if parenting wasn't hard enough already.
posted by smallish bear at 09:21PM UTC on November 30
Right on.
Thanks, islander. The entire article in the print mag is even more fun.
Plus there's a cool piece about the Mayan Underground Myths and sacred places that gave me the nerd giggles, it was so awesome.
And by awesome, I mean totally sweet.
If the fucking Pope, who is one of the most conservative in recent memory, can understand that there's nothing wrong with plate tectonics and evolution, why can't these morons?
I can't take Creationism seriously, so I tend not to pay too much attention.
Me, too. Until recently.
My takeaway (to use an awful term from MBA-enabled business meetings) from this is that progressives have got to stop ignoring/dismissing-as-ridiculous what the so-called Christian arm of the Right has been up to for the last generation or so: promoting its retarded worldview. (Actually, strike that -- it's unfair to the retarded to compare them to the Christian Right.) Pay attention to this shit. Call it out. Discuss it with folks. My bet is that there are plenty of Republicans who are currently closing their educated, thinking eyes to this part of their party who just need their eyes opened up a bit to come around and start casting their votes with this kind of crap in mind. Don't let the Christian Right be the only ones making noise about this garbage thinking.
Because they don't listen to senile Euros in dresses. And Catholics are idolaters and the servants of Satan. Didn't you know?
(wrt pope comment, natch)
btw I saw Eugenie C. Scott from the National Center for Science Education on one of the talking-heads cable shows last night, and she was very impressive. Supporting organizations like this might be a good step, too.
I'm going to start lobbying my state government to mandate that scientific inserts be placed in all Bibles sold in the state. You know, so they get a balanced education and learn both sides of the story.
After seeing this I just renewed my ACLU membership. This year I upped my donation.
MCT thinks like a superstar. So does jeblis.
Hey, who wants to put together a campaign demanding that the theory that aliens planted humans on Earth be included in HS biology classes?
If the fucking Pope, who is one of the most conservative in recent memory, can understand that there's nothing wrong with plate tectonics and evolution, why can't these morons?
Whoa! Slow down there little one. Plate Tectonics and Evolution are different. The only thing they share is a long time frame to occur.
Lets leave geology out of this one this time. We in geology are pretty sick of being lumped together with the whole evolution debate.
You live in a democracy. The (assumedly) elected school board members set the curriculum. If you want change, run for office or support someone whose views you share.
That is all.
rocket88, the answer isn't as simple as that. As the recent U.S. elections results show. There's a whole faith-based worldview that needs to be debunked or at least tempered. There's a battle going on for people's minds. Ignoring this kind of thing only gives crap faith-based thinking more room to grow.
tempest: First they came for evolution, but I said nothing, because I was a geologist...
rocket88: Right, and if the school board is elected by people who think pi is three because the KJ Bible says so, well, obviously, there's no problem changing the curriculum to reflect that, right?
Sidenote: I am a geologist. However my knowledge of the process of evolution isn't good enough for me to go fighting in creationist circles.
But I respect the point you're trying to make.
Meh, on the otherhand fuck 'em, my brain is wired too logically anyways. I can't stand even trying to talk with them sometimes...
Speak out against it all you want, but you're not going to change these people's minds. Under the system in which we live, if they amount to a majority, they win. And I think it is that simple.
How else do you propose to stop this kind of thing from happening?
I like this intelligent design idea. I'm going to use it to evolve a population of digital watches.
rocket88: education. Especially education that doesn't give equal weight to retarded thinking.
i like the little poll that was on the side of the article.
Which theory of the origin of the species should be taught?
Evolution: 26%
Intelligent design: 3%
Both: 5%
My theory is that the USA is rapidly devolving: 67%
that killed me. and as The Onion horoscope said a few weeks back, one of these days that bible they keep thumping is going to decide it's finally had enough from them, and deliver the beatdown of a lifetime...
HawthorneWingo: maybe we ought to start a push to teach the theory of an earth-centered solar system in the science classes? faith-based astronomy. hey, it's a valid theory! and also that the mon landings were staged. yep. just as much evidence for that as there is for ID. anything to get people to realize that not every little idea deserves equal time.
i'd rather be fired for teaching evolution than to continue teaching and have to mention ID. period.
What exactly is the great loss to humanity if some American kids are told about ID? Will they then lag behind their worldwide peers? That's already happening! What practical use is the knowledge of the evolution of species in their day to day lives?
I think, fuyugare, that the greater point is the equation of rational scientific thought with unprovable religious dogma. Slippery slope and all that.
One idea of the enlightenment was the improvement of the human animal, partly by replacing superstition with reason, faith with fact. Of course the end idea was that humans were perfectible, and that's just secular humanism. And we know how many people that pisses off.
You're missing the bigger picture here, fuyugare. Academic education is not about teaching practical every day applications of knowledge. By forcing pseudoscience into the realm of science undermines an educator's ability to teach the scientific method. The great loss comes when potential scientists and doctors are told at an impressionable age that when it comes to science, having testable, quantitative theories is equal to what people who have little to no understanding of science believe without evidence.
Will it affect their ability to push a button on an assembly line and spit out babies? No. But it does undermine our future ability to have the scientific method self-correct erroneous theory and enhance and lengthen our lives just because someone wishes that something was true instead of proving that it is.
