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anti-Evolution legislation
- Thread starter Morm
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The controversy comes with the clear misuse of the words fact and theory to undermine the legitimacy of Evolution as a concept.
The issue is that the guy who first proposed kin selection (EO Wilson) is now turning back and attempting to undo it in favor of simpler group selection because he claims the mathematical basis for kin selection is nonsense; it somewhat reminds me of how Erwin Schroedinger attempted to undo his own work in quantum mechanics because people were using it in ways he didn't like. I guess the debate will ensue on the side and probably be over by the end of the year at most. In higher biology classes in high school though, I think it's definitely appropriate to mention work redesigning and updating the theory of evolution with things like kin selection vs group selection, etc.
How many of you guys actually read that article?I know it's fun to beat up on the religious conservatives and whatnot, but I fail to see the controversy surrounding this Bill.
Incase you live under a rock, people in general do consider [the mentioned topics] to be controversial topics. The point of this bill is to let teachers know that they can cover any and all prevalent theories concerning the subject that they happen to be teaching without worrying about getting in trouble.
When you say that only your views can be discussed in public schools, you're no better than the average religious bigot.
There is social controversy surrounding evolution, abiogenesis, global warming, and cloning. Scientifically there is no controversy about evolution, the closest thing to controversy over the theory of abiogenesis is the fact that it's not done yet. Global warming is fuzzy at worst in the scientific community. Human cloning has not even been accomplished as of early 2011, and the only controversy surrounding it would be a matter of scientific ethics, not an issue of fact.
Neither global warming nor cloning have remote relevance in a high school discussion of biological evolution, and abiogenesis is only pertinent to evolution in the same way that quantum physics is pertinent to chemistry.
See, that's a great example of the problem. "You disagree with me, therefore you are uneducated". That gets us nowhere.
i myself am a believer of the evolution theory despite being christian but i don't really see the problem. let them do what they want to do it's their christian beliefs.
That's pathetic. Teach science in the science class, there should be no controversy or problem with that.
Anyone who disagrees with evolution clearly does not understand how it works. There is no controversy whatsoever in the scientific community over whether evolution takes place. Science is at its core based on evidence, and all of the evidence gathered thus far points to evolution. If you can't see this, you really are uneducated and need to read more scientific articles on the topic.
If you can come up with an argument against evolution that actually has evidence in support of it, the scientific community would accept this after your data was sufficiently replicated in a sound manner. So far, nothing of this nature has come up, though, so evolution remains the best explanation available.
As morm said, you teach science in a science class. Not ill-conceived "alternatives" that are not backed up by any actual evidence.
But I'm not arguing an opinion. We're obviously going to get nowhere because there's nothing to argue about. If something is supported so strongly it has reached the status of "theory", then I'm not going to take some random joe (or matt)'s word over people who actually do this for a living. The status of "theory" represents significant consensus on the issue by people who actually know what they're talking about.
You can continue to twitter away with your friends about shit you don't understand, but that's not going to stop you from being wrong.
I'd like teachers to teach scientific theory without having to worry about parents bitching because it's inconsistent with their bedtime stories.
He's talking about the actual bill guys, come on. Have any of you actually pulled it up and read it or are you going off the hyper extreme reaction provided in morm's OP?
Having actually read the bill, I can see that it is largely harmless, but just the same it's largely useless. I've never heard of an instance where a teacher tells their students evolution is the way it is. But likewise I've never seen one go out of their way to explain that it's not 100% fact. The curriculum dictates they cover evolution so they explain what it is and leave it at that. They neither try to convince students it's correct, nor do they step back and say "take it for what it's worth." I do not see a problem with this.
Personal experience; while Evolution was in most of my Science text books, it was never covered in class. I don't think legislation or controversy had anything to do with this, but rather it just isn't an essential topic.
Having actually read the bill, I can see that it is largely harmless, but just the same it's largely useless. I've never heard of an instance where a teacher tells their students evolution is the way it is. But likewise I've never seen one go out of their way to explain that it's not 100% fact. The curriculum dictates they cover evolution so they explain what it is and leave it at that. They neither try to convince students it's correct, nor do they step back and say "take it for what it's worth." I do not see a problem with this.
Personal experience; while Evolution was in most of my Science text books, it was never covered in class. I don't think legislation or controversy had anything to do with this, but rather it just isn't an essential topic.
Those words were found in the article about the bill, not the bill. gg
el oh el
read
the
bill
Y'all need to take a deep breath and read the bill. This is beyond lolerific.
If I didn't know you guys were all highly educated rational and enlightened, I would think that you are overreacting because the bill's sponsor happens to be religious. But that would be prejudice, and you guys are above that.
I'll just leave this here...
to reiterate this point: creationism is nothing more than a story. A story about how God creates everything, including atheists who then dare to question his existence.
