*** KANSAS IS NEXT BATTLEGROUND IN EVOLUTION DEBATE ***
Dean Hovey
Science] for some time now, even to the extent of getting legislation passed
to allow them to teach "creationism" side by side with evolution. The true
scientific community has largely remained within its hallowed halls rather
than storming out into the quadrangle to do battle with what it knows to be
pure nonsense. Scientists, unlike religionists, are political neophytes and
generally remain oblivious to the issue of religion.
Average Americans are not willing, nor intellectually mature enough, to
handle such heady stuff as questioning any religion except upon tweedle-dum
and tweedle-dee issues. Undoubtedly, this results from living under a
Constitution which, in its consummate fairness in not favoring one religion
above another, has made attacks on religion nearly needless and obsolete.
But in the First Amendment's success lies a great danger to our liberties.
If we never question our religions or their motives, they will ultimately
destroy our freedom to do so."
Quote from: CREATIONISM: The FOSSIL RECORD and the FLOOD, by William H.
Reynolds
Related thread:
http://x48.deja.com/threadmsg_ct.xp?AN=504910489.1&mhitnum=0&CONTEXT=9341548
83.781189120
_________________________________________________________
*** KANSAS IS NEXT BATTLEGROUND IN EVOLUTION DEBATE ***
(Forwarded from: American Atheist News for August 8, 1999)
Like Dorothy and her dog in the famous "Wizard of Oz" book, the
standard of teaching evolution as a scientific fact may not be around
much longer in Kansas public schools. On Wednesday, the Kansas Board
of Education meets for a showdown over a new statewide curriculum
covering all primary and high schools that "wipes out virtually all
mention of evolution and related concepts: natural selection, common
ancestors and the origin of the universe," according to the Washington
Post.
Proposed by a vocal conservative majority which now holds sway on the
Board, the curriculum guidelines -- while not explicitly prohibiting
the teaching of evolution -- leave the door open for infusing school
classes with creationist and other religious doctrines by declaring
that "no evidence contradicting a current scientific theory shall be
censored." Other proposed sections leave out any reference to
Marco-evolution, the concept that species evolve into other species
given time and the propitious physical conditions. And the proposed
guidelines leave out a critical statement included in current
standards which requires all students to understand "that evolution by
natural selection is a broad, unifying theoretical framework in
biology."
The Wednesday meeting caps years of work in Kansas and other states by
religious groups who embrace a literalist biblical account of how life
and the universe began. Indeed, Gallup polls reflect that nearly 44%
of Americans share this view, that "God created man pretty much in his
present form at one time within the last 10,000 years." Another 40%
are said to believe in some kind of god-driven "theistic evolution"
where a deity supposedly orchestrated a longer evolutionary process.
Only about 10%, notes the Washington Post and Gallup, hold to a
"strict, secular evolutionist perspective" that looks for scientific
explanations of how life arose from inanimate matter and developed
into progressively more complex organisms over a protracted period.
It is this stark difference in views that leads many fundamentalist
Christians to agree with organizations like Answers in Genesis and the
Creation Research Institute. Answers spokesperson Mark Looy says,
"Teaching evolution in public schools and telling children they are
just products of a survival of the fittest, just animals struggling to
survive, leaves many students with a sense of purposelessness and
hopelessness... What meaning is there to life?"
Claims like that lead to other questions which reflect cultural
stresses and dislocations in an increasingly complex and secular
culture. Creationist advocates often include other objections to
public school curriculum, touching upon issues such as sex education,
teaching tolerance and that charge that the nation's public schools
are hostage to a "conspiracy" of secular humanists. Some, such as
Christian Reconstructionist Samuel Blumenfeld, charge that the problem
is not just what is being taught in schools, but the entire public
school system which "undermines Christians' ability to influence their
children." According to the Kansas City Star newspaper, Blumenfeld
and other Christian conservatives "want to return to a time when
public schools worked," and supposedly reflected the views of
Calvinist founders "who believed that man is, by nature, a depraved
creature who needs fear of a higher power to do the right thing."
Growing Support
Once thought consigned to the historical rubbish heap, attacks on
evolution have found new voice thanks to the nation's resurgent
religious right wing. Religious conservatives such as Jerry Falwell
and Pat Robertson have stepped up their criticism of secular
education; Robertson told last year's Christian Coalition "Road to
Victory" conference that education reformer John Dewey trained a new
generation of teachers who spread "the poison of secular humanism"
throughout the nation's schools. Those sorts of charges have
resonated with other groups, including James Dobson's Focus on the
Family movement, Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, Concerned Women for
America and those who follow TV evangelists like D. James Kennedy of
Coral Ridge Ministries.
The religious groups which are critical of evolution, however, are
relying on more than just Biblical scripture in their battles with
local and state boards of education. One tactic has involved looking
for deficiencies in scientific findings -- even evolutionary
scientists say that the fossil record they study is, naturally,
incomplete. Creationists also advance a number of controversial
arguments which mainstream science rejects, such as the claim that
human footprints have been found in the same geologic strata as
dinosaur tracks, thus suggesting a "young earth" rather than the
deep-time epochs which most scientists argue for. There is also the
"fairness" argument, that Creationist accounts deserve "equal time"
along with evolutionary teachings, or that "students should hear all
sides" on the issue. Critics, though, point out that Creationists
advance a Judeo-Christian view of life and universal origins, and do
not extend "fairness" to permit accounts from other religions such as
Native American beliefs, Hinduism or Scientology.
But that whole debate is not appropriate in a public school classroom
setting designed to teach science, says Eugenie C. Scott of the
National Center for Science education. She told the Kansas City Star
that students need to understand evolution in order to master other
subjects such as biology, and that "The job in education is to
educate, not to compel dogma." Supporters note that the National
Academy of Science has established the teaching of evolution as a
"cornerstone" in science school curriculums throughout the nation.
In several states, though, that has generated controversy especially
from fundamentalists. In Nebraska recently, the state Board of
Education agreed with the NAS until Deputy Attorney general Steve
Grasz warned that including such language in school guidelines might
violate students' rights to freedom of religion. "Requiring students
to 'recognize' (as fact) theories which contradict their religious
beliefs would appear to be an interference with a right of
conscience." In June, Board members had to rework the guidelines, but
still maintained the evolution teaching standards over the objections
of board conservatives.
Other states have become divided over the evolution-creationism
controversy...
* Alabama enacted a law in 1995 requiring that all biology books used
in the state's public school system conspicuously display a warning
label declaring that evolution was "a controversial theory... No one
was present when life first appeared. Therefore any statement about
life's origins should be considered a theory and not a fact."
* In 1997, religious conservatives in Texas almost succeeded in
replacing the current biology texts with new books -- many published
by fundamentalist institutions -- which omitted any reference to
evolution. As the nation's second largest buyer of texts, the Lone
Star is considered a bellwether state. Science educators now worry
that even mainstream texts are minimizing any mention of evolution or
Charles Darwin.
* The Tennessee legislature considered a 1996 bill to dismiss any
public school teacher who did not present evolution as "theory,"
rather than "fact."
* In Louisiana, demands that creationism be given "equal time" in the
classroom along with evolution led to a Supreme Court fight. In 1987,
the justices ruled in EDWARDS v. AGUILLARD that the state could not
mandate the "equal time" scheme without violating the separation of
church and state.
Wednesday's Board session has many educators worried. One biology
instructor told the Washington Post, "Evolution is the unifying theory
of biology, and now students will get such an incomplete picture."
Another who has been teaching the subject in a Kansas public high
school since 1972, John Wachholz, says that every year he warns
students that he will not discuss religion in science class. "If they
want to talk creationism they can meet him at his Lutheran church,
where he is a regular member." He adds that if the new standards are
approved by the state BOE, "This thing will drive me out of teaching.
I'm a science teacher. If I teach biology without evolution I'd be
doing an injustice to students, and to myself."
The religious conservative majority is expected to prevail at
Wednesday's gathering. Striking evolution from the guidelines would
be a major victory for the creationists; but it could also be yet
another wake-up call for those who feel that the entire
creation-evolution debate died in 1925 with the Scopes trial in
Tennessee. Nearly three-quarters of a century later, despite the
growing body of evolutionary evidence, substantial numbers of people
believe that they are the product of intelligent design explained
accurately in the Book of Genesis, rather than the workings of nature
in a universe we still do not fully understand.
Subscribe to AANEWS: Info at
http://www.atheists.org/aanews.html
or email aanew...@atheists.org
Peter Nyikos
>"They [the Creationists] have been getting away with this nonsense [Creation
>Science] for some time now, even to the extent of getting legislation passed
>to allow them to teach "creationism" side by side with evolution. The true
>scientific community has largely remained within its hallowed halls rather
>than storming out into the quadrangle to do battle with what it knows to be
>pure nonsense. Scientists, unlike religionists, are political neophytes and
>generally remain oblivious to the issue of religion.
In this newsgroup, that would seem to be reversed. The ones
with political savvy all seem to be anti-creationists, many
of whom are scientists.
[I am an evoluitonist and a mathematician, but not an anti-creationist
nor someone with much political savvy compared to the more
savvy anti-creationists.]
> Average Americans are not willing, nor intellectually mature enough, to
>handle such heady stuff as questioning any religion except upon tweedle-dum
>and tweedle-dee issues.
Most anti-creationists here show plenty of signs of questioning
religion, even if they are ignorant of the sciences relevant
to evolution--it's questioning atheism that they seem to find hard
to handle.
> Undoubtedly, this results from living under a
>Constitution which, in its consummate fairness in not favoring one religion
>above another, has made attacks on religion nearly needless and obsolete.
Tell that to William Donoghue. He'll get a good laugh out of it.
>But in the First Amendment's success lies a great danger to our liberties.
>If we never question our religions or their motives, they will ultimately
>destroy our freedom to do so."
In this day and age? There's no danger of people never questioning
their religions, not even within the religious bodies themselves.
>Quote from: CREATIONISM: The FOSSIL RECORD and the FLOOD, by William H.
>Reynolds
>Related thread:
>http://x48.deja.com/threadmsg_ct.xp?AN=504910489.1&mhitnum=0&CONTEXT=9341548
>83.781189120
>_________________________________________________________
>*** KANSAS IS NEXT BATTLEGROUND IN EVOLUTION DEBATE ***
> (Forwarded from: American Atheist News for August 8, 1999)
>Like Dorothy and her dog in the famous "Wizard of Oz" book, the
>standard of teaching evolution as a scientific fact may not be around
>much longer in Kansas public schools. On Wednesday, the Kansas Board
>of Education meets for a showdown over a new statewide curriculum
>covering all primary and high schools that "wipes out virtually all
>mention of evolution and related concepts: natural selection, common
>ancestors and the origin of the universe," according to the Washington
>Post.
Curriculum? Does that include actual names of textbooks, or just
guidelines for what HAS to be covered?
>Proposed by a vocal conservative majority which now holds sway on the
>Board, the curriculum guidelines -- while not explicitly prohibiting
>the teaching of evolution -- leave the door open for infusing school
>classes with creationist and other religious doctrines by declaring
>that "no evidence contradicting a current scientific theory shall be
>censored."
Note the words "evidence" and "censored". Surely the author
of the preceding quote, who is worried about first amendment
rights, doesn't want evidence censored?!
> Other proposed sections
Sections of what?
> leave out any reference to
>Marco-evolution, the concept that species evolve into other species
>given time and the propitious physical conditions. And the proposed
>guidelines leave out a critical statement included in current
>standards which requires all students to understand "that evolution by
>natural selection is a broad, unifying theoretical framework in
>biology."
Evolution, yes. The "natural selection" part is gravy--I often
think the teaching of biology would make more progress without it.
As I said in one of my first posts to talk.origins:
================================= begin excerpt from post
>> Analogy: the monarch butterfly has a migratory pattern which takes
>> it back to a certain very small part of Mexico every few generations.
>> The mysterious part is that certain generations, having never been
>> anywhere near the whole of Mexico, nevertheless find their way.
And, in the spirit of what I wrote to Dr. Shallit in another post
a little while ago, you might be tempted to mumble as if half
asleep,
There is no mystery. Obviously, the ones that are
not able to return to that small area are at a
survival disadvantage and so those that do know
how to find their way are the ones whose offspring
you see today.
In so doing, however, you will have barely begun to scratch
the surface of WHY they make their way over there and told
me absolutely nothing whatsoever about HOW they are able to
find the location.
====================== end of excerpt
>The Wednesday meeting caps years of work in Kansas and other states by
>religious groups who embrace a literalist biblical account of how life
>and the universe began. Indeed, Gallup polls reflect that nearly 44%
>of Americans share this view, that "God created man pretty much in his
>present form at one time within the last 10,000 years."
That's less than the percent who disbelieved, two decades ago,
that we had landed men on the moon.
> Another 40%
>are said to believe in some kind of god-driven "theistic evolution"
>where a deity supposedly orchestrated a longer evolutionary process.
What's so bad about that? A conductor "orchestrating" the
musicians of an orchestra leaves them with lots of individual
freedom.
>Only about 10%, notes the Washington Post and Gallup, hold to a
>"strict, secular evolutionist perspective" that looks for scientific
>explanations of how life arose from inanimate matter and developed
>into progressively more complex organisms over a protracted period.
Note the candy-coated "looks for". It's possible to do that
and still be in the preceding 40%.
But then, the Washington Post never was strong on logic
when it was trying to push a viewpoint. It doesn't
take a rocket scientist to guess which viewpoint it is
pushing for here.
>It is this stark difference in views
More illogic.
> that leads many fundamentalist
>Christians to agree with organizations like Answers in Genesis and the
>Creation Research Institute. Answers spokesperson Mark Looy says,
>"Teaching evolution in public schools and telling children they are
>just products of a survival of the fittest, just animals struggling to
>survive, leaves many students with a sense of purposelessness and
>hopelessness... What meaning is there to life?"
That would not surprise me. In fact, it would be amazing if
no children were affected that way. If I had been introduced
to evolution in that way, I might have had the same reaction.
>Claims like that lead to other questions which reflect cultural
>stresses and dislocations in an increasingly complex and secular
>culture. Creationist advocates often include other objections to
>public school curriculum, touching upon issues such as sex education,
>teaching tolerance and that charge that the nation's public schools
>are hostage to a "conspiracy" of secular humanists.
Why the quotes? In my experience in talk.origins, the only
side that uses the word "conspiracy" is the militantly anti-creationist
side, putting it in the mouths of their opponents, including
evolutionists like myself.
Some, such as
>Christian Reconstructionist Samuel Blumenfeld, charge that the problem
>is not just what is being taught in schools, but the entire public
>school system which "undermines Christians' ability to influence their
>children." According to the Kansas City Star newspaper, Blumenfeld
>and other Christian conservatives "want to return to a time when
>public schools worked," and supposedly reflected the views of
>Calvinist founders "who believed that man is, by nature, a depraved
>creature who needs fear of a higher power to do the right thing."
Note the wording: according to a newspaper, not according to
Blumenfeld.
> Growing Support
>Once thought consigned to the historical rubbish heap, attacks on
>evolution have found new voice thanks to the nation's resurgent
>religious right wing. Religious conservatives such as Jerry Falwell
>and Pat Robertson have stepped up their criticism of secular
>education; Robertson told last year's Christian Coalition "Road to
>Victory" conference that education reformer John Dewey trained a new
>generation of teachers who spread "the poison of secular humanism"
>throughout the nation's schools. Those sorts of charges have
>resonated with other groups, including James Dobson's Focus on the
>Family movement, Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, Concerned Women for
>America and those who follow TV evangelists like D. James Kennedy of
>Coral Ridge Ministries.
No necessary connection with evolution here, especially
not for the 40% to whom the Washington Post gives short shrift.
>The religious groups which are critical of evolution, however, are
>relying on more than just Biblical scripture in their battles with
>local and state boards of education. One tactic has involved looking
>for deficiencies in scientific findings -- even evolutionary
>scientists say that the fossil record they study is, naturally,
>incomplete. Creationists also advance a number of controversial
>arguments which mainstream science rejects, such as the claim that
>human footprints have been found in the same geologic strata as
>dinosaur tracks, thus suggesting a "young earth" rather than the
>deep-time epochs which most scientists argue for. There is also the
>"fairness" argument, that Creationist accounts deserve "equal time"
>along with evolutionary teachings, or that "students should hear all
>sides" on the issue. Critics, though, point out that Creationists
>advance a Judeo-Christian view of life and universal origins, and do
>not extend "fairness" to permit accounts from other religions such as
>Native American beliefs, Hinduism or Scientology.
What incidents does this latter sentence refer to?
>But that whole debate is not appropriate in a public school classroom
>setting designed to teach science, says Eugenie C. Scott of the
>National Center for Science education. She told the Kansas City Star
>that students need to understand evolution in order to master other
>subjects such as biology,
...on the advanced undergraduate level. Especially with the curriculum
as dumbed-down as it is.