Worrying about not properly teaching the scientific method is good, but much of the stuff learned in school-life science classes is far from that ideal. Memorization and regurgitation of facts doesn't result in the same relationship with the science as, for example, playing with a chunk of radioactive Na and a fidgety detector to calculate the mass of neutrons does. The 'scientific method' itself is often a fiction. I have a good friend whose 'scientific method' appears to be drinking a lot of Vodka. (Caveat: he's in theoretical physics.)
What I'm trying to say is -- let them learn ID in school. The potential scientists in the bunch will become scientists despite it, when later in life they will invariably come to see their high-school science knowledge as a bundle of simplifications and (white) lies.
While we're at it, let's teach them that while babies might be the product of sexual contact and the joining of sperm and egg, it might also be the result of a stork delivery system or faeries leaving changelings in tree stumps.
The smart ones will sort it out. ;)
Why do you want high school students to know the real way to make babies? Are you pro-teen-pregnancy?!!
Oh, and that prayer cures polio. Or that hurricanes are not caused by anything but God's wrath.
I'm sure that'll do wonders for closing the gaps between classes and making sure that education does not become a luxury of the rich.
Why do you want high school students to know the real way to make babies? Are you pro-teen-pregnancy?!!
Not at all. I just want them to get a well-rounded education.
Besides, everyone knows that if God wants you to get pregnant, you will. As a curse for your sinfulness. Or a blessing for your righteousness. Though the latter might require heavy doese of fertility drugs, if he doesn't bless you right away.
For your ID refutation needs
Its interesting to note that many IDers appear to get Behe's (author of Darwin's Black Box, the ID "Bible") base argument wrong...arguing not only against evolution of the cell as Behe does, but arguing against evolution of entire organisms, which Behe concedes.
Behe's fatal flaw? He doesn't seem to know much about genetics...
I'm worried about the supression of hobbit history.
Question: Where do people's ideas of the meaning of the word "design" come from as it's used apart from ID?
When they name the next giant carnivorous dinosaur fossil a "Balrogodon", then geeks will truly rule the earth.
The second casualty: Good Information on Sexual Health.
And by "good" I mean "accurate." Apparently a congressional committee has found that federally funded "abstinence only" sex ed classes are (shock!) misleading kids about basic health facts. To wit:
The report concluded that two of the curricula were accurate but the 11 others, used by 69 organizations in 25 states, contain unproved claims, subjective conclusions or outright falsehoods regarding reproductive health, gender traits and when life begins. In some cases, Waxman said in an interview, the factual issues were limited to occasional misinterpretations of publicly available data; in others, the materials pervasively presented subjective opinions as scientific fact.
Among the misconceptions cited by Waxman's investigators:
• A 43-day-old fetus is a "thinking person."
• HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, can be spread via sweat and tears.
• Condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse.
One curriculum, called "Me, My World, My Future," teaches that women who have an abortion "are more prone to suicide" and that as many as 10 percent of them become sterile. This contradicts the 2001 edition of a standard obstetrics textbook that says fertility is not affected by elective abortion, the Waxman report said.
But hey, the smarter kids will figure it out. Nothing to sweat about.
More fun stuff from the article:
Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals "can result in pregnancy," a congressional staff analysis has found.
Fœtuses, HIV, and the causes of sterility are 'basic health facts'?
Basic facts about health. Yes?
It is no wonder that you people were trounced in the Nov. election. Here's to hoping that another three cycles of Republican governance will cause you to rupture some arteries.
Sexual health is about as fundamental as it gets.
I find your desire to see children lied to, to what is proven to be their detriment, perverse.
Fœtuses, HIV, and the causes of sterility are 'basic health facts'?
Also, fuyugare, it should be noted that these facts are especially basic in a federally funded class ABOUT reproduction and sex.
Of course, to keep it balanced, I suppose we should teach that large scale homosexual activity leads to cities being destroyed and women being turned into salt. Or that the coitus interruptus method leads to death from above. Or that masturbation causes insanity, blindness, and hairy palms.
I could go on, but I might bust an artery.
I don't want to see them 'lied to', as you claim, but I also don't consider controversial political questions such as the 'humanness' of foetuses to be 'basic health facts'.
fuyugare, I think the point is that the free market of scientific ideas should "choose" what is truly science, and what isn't, and that HS science classes should teach science that's been "chosen" that way, rather than "science" that's really politics in disguise.
Darwinism, FUCK YEAH!
Explainin' how single-celled things become people!
Darwinism, FUCK YEAH!
It's a revolutionary scientific theory, so suck on my balls!
I thought that too, Smo; "I agree with Santorum" was pretty much at the top of the list of phrases I really honestly never expected to hear myself uttering.
Truly it is a crazy world in which we live.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
You We are so fucked!
Ah, crap.
You want me to say "the theological implications are staggering," don't you?
Well, at this point, I'm @#$%ing sick of the @#$%ing theological implications.
And I want these mother@#$%ing snakes zealots off the mother@#$%ing plane insane power trip that seems devoid of all human decency and reason.
*goes off to have a banana...or possibly a pudding pop*
...pudding pop...
*drools*
This is all very distressing. My 10-year-nephew says he believes in God because, "someone must have made it all". That's the level that ID works, isn't it? At least we can still mould him...
*googles 'pudding pop'*
*drools*
Fnordistan.
I believe in Bill Cosby, because SOMEBODY had to have made the pudd'n' pops.
YouWe are so fucked!snakeszealots off the mother@#$%ingplaneinsane power trip that seems devoid of all human decency and reason. *goes off to have a banana...or possibly a pudding pop*