Let's compare this to evolution, shall we? The driving mechanism of evolution is natural selection. Theory: organisms better-adapted to survive have a better chance of passing their genes on, causing the species to adapt better to its surrounding as a whole. So far, we are par with creationism. "So what if this happens?" is a reasonable response at this stage, because all you're doing is offering an explanation of how things came to be, just like creationism does. HOWEVER, here's where they differ: the use of creationism stops here. To be honest, there is little use in explaining how something came to be, especially when there's no evidence for it. I could just as easily say Hazerider took a particularly angry shit one day and from it spawned the first bacteria and with each push he created a new species until his bowels were completely evacuated and we have horses but not unicorns because he ran out of bowel movements at that point. It's just a nice story.
Evolution goes beyond that. It has uses: it predicts, for example, that irresponsible overuse of antibiotics will introduce a higher evolutionary pressure on bacteria which may cause them to develop antibiotic resistance and laugh as they kill you with tuberculosis that you try to treat with pencillin. The bacteria will be like 'lol, we got over penicillin over fifty generations ago. it's what smallpox is to you humans'. So based on this prediction, what do we do? We restrict antibiotic use to life-threatening illnesses, or at least don't prescribe it to people with viral infections jesus christ. Potential outcome?
1. We were wrong, and antibiotic resistance continues at the same rate. Oh well.
2. We were (partially) right, and we slow down this process, giving us more time when antibiotics are effective, saving the lives of law-abiding Christians that get tuberculosis, and maybe giving us more time to develop new antibiotics.
What if we ignored this, and said, "hey, evolution isn't a fact! creationism is a viable alternative"? If we take the above scenario, only the first outcome is possible. We have gained nothing but a nice story.
In short, I hope creationists catch tuberculosis.
EDIT: that's a nice book mattj what is your point
okay can you explain what this bill is actually going to do? honestly I'm not sure so maybe if someone can give me the gist of the bill because it's full of wordy spun-up bullshit as any legislation is
Do you have to be a Christian to be afraid of the potential implications of cloning? Alot of people are afraid of robots for the same reason and I don't there's anything in the bible on the subject.
What does Global Warming have to do with Christianity? Nothing. It's just another thing you guys love to polarize yourselves with. That, regardless of how stupid you want your opposition to be (that's the polarizing), makes it controversial.
What does Global Warming have to do with Christianity? Nothing. It's just another thing you guys love to polarize yourselves with. That, regardless of how stupid you want your opposition to be (that's the polarizing), makes it controversial.
I think creationists shouldn't reap the benefits of a secular process that they don't 'believe in'. No more vaccines, no more non-walking transportation, no more farm harvested food, no more surgery, no more ANYTHING basically.
Go and live with the fucking Amish if you want to mistrust science. I like how you pick and choose which of the theories you want to believe in. Germ theory is no problem but evolution is? FUCK YOU.
Edit: Vonfondler it's typically republicans that dislike global climate change and what demographic swarms to republican values? That's what I thought.
Go and live with the fucking Amish if you want to mistrust science. I like how you pick and choose which of the theories you want to believe in. Germ theory is no problem but evolution is? FUCK YOU.
Edit: Vonfondler it's typically republicans that dislike global climate change and what demographic swarms to republican values? That's what I thought.
Ok, mattj, I will look at the bill again.
OK so far...
Whoa now. As I have been trying to re-iterate, evolution is NOT a doctrine. Scientists do not believe it blindly. They accept it and have elevated it to theory status because there is evidence. If sound evidence came out to contradict evolution, they would change their views accordingly. This is diametrically opposite of what a doctrine is (blindly accepting something just because you are told to do so)
Teaching science in a science class is not discrimination. It is what should be done. Teaching religious fairytales as if they were viable alternatives to scientific reasoning is just laughable, because creationists have no evidence. I don't know how much I need to say this to get through to you, but I'll say it again: evolution has evidence, whereas creationism does not. Evolution is science, whereas creationism is not. Now, stop saying I haven't read and comprehended the bill, because you are obviously the one who lacks reading comprehension.
you don't need to lump all of the christians together as if they're all some crazy god worshipping science hating trash. there are people that are sort of in between that yes may believe in the creation story but
if you know that god created the world in seven days, how long could a day have been? one day in god years might be how long it took for let's say the precambrian era which could correspond. and how we sprung from apes might have been how he created us. i don't know just some thoughts
Excellent comeback. I'm glad you're capable of employing logic in your responses.
And no I won't explain the bill for you. It's like 400 or so words. Start with the small ones and try sounding them out.
ohmygod ahaha
And lol morm, okay, you take all the findings made throughout history by athiest scientists, and I'll take all the findings made throughout history by Christian scientists. Deal?
[edit]Lanturn, you've actually got it backwards. The "doctrine" is Creationism. The bill prohibits teaching church doctrines. Where do you get that evolution is a "doctrine"? And how do you get that the bill is trying to say that teaching science in science class is discrimination? The first line of section e says
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