Most of the counterexamples, such as resistance to antibiotics,
can be covered by "microevolution" and "variation within species"
with which creationists have no problems.
> and that "The job in education is to
>educate, not to compel dogma." Supporters note that the National
>Academy of Science has established the teaching of evolution as a
>"cornerstone" in science school curriculums throughout the nation.
Not the NAS, I believe, but only a book published by NAS. But
then, _Issues in Science and Technology_ is published by NAS too,
and reflects a wide variety of viewpoints.
>In several states, though, that has generated controversy especially
>from fundamentalists. In Nebraska recently, the state Board of
>Education agreed with the NAS until Deputy Attorney general Steve
>Grasz warned that including such language in school guidelines might
>violate students' rights to freedom of religion. "Requiring students
>to 'recognize' (as fact) theories which contradict their religious
>beliefs would appear to be an interference with a right of
>conscience." In June, Board members had to rework the guidelines, but
>still maintained the evolution teaching standards over the objections
>of board conservatives.
> Other states have become divided over the evolution-creationism
>controversy...
>* Alabama enacted a law in 1995 requiring that all biology books used
>in the state's public school system conspicuously display a warning
>label declaring that evolution
Evolution? or abiogenesis?
> was "a controversial theory... No one
>was present when life first appeared. Therefore any statement about
>life's origins should be considered a theory and not a fact."
The conclusion is correct even though the internal logic
is faulty. "No one was present..." is a frivolous argument.
>* In 1997, religious conservatives in Texas almost succeeded in
>replacing the current biology texts with new books -- many published
>by fundamentalist institutions -- which omitted any reference to
>evolution.
That is definitely going too far.
As the nation's second largest buyer of texts, the Lone
>Star is considered a bellwether state. Science educators now worry
>that even mainstream texts are minimizing any mention of evolution or
>Charles Darwin.
>* The Tennessee legislature considered a 1996 bill to dismiss any
>public school teacher who did not present evolution as "theory,"
>rather than "fact."
How many legislators actually supported that one?
>* In Louisiana, demands that creationism be given "equal time" in the
>classroom along with evolution led to a Supreme Court fight. In 1987,
>the justices ruled in EDWARDS v. AGUILLARD that the state could not
>mandate the "equal time" scheme without violating the separation of
>church and state.
>Wednesday's Board session has many educators worried. One biology
>instructor told the Washington Post, "Evolution is the unifying theory
>of biology, and now students will get such an incomplete picture."
>Another who has been teaching the subject in a Kansas public high
>school since 1972, John Wachholz, says that every year he warns
>students that he will not discuss religion in science class. "If they
>want to talk creationism they can meet him at his Lutheran church,
>where he is a regular member." He adds that if the new standards are
>approved by the state BOE, "This thing will drive me out of teaching.
>I'm a science teacher. If I teach biology without evolution I'd be
>doing an injustice to students, and to myself."
>The religious conservative majority is expected to prevail at
>Wednesday's gathering. Striking evolution from the guidelines would
>be a major victory for the creationists;
Hey, suddenly it's striking it, rather than removing most
mention of it. What's the real picture here?
but it could also be yet
>another wake-up call for those who feel that the entire
>creation-evolution debate died in 1925 with the Scopes trial in
>Tennessee. Nearly three-quarters of a century later, despite the
>growing body of evolutionary evidence, substantial numbers of people
>believe that they are the product of intelligent design explained
>accurately in the Book of Genesis, rather than the workings of nature
>in a universe we still do not fully understand.
Note how once again the 40% get shoved down the memory hole.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina
Peter Nyikos
>"They [the Creationists] have been getting away with this nonsense [Creation
>Science] for some time now, even to the extent of getting legislation passed
>to allow them to teach "creationism" side by side with evolution. The true
>scientific community has largely remained within its hallowed halls rather
>than storming out into the quadrangle to do battle with what it knows to be
>pure nonsense. Scientists, unlike religionists, are political neophytes and
>generally remain oblivious to the issue of religion.
In this newsgroup, that would seem to be reversed. The ones
with political savvy all seem to be anti-creationists, many
of whom are scientists.
[I am an evoluitonist and a mathematician, but not an anti-creationist
nor someone with much political savvy compared to the more
savvy anti-creationists.]
> Average Americans are not willing, nor intellectually mature enough, to
>handle such heady stuff as questioning any religion except upon tweedle-dum
>and tweedle-dee issues.
Most anti-creationists here show plenty of signs of questioning
religion, even if they are ignorant of the sciences relevant
to evolution--it's questioning atheism that they seem to find hard
to handle.
> Undoubtedly, this results from living under a
>Constitution which, in its consummate fairness in not favoring one religion
>above another, has made attacks on religion nearly needless and obsolete.
Tell that to William Donoghue. He'll get a good laugh out of it.
>But in the First Amendment's success lies a great danger to our liberties.
>If we never question our religions or their motives, they will ultimately
>destroy our freedom to do so."
In this day and age? There's no danger of people never questioning
their religions, not even within the religious bodies themselves.
>Quote from: CREATIONISM: The FOSSIL RECORD and the FLOOD, by William H.
>Reynolds
>Related thread:
>http://x48.deja.com/threadmsg_ct.xp?AN=504910489.1&mhitnum=0&CONTEXT=9341548
>83.781189120
>_________________________________________________________
>*** KANSAS IS NEXT BATTLEGROUND IN EVOLUTION DEBATE ***
> (Forwarded from: American Atheist News for August 8, 1999)
>Like Dorothy and her dog in the famous "Wizard of Oz" book, the
>standard of teaching evolution as a scientific fact may not be around
>much longer in Kansas public schools. On Wednesday, the Kansas Board
>of Education meets for a showdown over a new statewide curriculum
>covering all primary and high schools that "wipes out virtually all
>mention of evolution and related concepts: natural selection, common
>ancestors and the origin of the universe," according to the Washington
>Post.
Curriculum? Does that include actual names of textbooks, or just
guidelines for what HAS to be covered?
>Proposed by a vocal conservative majority which now holds sway on the
>Board, the curriculum guidelines -- while not explicitly prohibiting
>the teaching of evolution -- leave the door open for infusing school
>classes with creationist and other religious doctrines by declaring
>that "no evidence contradicting a current scientific theory shall be
>censored."
Note the words "evidence" and "censored". Surely the author
of the preceding quote, who is worried about first amendment
rights, doesn't want evidence censored?!
> Other proposed sections
Sections of what?
> leave out any reference to
>Marco-evolution, the concept that species evolve into other species
>given time and the propitious physical conditions. And the proposed
>guidelines leave out a critical statement included in current
>standards which requires all students to understand "that evolution by
>natural selection is a broad, unifying theoretical framework in
>biology."
Evolution, yes. The "natural selection" part is gravy--I often
think the teaching of biology would make more progress without it.
As I said in one of my first posts to talk.origins:
================================= begin excerpt from post
>> Analogy: the monarch butterfly has a migratory pattern which takes
>> it back to a certain very small part of Mexico every few generations.
>> The mysterious part is that certain generations, having never been
>> anywhere near the whole of Mexico, nevertheless find their way.
And, in the spirit of what I wrote to Dr. Shallit in another post
a little while ago, you might be tempted to mumble as if half
asleep,
There is no mystery. Obviously, the ones that are
not able to return to that small area are at a
survival disadvantage and so those that do know
how to find their way are the ones whose offspring
you see today.
In so doing, however, you will have barely begun to scratch
the surface of WHY they make their way over there and told
me absolutely nothing whatsoever about HOW they are able to
find the location.
====================== end of excerpt
>The Wednesday meeting caps years of work in Kansas and other states by
>religious groups who embrace a literalist biblical account of how life
>and the universe began. Indeed, Gallup polls reflect that nearly 44%
>of Americans share this view, that "God created man pretty much in his
>present form at one time within the last 10,000 years."
That's less than the percent who disbelieved, two decades ago,
that we had landed men on the moon.
> Another 40%
>are said to believe in some kind of god-driven "theistic evolution"
>where a deity supposedly orchestrated a longer evolutionary process.
What's so bad about that? A conductor "orchestrating" the
musicians of an orchestra leaves them with lots of individual
freedom.
>Only about 10%, notes the Washington Post and Gallup, hold to a
>"strict, secular evolutionist perspective" that looks for scientific
>explanations of how life arose from inanimate matter and developed
>into progressively more complex organisms over a protracted period.
Note the candy-coated "looks for". It's possible to do that
and still be in the preceding 40%.
But then, the Washington Post never was strong on logic
when it was trying to push a viewpoint. It doesn't
take a rocket scientist to guess which viewpoint it is
pushing for here.
>It is this stark difference in views
More illogic.
> that leads many fundamentalist
>Christians to agree with organizations like Answers in Genesis and the
>Creation Research Institute. Answers spokesperson Mark Looy says,
>"Teaching evolution in public schools and telling children they are
>just products of a survival of the fittest, just animals struggling to
>survive, leaves many students with a sense of purposelessness and
>hopelessness... What meaning is there to life?"
That would not surprise me. In fact, it would be amazing if
no children were affected that way. If I had been introduced
to evolution in that way, I might have had the same reaction.
>Claims like that lead to other questions which reflect cultural
>stresses and dislocations in an increasingly complex and secular
>culture. Creationist advocates often include other objections to
>public school curriculum, touching upon issues such as sex education,
>teaching tolerance and that charge that the nation's public schools
>are hostage to a "conspiracy" of secular humanists.
Why the quotes? In my experience in talk.origins, the only
side that uses the word "conspiracy" is the militantly anti-creationist
side, putting it in the mouths of their opponents, including
evolutionists like myself.
Some, such as
>Christian Reconstructionist Samuel Blumenfeld, charge that the problem
>is not just what is being taught in schools, but the entire public
>school system which "undermines Christians' ability to influence their
>children." According to the Kansas City Star newspaper, Blumenfeld
>and other Christian conservatives "want to return to a time when
>public schools worked," and supposedly reflected the views of
>Calvinist founders "who believed that man is, by nature, a depraved
>creature who needs fear of a higher power to do the right thing."
Note the wording: according to a newspaper, not according to
Blumenfeld.
> Growing Support
>Once thought consigned to the historical rubbish heap, attacks on
>evolution have found new voice thanks to the nation's resurgent
>religious right wing. Religious conservatives such as Jerry Falwell
>and Pat Robertson have stepped up their criticism of secular
>education; Robertson told last year's Christian Coalition "Road to
>Victory" conference that education reformer John Dewey trained a new
>generation of teachers who spread "the poison of secular humanism"
>throughout the nation's schools. Those sorts of charges have
>resonated with other groups, including James Dobson's Focus on the
>Family movement, Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, Concerned Women for
>America and those who follow TV evangelists like D. James Kennedy of
>Coral Ridge Ministries.
No necessary connection with evolution here, especially
not for the 40% to whom the Washington Post gives short shrift.
>The religious groups which are critical of evolution, however, are
>relying on more than just Biblical scripture in their battles with
>local and state boards of education. One tactic has involved looking
>for deficiencies in scientific findings -- even evolutionary
>scientists say that the fossil record they study is, naturally,
>incomplete. Creationists also advance a number of controversial
>arguments which mainstream science rejects, such as the claim that
>human footprints have been found in the same geologic strata as
>dinosaur tracks, thus suggesting a "young earth" rather than the
>deep-time epochs which most scientists argue for. There is also the
>"fairness" argument, that Creationist accounts deserve "equal time"
>along with evolutionary teachings, or that "students should hear all
>sides" on the issue. Critics, though, point out that Creationists
>advance a Judeo-Christian view of life and universal origins, and do
>not extend "fairness" to permit accounts from other religions such as
>Native American beliefs, Hinduism or Scientology.
What incidents does this latter sentence refer to?
>But that whole debate is not appropriate in a public school classroom
>setting designed to teach science, says Eugenie C. Scott of the
>National Center for Science education. She told the Kansas City Star
>that students need to understand evolution in order to master other
>subjects such as biology,
...on the advanced undergraduate level. Especially with the curriculum
as dumbed-down as it is.
Most of the counterexamples, such as resistance to antibiotics,
can be covered by "microevolution" and "variation within species"
with which creationists have no problems.
> and that "The job in education is to
>educate, not to compel dogma." Supporters note that the National
>Academy of Science has established the teaching of evolution as a
>"cornerstone" in science school curriculums throughout the nation.
Not the NAS, I believe, but only a book published by NAS. But
then, _Issues in Science and Technology_ is published by NAS too,
and reflects a wide variety of viewpoints.
>In several states, though, that has generated controversy especially
>from fundamentalists. In Nebraska recently, the state Board of
>Education agreed with the NAS until Deputy Attorney general Steve
>Grasz warned that including such language in school guidelines might
>violate students' rights to freedom of religion. "Requiring students
>to 'recognize' (as fact) theories which contradict their religious
>beliefs would appear to be an interference with a right of
>conscience." In June, Board members had to rework the guidelines, but
>still maintained the evolution teaching standards over the objections
>of board conservatives.
> Other states have become divided over the evolution-creationism
>controversy...
>* Alabama enacted a law in 1995 requiring that all biology books used
>in the state's public school system conspicuously display a warning
>label declaring that evolution
Evolution? or abiogenesis?
> was "a controversial theory... No one
>was present when life first appeared. Therefore any statement about
>life's origins should be considered a theory and not a fact."
The conclusion is correct even though the internal logic
is faulty. "No one was present..." is a frivolous argument.
>* In 1997, religious conservatives in Texas almost succeeded in
>replacing the current biology texts with new books -- many published
>by fundamentalist institutions -- which omitted any reference to
>evolution.
That is definitely going too far.
As the nation's second largest buyer of texts, the Lone
>Star is considered a bellwether state. Science educators now worry
>that even mainstream texts are minimizing any mention of evolution or
>Charles Darwin.
>* The Tennessee legislature considered a 1996 bill to dismiss any
>public school teacher who did not present evolution as "theory,"
>rather than "fact."
How many legislators actually supported that one?
>* In Louisiana, demands that creationism be given "equal time" in the
>classroom along with evolution led to a Supreme Court fight. In 1987,
>the justices ruled in EDWARDS v. AGUILLARD that the state could not
>mandate the "equal time" scheme without violating the separation of
>church and state.
>Wednesday's Board session has many educators worried. One biology
>instructor told the Washington Post, "Evolution is the unifying theory
>of biology, and now students will get such an incomplete picture."
>Another who has been teaching the subject in a Kansas public high
>school since 1972, John Wachholz, says that every year he warns
>students that he will not discuss religion in science class. "If they
>want to talk creationism they can meet him at his Lutheran church,
>where he is a regular member." He adds that if the new standards are
>approved by the state BOE, "This thing will drive me out of teaching.
>I'm a science teacher. If I teach biology without evolution I'd be
>doing an injustice to students, and to myself."
>The religious conservative majority is expected to prevail at
>Wednesday's gathering. Striking evolution from the guidelines would
>be a major victory for the creationists;
Hey, suddenly it's striking it, rather than removing most
mention of it. What's the real picture here?
but it could also be yet
>another wake-up call for those who feel that the entire
>creation-evolution debate died in 1925 with the Scopes trial in
>Tennessee. Nearly three-quarters of a century later, despite the
>growing body of evolutionary evidence, substantial numbers of people
>believe that they are the product of intelligent design explained
>accurately in the Book of Genesis, rather than the workings of nature
>in a universe we still do not fully understand.
Note how once again the 40% get shoved down the memory hole.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina
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From: Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu>
Newsgroups: uk.test,at.test,de.test,talk.origins
Subject: cmsg cancel <1999081021...@milo.math.sc.edu>
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howard hershey
>
> "Dean Hovey" <dean...@uswest.net> writes:
>
[snip]
>
> Most of the counterexamples, such as resistance to antibiotics,
> can be covered by "microevolution" and "variation within species"
> with which creationists have no problems.
>
Really?? I cannot count the times I have had to point out that source
of the variation that produces resistance to antibiotics is new mutation
only to have Joe Creationist assert that microevolution only selects for
variants that *always* existed in the species because random mutation
cannot produce an increase in information (with some claiming the
opposite: that resistance to antibiotics really represents a selective
disadvantage - also because of the 'idee fixe' that random mutation can
only produce decay).
Creationists certainly do have problems with any natural selection that
selects variants produced by random mutations. They typically deny that
genetic variation (or at least any variant that can be selected for in
any different environment) is due to random mutation and puke forth
really dumb ideas about variation always being present (essentially all
potentially useful variants were in the ark).
You underestimate the wilful biological ignorance of creationists,
Peter. There are entire web sites devoted to the above ideas.
Peter Nyikos
>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>> "Dean Hovey" <dean...@uswest.net> writes:
>>
>[snip]
>>
>> Most of the counterexamples, such as resistance to antibiotics,
>> can be covered by "microevolution" and "variation within species"
>> with which creationists have no problems.
