Not really relevant ...
Oh my intelligent higher power!!! Today the Kansas school board voted to teach creationism along side evolution, as published in this NY Times article. I cant believe this, or can I. I want to freak out and be outraged, but then again its Kansas. As long as they keep farming, do I really care where they think life came from?
What really gets me though are the following lines ...
"In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena."
"But they also declare that the basic Darwinian theory that all life had a common origin and that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life have been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology."
''It gets rid of a lot of dogma that's being taught in the classroom today,'' said board member John Bacon, an Olathe Republican.
Are you kidding me or what? These guys rewrote what the definition of science is. Wow, I wonder how many international scientific comittees they consulted before coming to this monumental decision. I bet if i made a crack like that to one of the voting members, they'd lift their bible and say, "this is the only international comittee of anything I need".
Really though, what can one expect. In order to have a meaningful debate about any subject it is necessary for both sides to be versed in the subject. If one side has no idea about what is being debated, then how are they expected to make wise decisions. The real problem is not the people turn to the bible for answers, its that they arent given the information they need to answer for themselves. How are you going to believe in the age of a fossil, if you dont know what carbon dating fundamentally is.
Now what is really scary and shocking is that there are scientists who back the creationist agenda. The obvious issue there is that they are by far a minority in the science community. Yet, somehow the mere existence of such people justifies the movement to push the creationist dogma as a theory. That is, if a scientist believes this, it must be a competative theory. Yet, no such scientific theory exists and the existence of a scientist who supports it does not make it so. So, lets just redefine science to mean we dont need it to be a proper theory to be scientific. Shoot, if a group of 10 people representing the entire Educational system of a state in the U.S. has the power to do that, thats a problem.
Oh, and check this out if you have 4 minutes ... http://gprime.net/video.php/presidentialspeechalist
What really gets me though are the following lines ...
"In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena."
"But they also declare that the basic Darwinian theory that all life had a common origin and that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life have been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology."
''It gets rid of a lot of dogma that's being taught in the classroom today,'' said board member John Bacon, an Olathe Republican.
Are you kidding me or what? These guys rewrote what the definition of science is. Wow, I wonder how many international scientific comittees they consulted before coming to this monumental decision. I bet if i made a crack like that to one of the voting members, they'd lift their bible and say, "this is the only international comittee of anything I need".
Really though, what can one expect. In order to have a meaningful debate about any subject it is necessary for both sides to be versed in the subject. If one side has no idea about what is being debated, then how are they expected to make wise decisions. The real problem is not the people turn to the bible for answers, its that they arent given the information they need to answer for themselves. How are you going to believe in the age of a fossil, if you dont know what carbon dating fundamentally is.
Now what is really scary and shocking is that there are scientists who back the creationist agenda. The obvious issue there is that they are by far a minority in the science community. Yet, somehow the mere existence of such people justifies the movement to push the creationist dogma as a theory. That is, if a scientist believes this, it must be a competative theory. Yet, no such scientific theory exists and the existence of a scientist who supports it does not make it so. So, lets just redefine science to mean we dont need it to be a proper theory to be scientific. Shoot, if a group of 10 people representing the entire Educational system of a state in the U.S. has the power to do that, thats a problem.
Oh, and check this out if you have 4 minutes ... http://gprime.net/video.php/presidentialspeechalist
posted by Robert B. Friedman at 5:52 PM
1 Comments:
Yeah, Kansas is totally backwards. At least the people in Dover PA chose to elect people to the school board who actually value science. But of course, out comes a bible-thumper and says something stupid. Have you seen
this thing on CNN? It's ridiculous.
It totally pisses me off too that they're doing this. And you just know that they're not gonna stop with putting down evolution. I'm sure their anti-science agenda extends well into the other sciences, thus putting the country right back into the Middle Ages.
But anyway, I hope you have fun in the south pole :-)
TQM,
-Emily-
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