>>
>[snip]
>Really?? I cannot count the times I have had to point out that source
>of the variation that produces resistance to antibiotics is new mutation
...a "pointing out" of something that is highly dubious in
many cases.
>only to have Joe Creationist assert that microevolution only selects for
>variants that *always* existed in the species because random mutation
>cannot produce an increase in information (with some claiming the
>opposite: that resistance to antibiotics really represents a selective
>disadvantage - also because of the 'idee fixe' that random mutation can
>only produce decay).
Really? Let's see you come up with some urls. Julie Thomas and
I know of your infinite capacity for distorting the facts about
people.
[...]
>You underestimate the wilful biological ignorance of creationists,
>Peter. There are entire web sites devoted to the above ideas.
Let's see the urls.
Felipe
Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote in message
news:1999081117...@milo.math.sc.edu...
> howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> writes:
>
> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>
> >> "Dean Hovey" <dean...@uswest.net> writes:
[snip]
>
> >You underestimate the wilful biological ignorance of creationists,
> >Peter. There are entire web sites devoted to the above ideas.
>
> Let's see the urls.
Well, this one might even be more controvercial -- even (especially?) among
biologists. It's an article from AAAS's site, and a few years old (1992?).
Interested what people have to say:
Joseph Potter
Felipe <pjo...@email.villanova.edu> wrote in message news:7osdg0$8...@ftp.ee.vill.edu...
I have been called names for using ideas
from this URL. I wager you will get away with it.
A nice URL to put forth, however.
Regards, Joe
Ken Cox
> Felipe <pjo...@email.villanova.edu> wrote:
> > Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
> > > howard hershey writes:
> > > >You underestimate the wilful biological ignorance of creationists,
> > > >Peter. There are entire web sites devoted to the above ideas.
> > > Let's see the urls.
> > http://www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/dbsr/EVOLUT/goodman.htm
> I have been called names for using ideas
> from this URL. I wager you will get away with it.
He's presenting the site as an example of Peter's request for
examples of willful biological ignorance among creationists.
There's no endorsement implied, so no reason for anyone to
take Felipe to task for the ideas.
My one criticism would be that the above is not really a good
site for examples of willful biological ignorance. The ICR
site would be better, and may even have some "Acts and Facts"
articles directly illustrating the points Howard made -- the
erroneous use of information metrics in biology, or the claim
that all current variation was present in the animals on the
Ark. (Maybe not the latter; the ICR may instead hold to the
WBI that all current variation can have been produced over a
period of a few thousand years.)
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
Michael Painter
> >variants that *always* existed in the species because random mutation
> >cannot produce an increase in information (with some claiming the
> >opposite: that resistance to antibiotics really represents a selective
> >disadvantage - also because of the 'idee fixe' that random mutation can
> >only produce decay).
>
> Really? Let's see you come up with some urls. Julie Thomas and
> I know of your infinite capacity for distorting the facts about
> people.
>
This is from the FAQ page at http://www.creationscience.com/: Nothing
specific about microevolution that I could find but this would seem to deny
it.
Everything in nature was created in one or more rapid, discrete steps. (Ps
33:6-9) Five times Genesis states that "God said . . . and it was so." (Gen
1:6-7, 1:9, 1:11, 1:14-15, 1:24) All the Bible's miracles occurred quickly,
including the biggest and first miracle--Creation itself.
"There are permanent discontinuities between the many different "kinds" of
life. In fact, the Bible states ten times that each "kind" will reproduce
after itself. (Gen 1) The kinds are fixed and distinct. "
http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/31/31_2a.html mentions the
famous baramin"
"A baramin could be defined as the descendants of a single created
population. So each baramin has its beginning at the creation, and unless
extinct, continues to exist today in its descendants. ..."
Frome the same paragraph:" .... caused the members of the same baramin to
divide into separate races and species. ..."
I don't have the stomach for those sites for more than a few minutes.
Joseph Potter
Ken Cox <k...@lucent.com> wrote in message news:37B1BF...@research.bell-labs.com...
> Joseph Potter wrote:
> > Felipe <pjo...@email.villanova.edu> wrote:
> > > Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
> > > > howard hershey writes:
> > > > >You underestimate the wilful biological ignorance of creationists,
> > > > >Peter. There are entire web sites devoted to the above ideas.
>
> > > > Let's see the urls.
>
> > > http://www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/dbsr/EVOLUT/goodman.htm
>
> > I have been called names for using ideas
> > from this URL. I wager you will get away with it.
>
> He's presenting the site as an example of Peter's request for
> examples of willful biological ignorance among creationists.
> There's no endorsement implied, so no reason for anyone to
> take Felipe to task for the ideas.
>
"Willful biological ignorance?"
http://www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/dbsr/EVOLUT/goodman.htm
The AAAS is involved in "Willful biological ignorance?"
After 150 years of advancing science they went
nuts????
You finally prove you are so blind in your
bias that conversation with you is not
possible.
Sad, it is.
>
> My one criticism would be that the above is not really a good
> site for examples of willful biological ignorance. The ICR
> site would be better, and may even have some "Acts and Facts"
> articles directly illustrating the points Howard made -- the
> erroneous use of information metrics in biology, or the claim
> that all current variation was present in the animals on the
> Ark. (Maybe not the latter; the ICR may instead hold to the
> WBI that all current variation can have been produced over a
> period of a few thousand years.)
>
>
So, the ICR and the AAAS are almost the same????
Oh boy.
Regards, Joe
Colin R. Day
>
> Most anti-creationists here show plenty of signs of questioning
> religion, even if they are ignorant of the sciences relevant
> to evolution--it's questioning atheism that they seem to find hard
> to handle.
>
And how should they question atheism?
--
Colin R. Day cd...@ix.netcom.com alt.atheist #1500
Felipe
Ken Cox <k...@lucent.com> wrote in message
news:37B1BF...@research.bell-labs.com...
> Joseph Potter wrote:
> > Felipe <pjo...@email.villanova.edu> wrote:
> > > Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
> > > > howard hershey writes:
> > > > >You underestimate the wilful biological ignorance of creationists,
> > > > >Peter. There are entire web sites devoted to the above ideas.
>
> > > > Let's see the urls.
>
> > > http://www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/dbsr/EVOLUT/goodman.htm
>
> > I have been called names for using ideas
> > from this URL. I wager you will get away with it.
>
> He's presenting the site as an example of Peter's request for
> examples of willful biological ignorance among creationists.
Methinks I've snipped too much.
(And here I usually get miffed that people leave too much of the preceding
message in ...)
Actually I was presenting it as an example that not all mutations are bad,
and that beneficial mutations do arise (i.e. evolution consists of more than
just trimming away bad mutations). The site goes one further and reviews
evidence that some microorganisms adjust their mutation rate under stressful
conditions, that is, that mutations (or their rates, at least) are not
always random. A very controvercial idea, I suppose. I haven't the
background to really evaluate the ideas on the page, and the info is a
little old. But I'm curious what people think.
Ken Cox
> Ken Cox <k...@lucent.com> wrote:
> > He's presenting the site as an example of Peter's request for
> > examples of willful biological ignorance among creationists.
> > take Felipe to task for the ideas.
> "Willful biological ignorance?"
Did you bother to *read* the next sentence of my post, where
I said that it was *not* a good example of willful biological
ignorance? In fact, as I look at the rest of your comments,
did you intend that they have any relationship at all to what
I wrote?
I do not see, for example, how you go from my statement that
the AAAS site does not have examples of willful biological
ignorance, but the ICR site does, to your response:
> So, the ICR and the AAAS are almost the same????
In fact, I cannot help but think that your other comment:
> You finally prove you are so blind in your
> bias that conversation with you is not possible.
is a form of projection here, as your own response was so
totally disconnected from what I actually wrote.
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
Joseph Potter
Ken Cox <k...@lucent.com> wrote in message news:37B1D3...@research.bell-labs.com...
> Joseph Potter wrote:
> > Ken Cox <k...@lucent.com> wrote:
> > > He's presenting the site as an example of Peter's request for
> > > examples of willful biological ignorance among creationists.
> > > There's no endorsement implied, so no reason for anyone to
> > > take Felipe to task for the ideas.
>
> > "Willful biological ignorance?"
>
> Did you bother to *read* the next sentence of my post
Do you ever bother to show a man's words
or at least show the <snip>
you little ... ah, ...
Hard to not get mad at one like you.
---- Joe
Ken Cox
> Ken Cox <k...@lucent.com> wrote:
> > Joseph Potter wrote:
] > > Ken Cox <k...@lucent.com> wrote:
] > > > He's presenting the site as an example of Peter's request for
] > > > examples of willful biological ignorance among creationists.
] > > > There's no endorsement implied, so no reason for anyone to
] > > > take Felipe to task for the ideas.
] >
] > > "Willful biological ignorance?"
> >
> > Did you bother to *read* the next sentence of my post
> > ...
>
> Do you ever bother to show a man's words
> or at least show the <snip>
> you little ... ah, ...
Joe, anyone with a threaded newsreader, or for that matter anyone
with access to Deja, can look at the post to which I replied and
see that the text I have marked with "]" appears in your post
exactly as shown, and your "Willful biological ignorance?" is
the complete contents of the line. So there's no reason to put
in a [...], and in fact doing so would be wrong.
On the other hand, there are cases where cutting is wrong even
when the [...] is put in. Your own post provides such an example;
you cut my sentence in half, and replied only to that part without
even acknowledging the rest exists.
In fact, the only reason that what you did is even partly justified
is that you are trying to change the subject -- that is, to move
away from my observation that you badly misread my post, and turn
it into an argument over quotation styles. But fine, if you want
to talk about quotation styles, here are *all* the lines that I
cut out of your post (the one with "Willful biological ignorance?"):
> > > http://www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/dbsr/EVOLUT/goodman.htm
> > > The AAAS is involved in "Willful biological ignorance?"
> > > After 150 years of advancing science they went
> > > nuts????
> > > Sad, it is.
> > > Oh, boy.
Now, tell me what is wrong with snipping those lines. Two of
them have almost no content, one is a repetition of a URL that
is available in the thread, and the remaining three would, had
I left them in, only have strengthened my case that you badly
misread my post.
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
Joseph Potter
>Joseph Potter wrote:
>> Ken Cox <k...@lucent.com> wrote:
>> > Joseph Potter wrote:
>] > > Ken Cox <k...@lucent.com> wrote:
>] > > > He's presenting the site as an example of Peter's request for
>] > > > examples of willful biological ignorance among creationists.
>] > > > There's no endorsement implied, so no reason for anyone to
>] > > > take Felipe to task for the ideas.
>] >
>] > > "Willful biological ignorance?"
>> >
>> > Did you bother to *read* the next sentence of my post
>> > ...
>>
>> Do you ever bother to show a man's words
>> or at least show the <snip>
>> you little ... ah, ...
>
>Joe, anyone with a threaded newsreader, or for that matter anyone
>with access to Deja, can look at the post to which I replied and
>see that the text I have marked with "]" appears in your post
>exactly as shown, and your "Willful biological ignorance?" is
>the complete contents of the line. So there's no reason to put
>in a [...], and in fact doing so would be wrong.
>
Get back on topic you little .... ah, well.
The AAAS is a creationist bunch of no-goods
according to you.
Prove it you little ... ah, well.
Regards, Joe
--------------
"Current utility may not be equated with
historical origin, or, when you demonstrate
that something works well, you have not
solved the problem of how, when, or why
it arose." --- Stephen Jay Gould
Joe Janney
Peter Nyikos wrote:
> howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> writes:
>
> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>
> >> "Dean Hovey" <dean...@uswest.net> writes:
> >>
> >[snip]
> >>
> >> Most of the counterexamples, such as resistance to antibiotics,
> >> can be covered by "microevolution" and "variation within species"
> >> with which creationists have no problems.
> >>
> >[snip]
>
> >Really?? I cannot count the times I have had to point out that source
> >of the variation that produces resistance to antibiotics is new mutation
>
> ...a "pointing out" of something that is highly dubious in
> many cases.
>
> >only to have Joe Creationist assert that microevolution only selects for
> >variants that *always* existed in the species because random mutation
> >cannot produce an increase in information (with some claiming the
> >opposite: that resistance to antibiotics really represents a selective
> >disadvantage - also because of the 'idee fixe' that random mutation can
> >only produce decay).
>
> Really? Let's see you come up with some urls. Julie Thomas and
> I know of your infinite capacity for distorting the facts about
> people.
> [snip]
I'm not Howard, but can I play? I did about 15 minutes of quote mining here
at the end of the day and found the following:
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/scc/lifescience1.html
Natural selection cannot produce new genes; it only selects among preexisting
characteristics. a For example, many have mistakenly believed that
resistances "evolved" in response to pesticides and antibiotics. Sometimes, a
previously lost capability was reestablished, making it appear that something
evolved. b In other cases, a few resistant insects and bacteria were already
present when the pesticides and antibiotics were first applied. The
vulnerable insects and bacteria were killed, allowing resistant varieties,
which then had less competition, to proliferate. c While natural selection
occurred, nothing evolved and, in fact, some biological diversity was lost.
Mutations are the only known means by which new genetic material becomes
available for evolution. a Rarely, if ever, is a mutation beneficial to an
organism in its natural environment. Almost all observable mutations are
harmful; some are meaningless; many are lethal. b No known mutation has ever
produced a form of life having greater complexity and viability than its
ancestors.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/508.asp
Are there 'good' mutations? Evolutionists can point to a small handful of
cases in which a mutation has helped a creature to survive better than those
without it. Actually, they need to take a closer look. Such 'good' mistakes
are still the wrong types of changes to turn a fish into a philosopher - they
are headed in precisely the wrong direction. Rather than adding information,
they destroy information, or corrupt the way it can be expressed (not
surprising, since they are random mistakes).
Some antibiotic resistance was already present in the bacterial population,
as shown by specimens frozen before the development of antibiotics. So
natural selection only selected from pre-existing variation. But nothing new
was produced. Similarly, myxomatosis-resistant rabbits were already present
in the population. When myxomatosis was introduced to Australia,
non-resistant rabbits were selected against. But this processes caused the
loss of information from the bacteria and rabbit population due to the loss
of genetic diversity.
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/genetic-mutations.html
Mutations behave like a "blind gunman," a destroyer who shoots he deadly
"bullets" randomly into beautifully designed models of living molecular
machinery…
This research affirms the reality of the past Biblical curse of decay and
degeneration on the world of nature, as stated in both the Old and New
Testaments…
Mutations will eventually turn the human genetic code to gibberish.
http://pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/10mut09.htm
But, in truth, as we have observed, "natural selection" is nothing more than
random reshuffling of the genes within the species in any direction, and
"mutations" constitute nothing more than harmful damage to genes and DNA, and
damage that is totally unpredictable in its outcome.
http://pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/10mut02.htm
3 - Not helpful. Evolution requires improvement, but mutations never help
anyone. They only weaken or injure.—p. 13.
4 - Very harmful effects. Nearly all mutations are harmful. In most
instances, they weaken or damage the organism so seriously that it will not
long survive. If it does survive, its offspring tend to eventually die
out.—p. 13.
Not once. Not once has there ever been a recorded instance of a truly
beneficial mutation!
There are instances of reshuffled genes, which produced better varieties of
grapes, apples, and roses. But those were normal changes within species.
(They were still grapes, apples, and roses.) None of these are mutations. A
true mutation is a damage factor which produces injury or death.
Paul J Gans
It will be noted that quasi-evolutionist Nyikos doesn't
want to deal with my formulation.
Larry's point that my formulation is useless for professionals
is quite right. But we don't really deal here with professionals.
We deal with gifted and, more often, ungifted amateurs.
----- Paul J. Gans [ga...@panix.com]
In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> writes:
>>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>
>>> "Dean Hovey" <dean...@uswest.net> writes:
>>>
>>[snip]
>>>
>>> Most of the counterexamples, such as resistance to antibiotics,
>>> can be covered by "microevolution" and "variation within species"
>>> with which creationists have no problems.
>>>
>>[snip]
>>Really?? I cannot count the times I have had to point out that source
>>of the variation that produces resistance to antibiotics is new mutation
>...a "pointing out" of something that is highly dubious in
>many cases.
>>only to have Joe Creationist assert that microevolution only selects for
>>variants that *always* existed in the species because random mutation
>>cannot produce an increase in information (with some claiming the
>>opposite: that resistance to antibiotics really represents a selective
>>disadvantage - also because of the 'idee fixe' that random mutation can
>>only produce decay).
>Really? Let's see you come up with some urls. Julie Thomas and
>I know of your infinite capacity for distorting the facts about
>people.
>[...]
>>You underestimate the wilful biological ignorance of creationists,
>>Peter. There are entire web sites devoted to the above ideas.
>Let's see the urls.
>Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
>University of South Carolina
Ken Cox
> Get back on topic you little .... ah, well.
Projection, again. You're the one who suddenly wanted to talk
about my snipping patterns, rather than what you said I said.
Which you repeat here:
> The AAAS is a creationist bunch of no-goods
> according to you.
Again, how anyone can read what I said -- "My one criticism would
be that [the AAAS site] is not really a good site for examples of
willful biological ignorance. The ICR site would be better..."
and get the above -- which you are repeating -- I cannot see.
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
otter
science standards which omit discussion of evolution. This is a sad day
for science education in Kansas. Its not just a matter of evolution but
also an attack on the fundamental assumptions of science. If you live in
Kansas please call your local board of education members to voice your
displeasure. The governor is appearently furious at the board's activity
and may consider eliminating the board of education.
This is not just a matter of evolution or even science. Once the
creationists(A.K.A ) fundamentalists succeed in fostering their bankrupt
ideas on the six scientifically illiterate board of education members,
then they will act in other areas. What will they do to English, or
History?
Remember...you're next.
Paul
Andrew MacRae
|howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> writes:
|>Peter Nyikos wrote:
|>> "Dean Hovey" <dean...@uswest.net> writes:
|>>
|>[snip]
|>>
|>> Most of the counterexamples, such as resistance to antibiotics,
|>> can be covered by "microevolution" and "variation within species"
|>> with which creationists have no problems.
|>>
|>[snip]
|
|>Really?? I cannot count the times I have had to point out that source
|>of the variation that produces resistance to antibiotics is new mutation
|
|...a "pointing out" of something that is highly dubious in
|many cases.
Can you be more specific about the problems? And if it is highly
dubious in *many* cases, are there any where it is not dubious?
|>only to have Joe Creationist assert that microevolution only selects for
|>variants that *always* existed in the species because random mutation
|>cannot produce an increase in information (with some claiming the
|>opposite: that resistance to antibiotics really represents a selective
|>disadvantage - also because of the 'idee fixe' that random mutation can
|>only produce decay).
|
|Really? Let's see you come up with some urls.
Well, for example, some of these ideas were discussed a few months
ago with David Buckna and Jonathan Sarfati (thread title: "Skeptics choke
on frog"), who were talking about claims derived via information theory by
a guy called Lee Spetner, and published in a book on the subject ("Not By
Chance"). I described the generalities of the acquiring of bacterial
antibiotic resistance -- which is outside my area of expertise -- and the
counter-claim by David was that no net "information gain" had occurred,
and that the changes that had occurred were only due to "information loss"
and yielded reduced fitness, which apparently does not count. I already
knew that many such resistance-yielding mutations yielded less fit
bacteria compared to "wild" types, but: a) everything about "fitness" is
environment-dependent, and it wouldn't matter if it was "less fit" than
the "wild" type if the environment had permanently and widely changed to
the point that the "wild" ones could no longer survive in competition --
i.e. there was an implicit presumption that environments could not change
to the benefit of a "less fit" mutant in *current* environmental
conditions; b) I also knew that in many instances, other mutations had
occurred that had restored fitness of the resistant forms to at least as
"fit" as the "wild" types anyway.
Other people, such as Tim Ikeda, talked about the issues more
knowledgeably than I did, and had actually read Spetner's work. The gist
of it, from second-hand claims -- (i.e. I may not be accurately
representing it) -- is that Spetner has a rather unusual definition of
what constitutes an addition of "new information" via mutations, and
therefore he would exclude a great number of types of mutations as an
example of the accumulation of "new" information by evolutionary
processes, eventhough the mutations yield features that are beneficial and
were not in the original organism.
Here are a few sample postings, from which you can follow the
thread. This "new information" aspect was only one component of the
discussion, and I vaguely recall some spin-off threads under other names
that dealt only with the "information" aspects. They can probably be
found in dejanews using terms like "Spetner".
http://www.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=424891561
http://www.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=425877028
Here is a page that has a pretty nice shopping list of some of the
reasons Howard mentioned:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/Docs/337.asp
Here is some earlier discussion by Ian Musgrave on the subject of
bacterial antibiotic resistance:
http://www.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=474220113
In my observation, the idea that evolution by natural selection
can not produce "new information" (in some sense of that word), even at a
"microevolutionary" level, is pretty widespread among at least *some*
anti-evolutionary creationists. Some creationists do indeed have a
problem with at least some aspects of "microevolution", making Howard's
claims reasonable, in my opinion, regardless of the scientific veracity of
the creationist claims.
|Julie Thomas and
|I know of your infinite capacity for distorting the facts about
|people.
He does not appear to have greatly distorted things in this
instance, in my opinion. Naturally, there are likely to be some minor and
probably irrelevant semantic differences between what he said in a few
short sentences and what the much lengthier examples say, which could be
the starting point for a tremendously lengthy rhetorical argument about
the accuracy of Howard's representation, and which could potentially serve
as evidence towards his eventual conviction for not getting his
paraphrasal exactly the same as what was previously said, but I personally
think his representation was close enough to not be a flagrantly dishonest
misrepresentation. Your opinion may vary.
Please note that although I could be providing this information
for the sake of licking Howard's boots, or whatever catch phrase is
appropriate in this situation, it is also possible that rather than being
motivated by personal admiration for or devotion to the Howard plexus and
the pack in general, I may be providing the information merely due to the
coincidence that I happened to previously discuss exactly the issue you
requested more information about, and I therefore immediately recognized
it and knew how to find it. I hope this saves you and Howard some effort
in the ensuing discussion. Also, by providing this information I am not
implicitly agreeing to discuss it at length with you. Sorry.
|[...]
|
|>You underestimate the wilful biological ignorance of creationists,
|>Peter. There are entire web sites devoted to the above ideas.
|
|Let's see the urls.
-Andrew
mac...@agc.bio._NOSPAM_.ns.ca
Peter Nyikos
Ken Cox <k...@lucent.com> writes:
>Joseph Potter wrote:
>> Felipe <pjo...@email.villanova.edu> wrote:
>> > Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>> > > howard hershey writes:
>> > > >You underestimate the wilful biological ignorance of creationists,
>> > > >Peter. There are entire web sites devoted to the above ideas.
>> > > Let's see the urls.
>> > http://www.aaas.org/spp/dspp/dbsr/EVOLUT/goodman.htm
>
>> I have been called names for using ideas
>> from this URL. I wager you will get away with it.
>He's presenting the site as an example of Peter's request for
>examples of willful biological ignorance among creationists.
That is not what I requested. I asked primarily for web sites
devoted to the "above ideas" and secondarily for examples showing
that I *underestimate* the willful biological ignorance
among creationists. The "above ideas" had to do with
the idea that lots of creationists believe that
immunity to antibiotics "was always there in the genes"
and cannot be the result of mutations and that many even believe,
that all ALLELES [the only way one could really interpret
the word "genes" in this context and demonstrate willful ignorance]
present today were already present in the animals on Noah's ark
(or in organisms able to survive the flood, such as fish and
the eggs of some insects, etc.).
By the way, I came across an article just today in _Business Week_
about an earlier article in _Nature_ in which it said that
antibiotics apparently do not kill bacteria directly, but do it by
triggering a self-destruct mechanism in the genes themselves!
So creationists can relax--the development of "immunity" to
antibiotics may consist of "increasing randomness" and
"decreasing information" in that it disables a self-destruct
mechanism in the cell rather than adding a new ability!
>My one criticism would be that the above is not really a good
>site for examples of willful biological ignorance. The ICR
>site would be better, and may even have some "Acts and Facts"
>articles directly illustrating the points Howard made -- the
>erroneous use of information metrics in biology,
Howard did not mention those in his reply to me. He did say
something about decreased information, but there was no quantification
implied; and as you can see, the creationists' case here may be
trickier to overcome than even I thought until today.
or the claim
>that all current variation was present in the animals on the
>Ark. (Maybe not the latter; the ICR may instead hold to the
>WBI that all current variation can have been produced over a
>period of a few thousand years.)
Indeed, that seems to be Henry Morris's view.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
Peter Nyikos
>It will be noted that quasi-evolutionist Nyikos doesn't
>want to deal with my formulation.
HUH???
Your formulation of what?
And in what way am I a *quasi*evolutionist? I have believed in
the evolution of all vertebrates from a common chordate ancestor
since the age of ten (over 40 years ago) and in the evolution of
all organisms from a small handful of one-celled species for the
last two years. The evidence for the former is simply overwhelming
and the evidence for the latter is extremelly strong.
As for abiogenesis, that is not evolution in the sense of the t.o. FAQ.
>Larry's point that my formulation is useless for professionals
>is quite right. But we don't really deal here with professionals.
>We deal with gifted and, more often, ungifted amateurs.
Larry? Larry's in other threads.
> ----- Paul J. Gans [ga...@panix.com]
>In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>>howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> writes:
>>>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>>
>>>> "Dean Hovey" <dean...@uswest.net> writes:
>>>>
>>>[snip]
>>>>
>>>> Most of the counterexamples, such as resistance to antibiotics,
>>>> can be covered by "microevolution" and "variation within species"
>>>> with which creationists have no problems.
>>>>
>>>[snip]
>>>Really?? I cannot count the times I have had to point out that source
>>>of the variation that produces resistance to antibiotics is new mutation
>>...a "pointing out" of something that is highly dubious in
>>many cases.
This comment of mine has held up well so far today. It may
even be that resistance consists of the failure to *express* a gene
rather than the actual destruction of the self-destruct gene
that seems to be the means whereby antibiotics do their thing.
>>>only to have Joe Creationist assert that microevolution only selects for
>>>variants that *always* existed in the species because random mutation
>>>cannot produce an increase in information (with some claiming the
>>>opposite: that resistance to antibiotics really represents a selective
>>>disadvantage - also because of the 'idee fixe' that random mutation can
>>>only produce decay).
>>Really? Let's see you come up with some urls. Julie Thomas and
>>I know of your infinite capacity for distorting the facts about
>>people.
People have come up with urls from websites, as per my request below,
but so far no one has documented Howard Hershey receiving replies
from creationists as described above.
>>[...]
>>>You underestimate the wilful biological ignorance of creationists,
>>>Peter. There are entire web sites devoted to the above ideas.
>>Let's see the urls.
>>Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
>>University of South Carolina
Peter Nyikos
>The Kansas board of education(?) has voted to accept the watered down
>science standards which omit discussion of evolution.
Omit *requiring* discussion of education, as far as I could
tell from the first post to this thread. And even your wording
doesn't suggest otherwise.
And at what level? High school? Middle school? Grade school?
All three?
This is a sad day
>for science education in Kansas. Its not just a matter of evolution but
>also an attack on the fundamental assumptions of science.
This alarmist talk is not going to lead to levelheaded assessment
of the real implications of the decision.
> If you live in
>Kansas please call your local board of education members to voice your
>displeasure. The governor is appearently furious at the board's activity
>and may consider eliminating the board of education.
A big over-reaction and an unwise precedent.
>This is not just a matter of evolution or even science. Once the
>creationists(A.K.A ) fundamentalists succeed in fostering their bankrupt
>ideas on the six scientifically illiterate board of education members,
>then they will act in other areas. What will they do to English, or
>History?
>Remember...you're next.
I'm more concerned about such things as requirements that sex
education be taught in kindergarten.
In contrast, this decision is an *omission* of a requirement.
All I've read indicates that school districts will be perfectly
free to choose books emphasizing evolution, and many probably will.
I wonder what Libertarians would have to say about this.
>Paul
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Peter Nyikos
"Colin R. Day" <cd...@ix.netcom.com> writes:
>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>> Most anti-creationists here show plenty of signs of questioning
>> religion, even if they are ignorant of the sciences relevant
>> to evolution--it's questioning atheism that they seem to find hard
>> to handle.
>>
>And how should they question atheism?
Very simple--start by contemplating the strong possibility that there
are a staggering number of universes besides this one. Then
consider the fairly strong possibility that
ours is rather modest in comparison to the best. All it
takes after that is to consider the further possibility that among
the best is one in which there is an unlimited amount of time
for a being to arise that is capable of such feats as fashioning
our own modest universe, possibly out of the stuff of its own
grander universe.
A Creator, in other words. Not the infinitely perfect being
of Thomism, for instance, but not the sort of thing one can
believe in the existence of and still call oneself an "atheist".
The first possibility is very strong because our universe is
just too darned good at producing orderly planetary systems
with life-congenial conditions for it to be the only universe
there is; that would be just too big a stroke of luck.
The second possibility comes straight out of the principle
of mediocrity; the Copernican revolution began the long process
of making us realize that we are not in any favored position.
So, while we wouldn't be here in the first place if our universe
were not a lot better than the *average universe*, it is to be expected
to be only average as far as worlds in which life is possible
is concerned.
>--
>Colin R. Day cd...@ix.netcom.com alt.atheist #1500
I may have mentioned this before--there was a Colin Day who
was a graduate student here for a number of years.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Peter Nyikos
>Peter Nyikos wrote:
Yes, but you snipped too much. Your quotes are pretty good
at meeting a challenge I made a few lines later, but not
for the specific challenge above, which was for cases of
the behavior Howard describes in talk.origins.
>http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/scc/lifescience1.html
>http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/508.asp
>http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/genetic-mutations.html
>http://pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/10mut09.htm
>http://pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/10mut02.htm
Yeah, this is pretty dogmatic and far out, all right.
Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
Paul J Gans
>>The Kansas board of education(?) has voted to accept the watered down
>>science standards which omit discussion of evolution.
>Omit *requiring* discussion of education, as far as I could
>tell from the first post to this thread. And even your wording
>doesn't suggest otherwise.
>And at what level? High school? Middle school? Grade school?
>All three?
> This is a sad day
>>for science education in Kansas. Its not just a matter of evolution but
>>also an attack on the fundamental assumptions of science.
>This alarmist talk is not going to lead to levelheaded assessment
>of the real implications of the decision.
Of course there's no need to be alarmed. It is about
the same as if the state mandated that nobody be required
to show competence in solving quadratics in order to
pass a college algebra class.
But then, you don't understand analogies, do you?
[rest deleted]
Thomas S. Urban
>[posted and e-mailed]
>
>"Colin R. Day" <cd...@ix.netcom.com> writes:
>
>>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
>
>>>
>>> religion, even if they are ignorant of the sciences relevant
>>> to evolution--it's questioning atheism that they seem to find hard
>>> to handle.
>>>
>
>
>Very simple--start by contemplating the strong possibility that there
>are a staggering number of universes besides this one. Then
Other universes might possibly be allowable in some theoretical
physics, how do you get "strong possibility"?
>consider the fairly strong possibility that
>ours is rather modest in comparison to the best. All it
>takes after that is to consider the further possibility that among
>the best is one in which there is an unlimited amount of time
>for a being to arise that is capable of such feats as fashioning
>our own modest universe, possibly out of the stuff of its own
>grander universe.
So you've jumped this far, but what if a being with the capabilites
arose, but didn't create this universe (i.e., it's natural), would
you still call him god if he had nothing whatsoever to do with
our universe? Of course, this is all just daydreaming, and mere
possibility doesn't convert me to theism.
>A Creator, in other words. Not the infinitely perfect being
>of Thomism, for instance, but not the sort of thing one can
>believe in the existence of and still call oneself an "atheist".
You can admit a creator is possible and still be an atheist.
>
>The first possibility is very strong because our universe is
>just too darned good at producing orderly planetary systems
>with life-congenial conditions for it to be the only universe
>there is; that would be just too big a stroke of luck.
Since we know of exactly one solar system with "orderly planetary
systems with life-congenial conditions", how do you get from
possibility to very strong possibility? The jump to stating
the likelihood of life-congenial conditions in other universes,
or even the existence of other universes is even worse.
>
>The second possibility comes straight out of the principle
>of mediocrity; the Copernican revolution began the long process
>of making us realize that we are not in any favored position.
>So, while we wouldn't be here in the first place if our universe
>were not a lot better than the *average universe*, it is to be expected
>to be only average as far as worlds in which life is possible
>is concerned.
>
And who says the set of universes (if it's bigger than 1)
follows the principle of mediocrity, or a gaussian distribution,
or anything else? This way of questioning atheism doesn't seem
to be very fruitful other than to illustrate that you can, if you
string together a bunch of assumptions about things no one on
this planet has any way of knowing, you can arrive at the
conclusion that a god-like being is *possible*. That's as far
as it goes, as near as I can tell.
.
John P. Boatwright
> "They [the Creationists] have been getting away with
> this nonsense [Creation Science] for some time now,
> even to the extent of getting legislation passed
> to allow them to teach "creationism" side by side
> with evolution.
There is NO PROOF for evolution.
NOTHING never made anything.
It's clear A DESIGNER made it all.
God is the designer.
> Wednesday's Board session has many educators worried.
Big deal.
> One biology instructor told the Washington Post,
> "Evolution is the unifying theory of biology, and
> now students will get such an incomplete picture."
They're being told a LIE right now, they're being
told that NOTHING is just as valid as God.
That's BUNK.
God made it all, God gave PROOF.
NOTHING never gave any proof what-so-ever.
God's Genesis account is DEAD ON with science data.
NOTHING gave NO ACCOUNT, none.
NOTHING loses by default.
God wins since he gave PROOF, actual PROOF that he did it.
> The religious conservative majority is expected to
> prevail at Wednesday's gathering. Striking evolution
> from the guidelines would be a major victory for the
> creationists;
God already won.
He won from the start.
God made it all, Jesus died for our sins.
Proof God described the planet density profile
BEFORE science did:
http://www.teleport.com/~salad/4god/density.htm
(see the 2 graphs, obviously God was right in Genesis)
Jennifer Palonus
...
> I wonder what Libertarians would have to say about this.
Well, as a libertarian, I think this illustrates 3 things:
1. Government is the wrong institution to be running the schools.
Anything run by the government is always at the mercy of the most vocal
political pressure groups. This is why government schools are so prone
to educational fads. Whichever ideological/pedagogical fad captures the
school boards ends up taking over the curriculum. The government
schools' monopoly protects the bureaucrats as they hang on to their new
fad-inspired programs long after it becomes obvious they've failed the
children. Now the schools are being captured by the stealth creationist
school boards. Same-old same-old.
2. Government schools have failed in their mission of teaching children
logical thinking skills, as well as basic knowledge necessary to thrive
in our internationally competitive society. But they have done a good
job of teaching look-see reading "skills". They have succeeded in
raising the self-esteem of children to the extent that American students
have higher opinions of their own abilities - while having lower actual
test scores - than students in other countries. You're naiive if you
think that excellent education is the goal of government schools.
3. Christians are the most visible subculture involved in homeschooling
& private schooling. And yet the only long-term solution to the dumbing
down of American kids is a healthy marketplace in education. Anyone
who's concerned about educational excellence but nevertheless bet on
government schools as the guarantor of widely-available quality
education, made a bad bet indeed.
Jenny
--
---------------------------------------- jpal...@graphicaldynamics.com
NO MORE 404's!
Scan your website for broken links & images - each day, automatically!
------------------------- http://www.graphicaldynamics.com/aa/webcheck/
Jennifer Palonus
...
> >And how should they question atheism?
>
> Very simple--start by contemplating the strong possibility that there
> are a staggering number of universes besides this one. Then
> consider the fairly strong possibility that
> ours is rather modest in comparison to the best. All it
> takes after that is to consider the further possibility that among
> the best is one in which there is an unlimited amount of time
> for a being to arise that is capable of such feats as fashioning
> our own modest universe, possibly out of the stuff of its own
> grander universe.
>
> A Creator, in other words. Not the infinitely perfect being
> of Thomism, for instance, but not the sort of thing one can
> believe in the existence of and still call oneself an "atheist".
Sure I could. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic", & all that. :-)
> The first possibility is very strong because our universe is
> just too darned good at producing orderly planetary systems
> with life-congenial conditions for it to be the only universe
> there is; that would be just too big a stroke of luck.
It's a big stroke of luck that we living beings happen to find ourselves
in a universe that's "congenial" to living beings? Are you surprised to
know that most men who've lost their hair are also men who are bald?
> The second possibility comes straight out of the principle
> of mediocrity; the Copernican revolution began the long process
> of making us realize that we are not in any favored position.
> So, while we wouldn't be here in the first place if our universe
> were not a lot better than the *average universe*, it is to be expected
> to be only average as far as worlds in which life is possible
> is concerned.
It certainly is intuitively obvious that a universe that produced Man
must be, uh, "better" than the average universe.
Charles Dye
>Very simple--start by contemplating the strong possibility that there
>are a staggering number of universes besides this one. Then
>consider the fairly strong possibility that
>ours is rather modest in comparison to the best. All it
>takes after that is to consider the further possibility that among
>the best is one in which there is an unlimited amount of time
>for a being to arise that is capable of such feats as fashioning
>our own modest universe, possibly out of the stuff of its own
>grander universe.
>
>A Creator, in other words. Not the infinitely perfect being
>of Thomism, for instance, but not the sort of thing one can
>believe in the existence of and still call oneself an "atheist".
"There are other sages too, who doubting the existence of that
power these beings, who may be called the amschaspands, are said to
serve, nonetheless assert the fact of their existence. Their
assertions are based not on human testimony -- of which there is much
and to which I add my own, for I saw such a being in the mirror-paged
book in the chambers of Father Inire -- but rather on irrefutable
theory, for they say that if the universe was not created (which they,
for reasons not wholly philosophical, find it convenient to
disbelieve), then it must have existed forever to this day. And if it
has so existed, time itself extends behind the present day without
end, and in such a limitless ocean of time, all things conceivable
must of necessity have come to pass. Such beings as the amschaspands
are conceivable, for they, and many others, have conceived of them.
But if creatures so mighty once entered existence, how should they be
destroyed? Therefore they are still extant.
"Thus by the paradoxical nature of knowledge, it is seen that
though the existence of the Ylem, the primordial source of all things,
may be doubted, yet the existence of his servants may not be doubted."
-- Gene Wolfe, in "The Book of the New Sun"
Justin
John P. Boatwright <sa...@teleport.com> wrote in message
news:37B255...@teleport.com...
Michael Painter
John P. Boatwright <sa...@teleport.com> wrote in message
news:37B255...@teleport.com...
> Dean Hovey wrote:
>
> > "They [the Creationists] have been getting away with
> > this nonsense [Creation Science] for some time now,
> > even to the extent of getting legislation passed
> > to allow them to teach "creationism" side by side
> > with evolution.
>
> There is NO PROOF for evolution.
>
> NOTHING never made anything.
>
> It's clear A DESIGNER made it all.
>
> God is the designer.
Boatwrong is the one person who might convince me that having the food and
air intake in the same place is a good idea.
Maybe he should experiment with the gag reflex.
Given a few drinks it possible to take a deep breath without gagging, even
if you're underwater....
Robert S.
>
> Dean Hovey wrote:
>
> > "They [the Creationists] have been getting away with
> > this nonsense [Creation Science] for some time now,
> > even to the extent of getting legislation passed
> > to allow them to teach "creationism" side by side
> > with evolution.
>
> There is NO PROOF for evolution.
>
> NOTHING never made anything.
Hmmm. Well, fundamentalist moronic Christian dogma
apparently seems to come from nothing.
Amazing that someone apparently as intelligent as
you are, cannot see the Human invention of religion.
Apologists for Christian fundamentalist dogma cannot
absolutely prove that Jesus was a real historical person.
There's a lot more observable evidence for evolution
as an explanation for our existence than there is for
your fictional dogma. In fact, there is _no_ observable
evidence for your fictional dogma.
In the light of reason, you are (metaphorically)
trying to beat back the sea with a broom.
One of the ancestors of your family was a predecessor
to the modern human species. Deal with it rationally.
John P. Boatwright
> God this, God that, God dammit.
God made EVERYTHING, every particle.
Just saw the reports, apparently Kansas tossed out
evolution.
ha ha ha...
Excellent!
It's about time someone did the right thing.
Ya, no more of this GARBAGE about how NOTHING somehow
made everything:
"Uh... we're not really sure how, but NOTHING
seems to be the cause for it all happening.
From what we can tell, NOTHING was working
all the time to do this and that... and ...
well... here we are..."
ha ha ha...
That's what Kansas tossed out... it was GARBAGE.
In contrast, God PROVED he knew how the planets
formed, he nailed the creation event TIMING vs.
the science data.
And what did NOTHING have to say about it?
============================================
NOTHING didn't give ANY proof what-so-ever.
============================================
None.
Therefore evolution dies the death.
Even today, science ADMITS they don't know how the
planets formed. Yet God gave statements MATCHING
what Hubble Space Telescope shows about stellar
events and planet formation.
Hubble Space Telescope plainly shows what God
had said all along.
That's the POWER of God, he KNEW >>> BEFORE <<<
science did. He knew EXACTLY what happened.
Matt Miller
says...
> otter <otte...@geocities.com> writes:
>
> >The Kansas board of education(?) has voted to accept the watered down
> >science standards which omit discussion of evolution.
>
> Omit *requiring* discussion of education, as far as I could
> tell from the first post to this thread. And even your wording
> doesn't suggest otherwise.
It opens the door wide open for local school boards to bar it
completely. Which I imagine will happen across the state. If your a local
administrator with little knowledge of science why bother putting up with
creationist parents?
--
Matt Miller | http://pw2.netcom.com/~matmillr | a.a# 357
EAC Spokesmodel
"Under the rocks and stones
there is water underground."
-The Talking Heads
borg166
"John P. Boatwright" wrote:
I hope kansas gets nuked...before the disease spreads....
eon sol
<snip>
> There is NO PROOF for evolution.
>
> NOTHING never made anything.
>
> It's clear A DESIGNER made it all.
>
> God is the designer.
Oh, cool. One question: Who made God? Or did *nothing* make God??
If *nothing* made God, then you're going to have to go back and give
*nothing* all the credit for the universe again.
>
> > Wednesday's Board session has many educators worried.
>
> Big deal.
>
> > One biology instructor told the Washington Post,
> > "Evolution is the unifying theory of biology, and
> > now students will get such an incomplete picture."
>
> They're being told a LIE right now, they're being
> told that NOTHING is just as valid as God.
>
> That's BUNK.
>
> God made it all, God gave PROOF.
>
> NOTHING never gave any proof what-so-ever.
>
> God's Genesis account is DEAD ON with science data.
So God can borrow our science data, but we can't use that same data to
support evolution? Which will it be, science or God?
> NOTHING gave NO ACCOUNT, none.
>
> NOTHING loses by default.
By default, we assume that God does not exist, unless there is sufficient
evidence to suggest his existence. No such evidence has been discovered.
Not even your warped mathematics and mindless rants will change this fact.
>
> God wins since he gave PROOF, actual PROOF that he did it.
>
> > The religious conservative majority is expected to
> > prevail at Wednesday's gathering. Striking evolution
> > from the guidelines would be a major victory for the
> > creationists;
>
> God already won.
>
> He won from the start.
>
Wally Anglesea
<SNIP>
>
>I hope kansas gets nuked...before the disease spreads....
Wasn't it Kansas that once passed a law stating pi was 3?
sad really. The state of American education is very, very, sad. If
it continues to decline thusly, brought on by the fundies, then I can
see the day coming when the US will no longer be the nation it once
was, capable of sending people to the Moon.
I guess, and hope, that this is all a minor aberration.
Truth always wins in the end.
Find out about Australia's most dangerous Doomsday Cult:
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~wanglese/pebble.htm
Fight spam:
http://www.caube.org.au/
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http://setiathome.berkeley.edu
"needs sugar...." -Socrates
Copperhead
If this happens in this state, it's homeschooling for my kid. Maybe I
ought to do that anyway. To hell with diversity.
>Help find ET:
>http://setiathome.berkeley.edu
>
The link doesn't work.
>
>"needs sugar...." -Socrates
>
Agkistrodon
Felipe
Michael Painter <mpai...@inreach.com> wrote in message
news:%Vts3.967$T5.6...@news.inreach.com...
> > Dean Hovey wrote:
> > There is NO PROOF for evolution.
> >
> > NOTHING never made anything.
> >
> > It's clear A DESIGNER made it all.
> >
> > God is the designer.
>
> air intake in the same place is a good idea.
> Maybe he should experiment with the gag reflex.
> Given a few drinks it possible to take a deep breath without gagging, even
> if you're underwater....
While I find this view more than a little extreme, I have to admit his
all-caps moronic ravings make me crave the intelligently stated drivel of a
few people I really can't stand. So, who teaches these people that the way
to win an argument is to shout the loudest?
Peter Nyikos
>In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>>otter <otte...@geocities.com> writes:
>>>The Kansas board of education(?) has voted to accept the watered down
>>>science standards which omit discussion of evolution.
>>Omit *requiring* discussion of education, as far as I could
Weird absentmindedness--I meant "evolution" not education, but
there was some momentary disconnect.
>>tell from the first post to this thread. And even your wording
>>doesn't suggest otherwise.
>>And at what level? High school? Middle school? Grade school?
>>All three?
>> This is a sad day
>>>for science education in Kansas. Its not just a matter of evolution but
>>>also an attack on the fundamental assumptions of science.
>>This alarmist talk is not going to lead to levelheaded assessment
>>of the real implications of the decision.
>Of course there's no need to be alarmed. It is about
>the same as if the state mandated that nobody be required
>to show competence in solving quadratics in order to
>pass a college algebra class.
We aren't talking about college; we are talking about
what came before. We aren't talking about standards for
passing courses--if that were the case, then a student
could be incompetent at quadratics and still get
a passing grade, what with all the topics college algebra
embraces. And that applies in spades to evolution and
high school biology, unless the teacher is an absolute
tyrant who saturates the whole high school biology course
with evolution in a way that utterly misses the point of high
school biology.
By the way, I get lots of engineering students in my
differential equations courses who say "This polynomial
doesn't factor" and letting it go at that, when
I give them something like:
x^2 + 3x + 1 = 0
which involves radicals but NOT imaginary numbers.
Should they have been kept in high school until they mastered these?
>But then, you don't understand analogies, do you?
I understand analogies perfectly well. It's just that they
run a wide range from the absolutely lousy and misleading
to the great ones.
Martin Crisp
wrote:
> In contrast, God PROVED he knew how the planets
> formed, he nailed the creation event TIMING vs.
> the science data.
What is the point of faith if God goes around proving things?
Have Fun
Martin
--
Of course the 'from:' address is valid
Dejanews: Fake what you know, share what you don't
Martin Crisp
wrote:
>
> Michael Painter <mpai...@inreach.com> wrote in message
> news:%Vts3.967$T5.6...@news.inreach.com...
[snip]
> > Boatwrong is the one person who might convince me that having the food
> and
> > air intake in the same place is a good idea.
> > Maybe he should experiment with the gag reflex.
> > Given a few drinks it possible to take a deep breath without gagging,
even
> > if you're underwater....
>
> While I find this view more than a little extreme, I have to admit his
> all-caps moronic ravings make me crave the intelligently stated drivel of
a
> few people I really can't stand. So, who teaches these people that the
way
> to win an argument is to shout the loudest?
=/*GOD*/=
of course,
HTH :-)
Wally Anglesea
wrote:
>wang...@ozemail.com.au (Wally Anglesea) wrote:
>
>If this happens in this state, it's homeschooling for my kid. Maybe I
>ought to do that anyway. To hell with diversity.
>
>
>>Help find ET:
>>http://setiathome.berkeley.edu
>>
>
>The link doesn't work.
bugger:
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
>>
>>"needs sugar...." -Socrates
>>
>Agkistrodon
Find out about Australia's most dangerous Doomsday Cult:
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~wanglese/pebble.htm
Fight spam:
http://www.caube.org.au/
Help find ET:
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu
"needs sugar...." -Socrates
Matt Silberstein
<nyi...@math.sc.edu>:
[snip]
>And in what way am I a *quasi*evolutionist? I have believed in
>the evolution of all vertebrates from a common chordate ancestor
>since the age of ten (over 40 years ago)
Joe, where are you? Why don't you ask Peter for his step-by-step
description of the evolution of echolocation in bats? He believes it
happened, yet he lacks even a just-so story on how it happened. Don't
you have a comment about this?
[snip]
Matt Silberstein
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
That man wears his skin
like a dancer wears a veil.
That man stalks his victim
like a cancer stalks a cell.
That man's soul has left him
his heart's as deadly as a rusty nail
That man sheds his skin like a veil.
M.T.
Bill McHale
Distribution:
Copperhead (agkis...@mindspring.com) wrote:
: wang...@ozemail.com.au (Wally Anglesea) wrote:
: If this happens in this state, it's homeschooling for my kid. Maybe I
: ought to do that anyway. To hell with diversity.
You could always send them to Catholic School, they at least will teach
them about Evolution and the creation of the Universe in scientific terms
: ). Hey maybe we should support School Vouchers afterall; that way when
other fundie dominated school boards do the same thing we can send our
kids to Parochial and Private schools that will teach them what they
really need to know.
--
Bill
***************************************************************************
Nostalgia is not what it use to be!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Home page - http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~wmchal1
***************************************************************************
Joseph Potter
Matt Silberstein <mat...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:37b5be99...@nntp.ix.netcom.com...
> In talk.origins I read this message from Peter Nyikos
> <nyi...@math.sc.edu>:
>
> [snip]
>
> >And in what way am I a *quasi*evolutionist? I have believed in
> >the evolution of all vertebrates from a common chordate ancestor
> >since the age of ten (over 40 years ago)
>
> Joe, where are you? Why don't you ask Peter for his step-by-step
> description of the evolution of echolocation in bats? He believes it
> happened, yet he lacks even a just-so story on how it happened. Don't
> you have a comment about this?
>
> [snip]
>
>
He, Will, and I are in the process of discussing bat
evolution. Please note Will's plea for the
"rules" to keep it a decent discussion in his
"re-start."
Join in if you care to do so.
Regards, Joe
Bill McHale
: Justin wrote:
: > God this, God that, God dammit.
: God made EVERYTHING, every particle.
Evolution does not dispute that for that is not what evolution is about.
: Just saw the reports, apparently Kansas tossed out
: evolution.
: ha ha ha...
: Excellent!
: It's about time someone did the right thing.
Yes they tossed it out on the basis that it was a theory.. heck lets throw
out Physics, and Chemistry as well because all they are are collections of
theories.
: Ya, no more of this GARBAGE about how NOTHING somehow
: made everything:
: "Uh... we're not really sure how, but NOTHING
: seems to be the cause for it all happening.
: From what we can tell, NOTHING was working
: all the time to do this and that... and ...
: well... here we are..."
Say who are you quoting? Or are you just making the quote up to try and
make science something it is not.
: ha ha ha...
: That's what Kansas tossed out... it was GARBAGE.
No it was the future of its kids. I think that any school that adopts an
evolution free science cirriculum should be sued for malpractice. They
are not preparing kids for what they may need after they finish school,
particularly if they go to college.
: In contrast, God PROVED he knew how the planets
: formed, he nailed the creation event TIMING vs.
: the science data.
huh?
: And what did NOTHING have to say about it?
: ============================================
: NOTHING didn't give ANY proof what-so-ever.
: ============================================
Of course not, that is the job of scientists.
: None.
: Therefore evolution dies the death.
Because of limitation in the knowledge of Astronomers? That seems to be a
non sequitor to me.
: Even today, science ADMITS they don't know how the
: planets formed. Yet God gave statements MATCHING
: what Hubble Space Telescope shows about stellar
: events and planet formation.
Astronomers admit they don't have the precise mechanism of how planets
formed down, but they do have a pretty good general idea.
: Hubble Space Telescope plainly shows what God
: had said all along.
How does the Hubble Space Telescope show this? I looked at your web page
and all the info present could be determined with a largish Amateur
Telescope. Not to mention it was simplistic and hardly would stand up to
scientific scrutiny.
Further you completely ignore the fact that evidence from other solar
Systems suggests that the arrangement of our solar system is not
necessarily standard. Other systems might have their less dense members
closer in.
: That's the POWER of God, he KNEW >>> BEFORE <<<
: science did. He knew EXACTLY what happened.
Yes that would be necessitated by being a creator.
: God made it all, Jesus died for our sins.
And your point?
: Proof God described the planet density profile
: BEFORE science did:
Only with a really creative interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2.
Joseph Potter
Bill McHale <wmc...@umbc.edu> wrote in message news:7oufbp$juf$5...@news.umbc.edu...
> ing.com>:
> Distribution:
>
> Copperhead (agkis...@mindspring.com) wrote:
> : wang...@ozemail.com.au (Wally Anglesea) wrote:
>
> : If this happens in this state, it's homeschooling for my kid. Maybe I
> : ought to do that anyway. To hell with diversity.
>
> You could always send them to Catholic School, they at least will teach
> them about Evolution and the creation of the Universe in scientific terms
> : ). Hey maybe we should support School Vouchers afterall; that way when
> other fundie dominated school boards do the same thing we can send our
> kids to Parochial and Private schools that will teach them what they
> really need to know.
>
> --
> Bill
>
Rich folks have always used private schools. Why allow
the common folk the same advantage? :-)
Regards, Joe
Stephen F. Schaffner
Wally Anglesea <wang...@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
>Wasn't it Kansas that once passed a law stating pi was 3?
It wasn't Kansas, it didn't say that pi was equal to 3.0, and it
didn't pass.
>sad really. The state of American education is very, very, sad.
No comment.
-------
Steve Schaffner ssc...@slac.stanford.edu
SLAC and I have a deal: they don't || Immediate assurance is an excellent sign
pay me, and I don't speak for them. || of probable lack of insight into the
|| topic. Josiah Royce
Morat
"John P. Boatwright" wrote:
> Dean Hovey wrote:
>
> > "They [the Creationists] have been getting away with
> > this nonsense [Creation Science] for some time now,
> > even to the extent of getting legislation passed
> > to allow them to teach "creationism" side by side
> > with evolution.
>
> There is NO PROOF for evolution.
>
> NOTHING never made anything.
>
> It's clear A DESIGNER made it all.
>
> God is the designer.
>
Oh my god. You finally made it over here. After reading your
(tortured)
logic concerning the formation of the solar system I have been
one of your biggest fans. And as for proofs, try the fossily
record...or failing that, a great deal of laboratory work. Or maybe
some straight DNA info....If you mean evolution isn't PROVABLE,
well, I agree with you. No theory is. But it has yet to be falsified,
and people have been trying for 100+ years.
>
> > Wednesday's Board session has many educators worried.
>
> Big deal.
>
> > One biology instructor told the Washington Post,
> > "Evolution is the unifying theory of biology, and
> > now students will get such an incomplete picture."
>
> They're being told a LIE right now, they're being
> told that NOTHING is just as valid as God.
>
I've yet to find a teacher who compared evolution and God. Oh wait.
I'm wrong. There was my brother's 10th grade Bio teacher...who asked
"Who here believes in the stupid evolution crap? I have to teach this
moronic
theory...." etc,etc,etc...sadly no one complained.
>
> That's BUNK.
>
> God made it all, God gave PROOF.
>
I'd like to see it. And don't tell me the Bible.
No one has yet to prove God wrote that one.
>
> NOTHING never gave any proof what-so-ever.
>
Nope. But DNA analysis and the fossily record has.
>
> God's Genesis account is DEAD ON with science data.
>
I guess you mean DEAD ON in the sense of being totally
wrong?
>
> NOTHING gave NO ACCOUNT, none.
>
Considering it wasn't a choice between nothing and God, that works
out.
>
> NOTHING loses by default.
>
> God wins since he gave PROOF, actual PROOF that he did it.
>
I repeat, where?
>
> > The religious conservative majority is expected to
> > prevail at Wednesday's gathering. Striking evolution
> > from the guidelines would be a major victory for the
> > creationists;
>
> God already won.
>
> He won from the start.
>
> God made it all, Jesus died for our sins.
>
> Proof God described the planet density profile
> BEFORE science did:
> http://www.teleport.com/~salad/4god/density.htm
> (see the 2 graphs, obviously God was right in Genesis)
It's a bunch of incorrect, bad, bad,bad,bad, inaccurate and
totally unsupported crap. Oh, by the way.....see the 2
graphs...obviously?
UGH.
--
spam blocking in effect. To reply remove "not"
------------------------------------------------------------------
Mankind must without a doubt be the most conceited race
in the universe, for who else believes that God has
nothing better to do than sit around all day and help
him out of tight spots? ---Alan Dean Foster
------------------------------------------------------------------
Laurence A. Moran
Jennifer Palonus <jpal...@halcyon.com> wrote:
>Well, as a libertarian, I think this illustrates 3 things:
[snip some typical libertarian rhetoric]
>2. Government schools have failed in their mission of teaching children
>logical thinking skills, as well as basic knowledge necessary to thrive
>in our internationally competitive society. But they have done a good
>job of teaching look-see reading "skills". They have succeeded in
>raising the self-esteem of children to the extent that American students
>have higher opinions of their own abilities - while having lower actual
>test scores - than students in other countries. You're naiive if you
>think that excellent education is the goal of government schools.
I'm curious about those students in other countries - the ones with
the higher test scores than American children. Do all those foreign
children attend private schools? Is it possible that other countries
provide excellent education in their government schools?
Larry Moran
Avital Pilpel
Wally Anglesea <wanglese@
> Truth always wins in the end.
No, it doesn't. Unfortunately.
Riftmann
Wally Anglesea wrote:
> On 12 Aug 1999 03:49:55 -0400, borg166 <bor...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> <SNIP>
>
> >
> >I hope kansas gets nuked...before the disease spreads....
>
> Wasn't it Kansas that once passed a law stating pi was 3?
>
> sad really. The state of American education is very, very, sad. If
> it continues to decline thusly, brought on by the fundies, then I can
> see the day coming when the US will no longer be the nation it once
> was, capable of sending people to the Moon.
>
> I guess, and hope, that this is all a minor aberration.
>
> Truth always wins in the end.
>
>
GODDAMMITT!!! Kansas isn't that bad. This is the first time anything
has happened like this in this state and people are PISSED. We have
always be proud of our education system ('till yesterday) and just a
month ago Kansas was in the top ten of states with a high regard of
children. Six stupid idiots trashed this entire states reputation. I
hope the speed in which we replace the numbskulls gets as much attention.
--
Rift
formerly proud Kansan
"Goddammit! The world is just filling up with more and more idiots!
And the computer is giving them access to the world! They're spreading
their stupidity! At least they were contained before -- now they're on
the loose everywhere!"
-- Harlan Ellison in The Onion
(Change the .com to .net to email)
Rockett Crawford
"John P. Boatwright" wrote:
> Dean Hovey wrote:
>
> God's Genesis account is DEAD ON with science data.
I have yet to see a science book that claims the
earth could possibly exist before the big bang (Gen 1:1)
or that the sky is solid with water above it to make clouds
and rain.
(Gen 1:6-7 NRSV) And God said, "Let there be
a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the
waters from the waters."
(Job 37:18 NRSV) Can you, like him, spread out
the skies, hard as a molten mirror?
(Prov 8:28 NRSV) when he made firm the skies
above, ...
(2 Chr 6:26 NRSV) "When heaven is shut up
and there is no rain because...
The authors of Genesis were primitive Hebrew
people who thought the earth was flat and sitting
on water supported by pillars, just like most
cultures at that time.
Rockett Crawford
PZ Myers
<Rift...@grapevine.com> wrote:
[snip]
>GODDAMMITT!!! Kansas isn't that bad. This is the first time anything
>has happened like this in this state and people are PISSED. We have
>always be proud of our education system ('till yesterday) and just a
>month ago Kansas was in the top ten of states with a high regard of
>children. Six stupid idiots trashed this entire states reputation. I
>hope the speed in which we replace the numbskulls gets as much attention.
Me, too. That's what we need -- to get the word out that people who commit
this kind of ignorant crime against education are not only going to get
nothing but scorn, but they are going to find themselves elected out of a job.
Hey, I hope that the subject line takes on a rather different meaning than
I suspect the original poster intended!
--
PZ Myers
Charles Dye
<sa...@teleport.com> wrote:
>There is NO PROOF for evolution.
>
>NOTHING never made anything.
>
>It's clear A DESIGNER made it all.
>
>God is the designer.
mAybE you tHink thAt ThesE are Just The samE OLd tirEd creatIoniST
cAnaRdS. bUT you're Wrong. these are nEw CreationIst Canards.
these are FREsh AnD exciting caNards. tHesE CanArds arE supPorted
by A random sprinKlING oF CApital lEttErs, WHiCh giVes them a rAkIsh
And modern feel. New and ImprOveD! and If THe packAgiNG imPaRTs a
a sense of EXCiteMEnt ANd importAnce, whO WiLL notice thAT the
contEnt Is just stale and obsOlETe niNETEEnTh-cENTuRY drIVel?
ras...@highfiber.COm
Steve Siirila
the and the results in the Indiana Legislature (passed House;
failed to pass Senate). As usual, what really happened in 1897
is more complicated and more interesting than the hearsay.
Stephen F. Schaffner (ssc...@vesta01.SLAC.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
: In article <37bca4c9...@news2.ozemail.com.au>,
: Wally Anglesea <wang...@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
: >Wasn't it Kansas that once passed a law stating pi was 3?
: It wasn't Kansas, it didn't say that pi was equal to 3.0, and it
: didn't pass.
: >sad really. The state of American education is very, very, sad.
: No comment.
: -------
: Steve Schaffner ssc...@slac.stanford.edu
Ken Cox
> Boatwrong is the one person who might convince me that having the food and
> air intake in the same place is a good idea.
> Maybe he should experiment with the gag reflex.
That would be cruel. However, he still might have a use -- it's
just barely possible that if we collect his stuff and send it to
the Kansas board, with a note "This is what you just voted to have
your children end up like", they might reverse their decision.
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
Andrew MacRae
|The Kansas board of education(?) has voted to accept the watered down
|for science education in Kansas. Its not just a matter of evolution but
|Kansas please call your local board of education members to voice your
|displeasure. The governor is appearently furious at the board's activity
|and may consider eliminating the board of education.
|
|This is not just a matter of evolution or even science. Once the
|creationists(A.K.A ) fundamentalists succeed in fostering their bankrupt
|ideas on the six scientifically illiterate board of education members,
|then they will act in other areas. What will they do to English, or
|History?
|
|Remember...you're next.
English or history? That is a long way off yet. You need to be
more practical, and think of the shorter-term, attainable goals. What
about physics or chemistry, or at least geology and astronomy? By the
exceeding high standards that have used (according to one of the cited
websites) to justify the omission of evolutionary theory in biology
classes because it is supposedly "unscientific", large areas of current
curriculum science must be subjected to the same sort of scrutiny and
substantial revisions. For example, all forms of Newtonian physics should
be immediately dropped from physics classes, and general relativity should
taught from the beginning in its place, and the well-known flaws in the
inappropriately-named "Ideal Gas Law" should be openly discussed in
chemistry class. Quantum mechanics and orbital theory should also be
taught first thing in chemistry class, rather than outdated,
oversimplified models of the atom that are known to be wrong. Sheesh,
biology is in *good* shape compared to what passes for teachable "science"
in some of the other scientific subjects in public schools -- falsified
ideas. They teach scientific ideas that are not merely "controversial",
but known to be *wrong*! Newton should be tossed in the dustbin of
history along with Darwin. It is a change long overdue, and there is no
reason why Kansas should be allowed to take the lead.
-Andrew
mac...@agc.bio._NOSPAM_.ns.ca
howard hershey
>
> In article <37bca4c9...@news2.ozemail.com.au>,
> Wally Anglesea <wang...@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
>
> >Wasn't it Kansas that once passed a law stating pi was 3?
It was Indiana.
>
> It wasn't Kansas, it didn't say that pi was equal to 3.0, and it
> didn't pass.
But only because of some serious effort on the part of one of the rare
brighter minds (relative to the dolt doing it as a favor for a crank
constituent) in the state government at that time (it was some time ago;
last century when Indiana was the frontier and being able to read, do
math, and think was not, even to the extent of today's low standards, a
generally recognized requirement for being a state legislator).
>
> >sad really. The state of American education is very, very, sad.
More of a comment on why representative democracy is both the best and
worst form of government. It also says a little about the mentality
that thinks you can change material reality by passing a law or setting
standards saying it ain't so. And *that* definitely has a resonance in
Kansas, Toto.
>
> No comment.
>
> -------
> Steve Schaffner ssc...@slac.stanford.edu
ZenIsWhen
>Dean Hovey wrote:
>
>> "They [the Creationists] have been getting away with
>> this nonsense [Creation Science] for some time now,
>> even to the extent of getting legislation passed
>> to allow them to teach "creationism" side by side
>> with evolution.
>
Your ignorance does not falsify evolution.
>
>NOTHING never made anything.
>
>It's clear A DESIGNER made it all.
>
>God is the designer.
Prove it!
>
>> Wednesday's Board session has many educators worried.
>
>Big deal.
>
>> One biology instructor told the Washington Post,
>> "Evolution is the unifying theory of biology, and
>> now students will get such an incomplete picture."
>
>They're being told a LIE right now, they're being
>told that NOTHING is just as valid as God.
>
>That's BUNK.
>
>God made it all, God gave PROOF.
Where is this proof?
>
>NOTHING never gave any proof what-so-ever.
>
>God's Genesis account is DEAD ON with science data.
>
>NOTHING gave NO ACCOUNT, none.
>
>NOTHING loses by default.
>
>God wins since he gave PROOF, actual PROOF that he did it.
Still don't see any.
>
>> The religious conservative majority is expected to
>> prevail at Wednesday's gathering. Striking evolution
>> from the guidelines would be a major victory for the
>> creationists;
and a major loss for education, science, reality, logic, reasoning and common
sense..
>
>God already won.
>
>He won from the start.
>
>God made it all, Jesus died for our sins.
Babble ..
Still don't see any proof.
Mel Walker
> Dean Hovey wrote:
>
> > "They [the Creationists] have been getting away with
> > this nonsense [Creation Science] for some time now,
> > even to the extent of getting legislation passed
> > to allow them to teach "creationism" side by side
> > with evolution.
> There is NO PROOF for evolution.
> NOTHING never made anything.
> It's clear A DESIGNER made it all.
> God is the designer.
If "NOTHING never made anything," then who or what made God? If nothing
made the designer, then the designer cannot exist, by your own argument.
Therefore, something must have designed the designer.
But, if the designer has a designer, who made the designer's designer? And
what about the designer's designer's designer?
Heck, this is getting difficult. Maybe I _should_ just stop thinking and
become a creationist.
--
Mel Walker <mwa...@xmission.com>
Let us not remain ignorant, with the ignorant, but let us show the
ignorant how to be wise. -- Brigham Young
Backup Minister of Superfluous Government Positions, DNRC
Andrew MacRae
|In talk.origins I read this message from Peter Nyikos
|<nyi...@math.sc.edu>:
|
|[snip]
|
|>And in what way am I a *quasi*evolutionist? I have believed in
|>the evolution of all vertebrates from a common chordate ancestor
|>since the age of ten (over 40 years ago)
|
|Joe, where are you? Why don't you ask Peter for his step-by-step
|description of the evolution of echolocation in bats? He believes it
|happened, yet he lacks even a just-so story on how it happened. Don't
|you have a comment about this?
No, Matt. Peter does (or did) have a "just-so story on how it
happened" for bats. Peter provided one quite a while ago (1997). Don't
you remember? It is still viewable at:
http://www.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=273355894
Hmmm... although I suppose it might not qualify as a "detailed
step-by-step" hypothesis depending upon what Joe meant by "detailed" and
"step-by-step".
-Andrew
mac...@agc.bio._NOSPAM_.ns.ca
John Hattan
>But, if the designer has a designer, who made the designer's designer? And
>what about the designer's designer's designer?
It's turtles all the way down.
On an up note, Kansas will be adding Scientific Turtleism (the theory
that the earth is flat and rests on the back of a turtle) and Scientific
Lunar Caesusism (the theory that the moon is made of cheese) for the
spring semester. For 2001, they intend to institute classes in drawing
lots and divining the future via sheep entrails.
>Heck, this is getting difficult. Maybe I _should_ just stop thinking and
>become a creationist.
It's quite simple to do. Just say "godidit" whenever anyone points out
one of the legion of absurdities in your claim.
---
John Hattan Grand High UberPope - First Church of Shatnerology
john-...@bigfoot.com http://www.bitsmart.com/shatner
ini...@my-deja.com
wang...@ozemail.com.au wrote:
> On 12 Aug 1999 03:49:55 -0400, borg166 <bor...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> <SNIP>
>
> >
> >I hope kansas gets nuked...before the disease spreads....
>
>
> it continues to decline thusly, brought on by the fundies, then I can
> see the day coming when the US will no longer be the nation it once
> was, capable of sending people to the Moon.
As someone involved in american education, I would like to say this
concerns me greatly. Did you know I was talking to a foreign friend of
mine at college, and she can't get accepted at an American grad school
in mathematics because she isn't american? (she is the best math
student at my college, her grades are phenominal - at least a 40 on the
putnam...) What people say is that American mathematicians are behind
European ones so much anyways that we need to educate ourselves first.
Does anyone else find this depressing?
> I guess, and hope, that this is all a minor aberration.
>
> Truth always wins in the end.
I hope as well... for both of your statements.
> Find out about Australia's most dangerous Doomsday Cult:
> http://www.ozemail.com.au/~wanglese/pebble.htm
>
> Fight spam:
> http://www.caube.org.au/
>
> Help find ET:
> http://setiathome.berkeley.edu
>
> "needs sugar...." -Socrates
>
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
Trailer
> Dean Hovey wrote:
>
> > "They [the Creationists] have been getting away with
> > this nonsense [Creation Science] for some time now,
> > even to the extent of getting legislation passed
> > to allow them to teach "creationism" side by side
> > with evolution.
>
> There is NO PROOF for evolution.
>
> NOTHING never made anything.
WHERE in the scientific literature does anyone say that EVOLUTION =
ABIOGENESIS? SHOW me.
>
>
> It's clear A DESIGNER made it all.
PROVE it.
>
> God is the designer.
>
PROVE that biblegod designed everything.
>
> > Wednesday's Board session has many educators worried.
>
> Big deal.
>
> > One biology instructor told the Washington Post,
> > "Evolution is the unifying theory of biology, and
> > now students will get such an incomplete picture."
>
> They're being told a LIE right now, they're being
> told that NOTHING is just as valid as God.
>
> That's BUNK.
>
> God made it all, God gave PROOF.
WHAT proof? SHOW me.
>
>
> NOTHING never gave any proof what-so-ever.
>
> God's Genesis account is DEAD ON with science data.
PROVE it.
>
>
> NOTHING gave NO ACCOUNT, none.
>
> NOTHING loses by default.
>
> God wins since he gave PROOF, actual PROOF that he did it.
>
> > The religious conservative majority is expected to
> > prevail at Wednesday's gathering. Striking evolution
> > from the guidelines would be a major victory for the
> > creationists;
>
> God already won.
>
> He won from the start.
>
> God made it all, Jesus died for our sins.
THAT'S bunk. PROVE THAT JESUS WAS/IS GOD.
>
>
> Proof God described the planet density profile
> BEFORE science did:
> http://www.teleport.com/~salad/4god/density.htm
> (see the 2 graphs, obviously God was right in Genesis)
Nice apologetics.
***************************************************
"The Dopeler Effect" : The tendency of stupid ideas
to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
--Ed Babinski
***************************************************
Rockett Crawford
John Hattan wrote:
> Mel Walker <mwa...@xmission.com> wrote:
>
> >Heck, this is getting difficult. Maybe I _should_ just stop thinking and
> >become a creationist.
>
> It's quite simple to do. Just say "godidit" whenever anyone points out
> one of the legion of absurdities in your claim.
And don't forget to capitalize every other word.
Capella #5 (exChristian)
150 bible errors, contradictions, atrocities, failed prophecies, etc...
http://web2.airmail.net/capella/aguide
howard hershey
>
> Joe Janney <jja...@aot.com> writes:
>
> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> >> howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> writes:
> >>
> >> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> "Dean Hovey" <dean...@uswest.net> writes:
> >> >>
> >> >[snip]
> >> >>
> >> >> Most of the counterexamples, such as resistance to antibiotics,
> >> >> can be covered by "microevolution" and "variation within species"
> >> >> with which creationists have no problems.
> >> >>
> >> >[snip]
> >>
> >> >Really?? I cannot count the times I have had to point out that source
> >> >of the variation that produces resistance to antibiotics is new mutation
> >>
> >> ...a "pointing out" of something that is highly dubious in
> >> many cases.
> >>
> >> >only to have Joe Creationist assert that microevolution only selects for
> >> >variants that *always* existed in the species because random mutation
> >> >cannot produce an increase in information (with some claiming the
> >> >opposite: that resistance to antibiotics really represents a selective
> >> >disadvantage - also because of the 'idee fixe' that random mutation can
> >> >only produce decay).
> >>
> >> Really? Let's see you come up with some urls. Julie Thomas and
> >> I know of your infinite capacity for distorting the facts about
> >> people.
> >> [snip]
>
> >I'm not Howard, but can I play?
>
> Yes, but you snipped too much. Your quotes are pretty good
> at meeting a challenge I made a few lines later, but not
> for the specific challenge above, which was for cases of
> the behavior Howard describes in talk.origins.
>
> I did about 15 minutes of quote mining here
> >at the end of the day and found the following:
>
> >http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/scc/lifescience1.html
>
[snip examples of the mainstream of creationist thought I have come to
know and love. Thanks for the quote-mining. I didn't want to wade in
the cesspool of creationist websites yesterday. I can only stomach so
much.]
>
> Yeah, this is pretty dogmatic and far out, all right.
Yes. Almost as bad as claims that the presence or absence of Fe has
anything to do with a structure being or not being a polypeptide.
>
> Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
> University of South Carolina
> Columbia, SC 29208
Louann Miller
Mel Walker wrote in message <7ouq4m$17v$1...@news.xmission.com>...
>If "NOTHING never made anything," then who or what made God? If nothing
>made the designer, then the designer cannot exist, by your own argument.
>Therefore, something must have designed the designer.
>
>But, if the designer has a designer, who made the designer's designer? And
>what about the designer's designer's designer?
The usual riposte is "God doesn't NEED a designer," although the wording can
get more formal. "Self-existent" is a common adjective, and there's a Latin
word I used to know back in my Episcopal days.
So stalemate. One side claims that although most things exist as the result
of someone or something previous, one object of an unusual type (i.e. the
whole Universe) does not, in the regular sense.
The other side, however, claims that although most things exist as the
result of someone or something previous, one object of an unusual type (i.e.
the Deity) does not, in the regular sense. You can see why they fight.
Joseph Potter
howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> wrote in message news:37B2B0...@indiana.edu...
> Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >
> > Joe Janney <jja...@aot.com> writes:
> >
> > >Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >
> > >> howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> writes:
> > >>
> > >> >Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > >> >>
> > >> >> "Dean Hovey" <dean...@uswest.net> writes:
> > >> >>
[snip]
www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/scc/lifescience1.html
> >
> [snip examples of the mainstream of creationist thought I have come to
> know and love. Thanks for the quote-mining. I didn't want to wade in
> the cesspool of creationist websites yesterday. I can only stomach so
> much.]
> >
> > Yeah, this is pretty dogmatic and far out, all right.
>
> Yes. Almost as bad as claims that the presence or absence of Fe has
> anything to do with a structure being or not being a polypeptide.
>
This is just the sort of thing I have come to expect from you
Howard. First you complain that Peter will not drop a
subject, then you bring it up for no good reason.
What in the world does it have to do with the Kansas
situation?
--- Joe
Ken Cox
> http://www.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=273355894
> Hmmm... although I suppose it might not qualify as a "detailed
> step-by-step" hypothesis depending upon what Joe meant by "detailed" and
> "step-by-step".
It also doesn't go into the origin of echolocation much, just the
origin of flying. Although I suppose one might speculate that
echolocation also arose as a form of sexual display.
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
Bill McHale
: As someone involved in american education, I would like to say this
: concerns me greatly. Did you know I was talking to a foreign friend of
: mine at college, and she can't get accepted at an American grad school
: in mathematics because she isn't american? (she is the best math
: student at my college, her grades are phenominal - at least a 40 on the
: putnam...) What people say is that American mathematicians are behind
: European ones so much anyways that we need to educate ourselves first.
: Does anyone else find this depressing?
This doesn't scan. In the scientific and technical fields there is
generally a large percentage if not the majority of students are foreign
nationals.
Also and please forgive my ignorance, but was is the putnam?
Alan Morgan
>I guess, and hope, that this is all a minor aberration.
I think it will probably be reversed. When the head of every
major university in Kansas wrote in to protest it and the
(Republican) governor of the state disapproved of it I don't
see it lasting.
>Truth always wins in the end.
I've got news for you. Slow and steady *doesn't* win the race,
most of the time Goliath kicks the crap out of David, and people
tend to believe comfortable lies over harsh truth.
Alan
howard hershey
>
> Paul J Gans <ga...@panix.com> writes:
>
> >It will be noted that quasi-evolutionist Nyikos doesn't
> >want to deal with my formulation.
>
> HUH???
>
> Your formulation of what?
>
> And in what way am I a *quasi*evolutionist? I have believed in
> the evolution of all vertebrates from a common chordate ancestor
> all organisms from a small handful of one-celled species for the
> last two years. The evidence for the former is simply overwhelming
> and the evidence for the latter is extremelly strong.
>
> As for abiogenesis, that is not evolution in the sense of the t.o. FAQ.
>
> >Larry's point that my formulation is useless for professionals
> >is quite right. But we don't really deal here with professionals.
> >We deal with gifted and, more often, ungifted amateurs.
>
> Larry? Larry's in other threads.
>
> > ----- Paul J. Gans [ga...@panix.com]
>
> >In talk.origins Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
> >>howard hershey <hers...@indiana.edu> writes:
>
> >>>Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> "Dean Hovey" <dean...@uswest.net> writes:
> >>>>
[snip]
>
> >>>of the variation that produces resistance to antibiotics is new mutation
>
> >>...a "pointing out" of something that is highly dubious in
> >>many cases.
>
> even be that resistance consists of the failure to *express* a gene
> rather than the actual destruction of the self-destruct gene
> that seems to be the means whereby antibiotics do their thing.
Well, antibiotics do many things (so that a new mutation - by which, of
course, I include recurrent mutations that newly arise again and again
rather than only mutations never before seen in history - that knocks
out a cellular gene *can*, in some cases, lead to resistance to an
antibiotic), but I am unable to think of a single antibiotic that works
by "the actual destruction of the self-destruct gene". Could you expand
on the way you think antibiotics "do their thing", Peter? I thought I
knew a fair amount about mechanisms of antibiotic resistance and now
that font of biological and biochemical knowledge, Peter Nyikos, tells
me that I have somehow missed, in my readings on the subject, "the means
whereby antibiotics do their thing". Please inform all of us, oh font
of wisdom and esoteric information, but why don't you change the thread
title to something like "Peter Nyikos explains antibiotic resistance".
>
[snip]
Brian Hartman
howard hershey wrote:
> Stephen F. Schaffner wrote:
> >
> > In article <37bca4c9...@news2.ozemail.com.au>,
> > Wally Anglesea <wang...@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
> >
> > >Wasn't it Kansas that once passed a law stating pi was 3?
>
> It was Indiana.
> >
> > It wasn't Kansas, it didn't say that pi was equal to 3.0, and it
> > didn't pass.
>
> But only because of some serious effort on the part of one of the rare
> brighter minds (relative to the dolt doing it as a favor for a crank
> constituent) in the state government at that time (it was some time ago;
> last century when Indiana was the frontier and being able to read, do
> math, and think was not, even to the extent of today's low standards, a
> generally recognized requirement for being a state legislator).
> >
> > >sad really. The state of American education is very, very, sad.
>
> More of a comment on why representative democracy is both the best and
> worst form of government. It also says a little about the mentality
> that thinks you can change material reality by passing a law or setting
> standards saying it ain't so. And *that* definitely has a resonance in
> Kansas, Toto.
I'm just going to toss this idea out there: The problem in Kansas is indicative of a
larger problem: The fallacy that parents have any business giving their children
formal education, and, even larger, the idea that parents "own" children. IMHO, the
need of the nation to have educated citzens trumps any ignoramus's right to fill
their child's head with any ignorant/bigoted/brain-dead idea that pops into their
head. This Kansas thing is what happens when education takes a back-seat to
"parents' rights" to raise their children. *grumble*
Felipe
Charles Dye <ras...@highfiber.com> wrote in message
news:37b2dbf8...@ediacara.org...
> On 12 Aug 1999 00:50:20 -0400, "John P. Boatwright"
> <sa...@teleport.com> wrote:
>
> >There is NO PROOF for evolution.
> >
> >NOTHING never made anything.
> >
> >
>
> mAybE you tHink thAt ThesE are Just The samE OLd tirEd creatIoniST
> cAnaRdS. bUT you're Wrong. these are nEw CreationIst Canards.
> these are FREsh AnD exciting caNards. tHesE CanArds arE supPorted
> by A random sprinKlING oF CApital lEttErs, WHiCh giVes them a rAkIsh
> And modern feel. New and ImprOveD! and If THe packAgiNG imPaRTs a
> a sense of EXCiteMEnt ANd importAnce, whO WiLL notice thAT the
> contEnt Is just stale and obsOlETe niNETEEnTh-cENTuRY drIVel?
I think you're misrepresenting yourself. I did a quick poisson analysis and
found that the letters deviate from a random distribution (p < 0.02). The
sprinkling is not random. Liar! And, what have ducks got to do with
anything?
(Actually, I was hoping the letters suggested some secret code -- and I
still hope other notes have hidden messages in the caps.)
Cheers.
> ras...@highfiber.COm
>
Stew Dean
added to the meme pool:
>On 12 Aug 1999 00:50:20 -0400, "John P. Boatwright"
><sa...@teleport.com> wrote:
>
>>There is NO PROOF for evolution.
>>
>>NOTHING never made anything.
>>
>>It's clear A DESIGNER made it all.
>>
>>God is the designer.
>
>mAybE you tHink thAt ThesE are Just The samE OLd tirEd creatIoniST
>cAnaRdS. bUT you're Wrong. these are nEw CreationIst Canards.
>these are FREsh AnD exciting caNards. tHesE CanArds arE supPorted
>by A random sprinKlING oF CApital lEttErs, WHiCh giVes them a rAkIsh
>And modern feel. New and ImprOveD! and If THe packAgiNG imPaRTs a
>a sense of EXCiteMEnt ANd importAnce, whO WiLL notice thAT the
>contEnt Is just stale and obsOlETe niNETEEnTh-cENTuRY drIVel?
>
>ras...@highfiber.COm
Reminds me of CyBer DooDz.
Alternatively just let them download evolution onto their computer and
see it working quite happily. Or perhaps there's a itty bitty god
running the program behind the scene?
http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Artificial_Life/Artificial_Worlds/
Stewart Dean - ste...@webslave.dircon.co.uk
alife guide - http://www.webslave.dircon.co.uk/alife
Felipe
Bill McHale <wmc...@umbc.edu> wrote in message
news:7ouva3$pht$1...@news.umbc.edu...
> ini...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> : As someone involved in american education, I would like to say this
> : concerns me greatly. Did you know I was talking to a foreign friend of
> : mine at college, and she can't get accepted at an American grad school
> : in mathematics because she isn't american? (she is the best math
> : student at my college, her grades are phenominal - at least a 40 on the
> : putnam...) What people say is that American mathematicians are behind
> : European ones so much anyways that we need to educate ourselves first.
>
> : Does anyone else find this depressing?
>
> This doesn't scan. In the scientific and technical fields there is
> generally a large percentage if not the majority of students are foreign
> nationals.
I agree. Even in applied fields, like engineering, there seems to be no
shortage of foreign students, and in the basic sciences (and I assume math),
US born grad students seem to be almost the exception rather than the rule.
The only thing I can think of is that perhaps she's having trouble getting
funding because she's, I dunno, Canadian? For some reason the US and Canada
seem to thumb their noses at each other rather than fund the graduate
educations of either.
Besides which, the US is a big enough country that, even if the mean is
pretty low, the tail ends of the distribution can be pretty high. That is,
there are plenty of math wizzes at the graduate level.
[snip]
Mel Walker
> I'm curious about those students in other countries - the ones with
> the higher test scores than American children. Do all those foreign
> children attend private schools? Is it possible that other countries
> provide excellent education in their government schools?
Many of them, if not all, have central control of education at the highest
levels of government. I'm not advocating that, necessarily, but it is
interesting.
Laurence A. Moran
Felipe <pjo...@email.villanova.edu> wrote:
[snip]
>I agree. Even in applied fields, like engineering, there seems to be no
>shortage of foreign students, and in the basic sciences (and I assume math),
>US born grad students seem to be almost the exception rather than the rule.
>The only thing I can think of is that perhaps she's having trouble getting
>funding because she's, I dunno, Canadian? For some reason the US and Canada
>seem to thumb their noses at each other rather than fund the graduate
>educations of either.
Felipe, I know that you had a bad personal experience with funding but
that's no reason to distort reality. Canadian students go off to American
graduate schools all the time and get funded by the host school. The graduate
schools in Canada accept American students and provide funding. As far as
I can tell there are hardly any impediments that prevent the free exchange
of students across the US-Canadian border.
Larry Moran
Ken Cox
> For some reason the US and Canada
> seem to thumb their noses at each other rather than fund the graduate
> educations of either.
NFE (not foreign enough). Or, as Goldie Hawn put it in _Protocol_,
"No, I haven't been to any foreign countries. Except Canada, but
that doesn't count because it's, like, attached."
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
Louann Miller
Marty Fouts wrote in message ...
>inigo69 pounded silicon into:
>
>[snip]
>
>> Did you know I was talking to a foreign friend of mine at college,
>> and she can't get accepted at an American grad school in mathematics
>> because she isn't american? (she is the best math student at my
>> college, her grades are phenominal - at least a 40 on the putnam...)
>> What people say is that American mathematicians are behind European
>> ones so much anyways that we need to educate ourselves first.
>> Does anyone else find this depressing?
>I find it highly unlikely. Do you mean she can't get into any US grad
>school in the mathematics program, or do you mean that there is a
>specific US grad schools that she was denied admission to? If she
>can't get into any US grad school, it isn't because of her alien
>status, since most US grad schools currently have non-residents in
>their graduate programs.
I'll second that. I *work* for a graduate school, handling the applications
at every stage, and we get a lot of foreign applications. The current
incoming class of nine has two foreign students, which is about par. A few
students who were offered places in the program didn't accept them; I don't
know if any of those students were foreign.
Ken Cox
> I just read the same article myself. It appears that they are keeping
> the part about natural Selection though. It they found a Force in nature
> that knit's togther DNA, they truly have discovered the hand of God
> anyway.
Electromagnetism is the hand of God?
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
Colin R. Day
> >And how should they question atheism?
>
> Very simple--start by contemplating the strong possibility that there
> are a staggering number of universes besides this one. Then
> consider the fairly strong possibility that
> ours is rather modest in comparison to the best. All it
> takes after that is to consider the further possibility that among
> the best is one in which there is an unlimited amount of time
> for a being to arise that is capable of such feats as fashioning
> our own modest universe, possibly out of the stuff of its own
> grander universe.
>
What do you mean by "universe"?
> >--
> >Colin R. Day cd...@ix.netcom.com alt.atheist #1500
>
> I may have mentioned this before--there was a Colin Day who
> was a graduate student here for a number of years.
>
Yes, you have, and yes, I am he. By the way, I have emailed
this
>
> Peter Nyikos -- standard disclaimer --
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics
> University of South Carolina
> Columbia, SC 29208
--
Colin R. Day cd...@ix.netcom.com alt.atheist #1500
Joseph Potter
Marty Fouts <mathem...@usenet.nospam.fogey.com> wrote in message
news:wkr9l8q...@usenet.nospam.fogey.com...
> Brian Hartman pounded silicon into:
>
[snip]
>
> This is the sort of comment that always sounds fine when it is your
> idea of what should be taught that is being suppressed and the other
> guys that is 'ignorant/bigoted/brain-dead'.
>
> It tends to fall down in practice when you try to answer the question
> "if not the parents, then who?" There aren't enough class days in the
> K-12 period to teach all of the material that various special
> interests would have students learn and there's no clear way to
> select.
>
> One could argue that 'educators', that is people trained in the
> overall pedagogy of education should make that decision, but they are,
> at best, qualified to tell us how to teach, to tell us that if we
> want to teach X we must first teach Y so that X will make sense, and
> to tell us that we can't teach Z to students under a certain age
> because they haven't developed to the point of understanding it.
>
> One could argue that 'experts', that is people trained in a given
> field, should make that decision, but they are, at best, qualified to
> tell us what we need to teach to provide 'familiarity' or 'expertise'
> in their field, but not to tell us whether it is their field or some
> other that should or shouldn't be taught.
>
> One could argue that 'policy makers', that is politicians who have
> some overall responsibility for cultural continuity, should make that
> decision, and in a culture in which such policy makers existed and
> their interests corresponded with the culture's interests, that would
> be best; but we do not have such a culture in the United States.
>
> Finally, one recognizes that parents do not "own" children, but do
> "own" the responsibility for raising children. The United States is a
> polyglot culture, and although it might be eventually possible to
> forge a common understanding of the minimum mandatory requirements
> that all students should possess to graduate from high school, we are
> a very long way from that point.
>
> What is needed, rather than a fragmentation and battle over the
> specific issue of when and how to teach evolutionary biology to
> children, is the recognition that a coherent education prepares a
> student for a place in the culture, and must include balanced access
> to all of the components of the culture, including exposure to the
> sciences, arts, and cultural concepts, but that most importantly, such
> an education must be founded on teaching students to think critically
> and carefully.
>
> There is no person more dangerous to orthodoxy than the person who can
> evaluate the evidence for them self and who has access to the evidence.
>
> Our concern should be not this subject or that subject, but rather the
> skill of critical thinking and free access to complete evidence.
>
> --
>
> - 30 -
>
Marty,
I think you should submit the above to the NY Times as
a reader letter. No --- I am serious.
A finer post on this subject is not in my memory.
Regards, Joe
TLG
Where DID "God" COME from? Your ARGUMENT is silly AND destroys ITSELF.
If "God's" GENESIS is so DEAD ON, then WHY is IT that for HUNDREDS of
years NO one COULD figure THAT the EARTH was ROUND? WHY doesn't the
bible state THAT the EARTH is ROUND? Obviously if "God" would have
known this.
"John P. Boatwright" wrote:
>
> Dean Hovey wrote:
>
> > "They [the Creationists] have been getting away with
> > this nonsense [Creation Science] for some time now,
> > even to the extent of getting legislation passed
> > to allow them to teach "creationism" side by side
> > with evolution.
>
> There is NO PROOF for evolution.
>
> NOTHING never made anything.
>
> It's clear A DESIGNER made it all.
>
> God is the designer.
>
> > Wednesday's Board session has many educators worried.
>
> Big deal.
>
> > One biology instructor told the Washington Post,
> > "Evolution is the unifying theory of biology, and
> > now students will get such an incomplete picture."
>
> They're being told a LIE right now, they're being
> told that NOTHING is just as valid as God.
>
> That's BUNK.
>
> God made it all, God gave PROOF.
>
> NOTHING never gave any proof what-so-ever.
>
> God's Genesis account is DEAD ON with science data.
>
> NOTHING gave NO ACCOUNT, none.
>
> NOTHING loses by default.
>
> God wins since he gave PROOF, actual PROOF that he did it.
>
> > The religious conservative majority is expected to
> > prevail at Wednesday's gathering. Striking evolution
> > from the guidelines would be a major victory for the
> > creationists;
>
> God already won.
>
> He won from the start.
>
> God made it all, Jesus died for our sins.
>
Paul J Gans
>In article <1999081202...@milo.math.sc.edu>, nyi...@math.sc.edu
>says...
>> otter <otte...@geocities.com> writes:
>>
>> >The Kansas board of education(?) has voted to accept the watered down
>> >science standards which omit discussion of evolution.
>>
>> Omit *requiring* discussion of education, as far as I could
>> tell from the first post to this thread. And even your wording
>> doesn't suggest otherwise.
> It opens the door wide open for local school boards to bar it
>completely. Which I imagine will happen across the state. If your a local
>administrator with little knowledge of science why bother putting up with
>creationist parents?
That has already happened in many local school systems.
But you may be missing a major point. The board of education
has decided that no questions about evolution can be on
any exam used to prove competence in a subject or for any
exam used to certify graduation. What *that* means is that
local school boards can still teach it, but that they can't
test the knowledge.
They are a sneaky bunch, aren't they...
Paul King
Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>[posted and e-mailed]
>
>"Colin R. Day" <cd...@ix.netcom.com> writes:
>
>>Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
>
>>>
>>> Most anti-creationists here show plenty of signs of questioning
>>> religion, even if they are ignorant of the sciences relevant
>>> to evolution--it's questioning atheism that they seem to find hard
>>> to handle.
>>>
>
>>And how should they question atheism?
>
>Very simple--start by contemplating the strong possibility that there
>are a staggering number of universes besides this one. Then
>consider the fairly strong possibility that
>ours is rather modest in comparison to the best. All it
>takes after that is to consider the further possibility that among
>the best is one in which there is an unlimited amount of time
>for a being to arise that is capable of such feats as fashioning
>our own modest universe, possibly out of the stuff of its own
>grander universe.
While it's certainly possible that there are other universes - and even
other universes more hospitable to life - I don't consider one capable of
supporting life for an unimited time a "strong possibility".
Nor do I see any reason to consider a creature with advanced technology a
god.
Nor do I see any reason to presume that our universe was created rather
than being one of the *very* many uncreated universes your idea postulates.
So such a being remains a speculation - and even if one did exist it is
highly questionable whether it should be considered a god and very likely
that it has nothing whatever to do with us.
Joseph Potter
Paul King <pa...@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:B3D8D6E29...@morat.demon.co.uk...
> In article <1999081203...@milo.math.sc.edu>,
> Peter Nyikos <nyi...@math.sc.edu> wrote:
>
> >[posted and e-mailed]
> >
> >"Colin R. Day" <cd...@ix.netcom.com> writes:
> >
> >>Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >
<snip>
>
> While it's certainly possible that there are other universes - and even
> other universes more hospitable to life - I don't consider one capable of
> supporting life for an unlimited time a "strong possibility".
> Nor do I see any reason to consider a creature with advanced technology a
> god. ...
>
<snip>
Who does, except for Howard?
A civilization like ours, given another few millennia,
may well be able to create life at will.
Regards, Joe
Paul Haworth
<jpal...@halcyon.com> writes
> Anyone
>who's concerned about educational excellence but nevertheless bet on
>government schools as the guarantor of widely-available quality
>education, made a bad bet indeed.
The Scottish education system is recognised as one of the best in the
world. Within Scotland the area of greatest excellence, which produces
the most graduates per head of population in Britain, is the Highlands
and Islands. Scotland itself has a strong Socialist tradition (In common
with Wales and the North of England) and this is at it's strongest in
the Highlands.
Cheers
Paul
Jennifer Palonus
Peter Nyikos wrote:
...
> I wonder what Libertarians would have to say about this.
Well, as a libertarian, I think this illustrates 3 things:
1. Government is the wrong institution to be running the schools.
Anything run by the government is always at the mercy of the most vocal
political pressure groups. This is why government schools are so prone
to educational fads. Whichever ideological/pedagogical fad captures the
school boards ends up taking over the curriculum. The government
schools' monopoly protects the bureaucrats as they hang on to their new
fad-inspired programs long after it becomes obvious they've failed the
children. Now the schools are being captured by the stealth creationist
school boards. Same-old same-old.
2. Government schools have failed in their mission of teaching children
logical thinking skills, as well as basic knowledge necessary to thrive
in our internationally competitive society. But they have done a good
job of teaching look-see reading "skills". They have succeeded in
raising the self-esteem of children to the extent that American students
have higher opinions of their own abilities - while having lower actual
test scores - than students in other countries. You're naiive if you
think that excellent education is the goal of government schools.
3. Christians are the most visible subculture involved in homeschooling
& private schooling. And yet the only long-term solution to the dumbing
down of American kids is a healthy marketplace in education. Anyone
who's concerned about educational excellence but nevertheless bet on
government schools as the guarantor of widely-available quality
education, made a bad bet indeed.
Jenny
---------------------------------------- jpal...@graphicaldynamics.com
Download FREE daily & historical stock quotes into MetaStock
- each day, automatically!
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Jennifer Palonus
Peter Nyikos wrote:
...
> >And how should they question atheism?
>
> Very simple--start by contemplating the strong possibility that there
> are a staggering number of universes besides this one. Then
> consider the fairly strong possibility that
> ours is rather modest in comparison to the best. All it
> takes after that is to consider the further possibility that among
> the best is one in which there is an unlimited amount of time
> for a being to arise that is capable of such feats as fashioning
> our own modest universe, possibly out of the stuff of its own
> grander universe.
>
> A Creator, in other words. Not the infinitely perfect being
> of Thomism, for instance, but not the sort of thing one can
> believe in the existence of and still call oneself an "atheist".
Sure I could. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic", & all that. :-)
> The first possibility is very strong because our universe is
> just too darned good at producing orderly planetary systems
> with life-congenial conditions for it to be the only universe
> there is; that would be just too big a stroke of luck.
It's a big stroke of luck that we living beings happen to find ourselves
in a universe that's "congenial" to living beings? Are you surprised to
know that most men who've lost their hair are also men who are bald?
> The second possibility comes straight out of the principle
> of mediocrity; the Copernican revolution began the long process
> of making us realize that we are not in any favored position.
> So, while we wouldn't be here in the first place if our universe
> were not a lot better than the *average universe*, it is to be expected
> to be only average as far as worlds in which life is possible
> is concerned.
It certainly is intuitively obvious that a universe that produced Man
must be, uh, "better" than the average universe! :-)
Ken Cox
> Paul King <pa...@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > Nor do I see any reason to consider a creature with advanced technology a
> > god. ...
> Who does, except for Howard?
He doesn't. You misread his comment -- he was saying that an
advanced technology that could produce a DNA message along the
lines Julie described would be God-like.
--
Ken Cox k...@research.bell-labs.com
Paul J Gans
>> On 12 Aug 1999 03:49:55 -0400, borg166 <bor...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> <SNIP>
>>
>> >
>> >I hope kansas gets nuked...before the disease spreads....
>>
>> Wasn't it Kansas that once passed a law stating pi was 3?
>>
>> it continues to decline thusly, brought on by the fundies, then I can
>> see the day coming when the US will no longer be the nation it once
>> was, capable of sending people to the Moon.
>As someone involved in american education, I would like to say this
>concerns me greatly. Did you know I was talking to a foreign friend of
>mine at college, and she can't get accepted at an American grad school
>in mathematics because she isn't american? (she is the best math
>student at my college, her grades are phenominal - at least a 40 on the
>putnam...) What people say is that American mathematicians are behind
>European ones so much anyways that we need to educate ourselves first.
>Does anyone else find this depressing?
I don't find it depressing, I find it unbelievable.
At New York University the math department (and many others)
is filled with graduate students who are non-citizens of
the U.S. The situation at many other universities in the
U.S. is quite the same.
[...]
etherman
Felipe <pjo...@email.villanova.edu> wrote in message
news:7ov1sv$2...@ftp.ee.vill.edu...
> I agree. Even in applied fields, like engineering, there seems to be no
> shortage of foreign students, and in the basic sciences (and I assume
math),
> US born grad students seem to be almost the exception rather than the
rule.
> The only thing I can think of is that perhaps she's having trouble getting
Canada
> seem to thumb their noses at each other rather than fund the graduate
> educations of either.
In my school there were few foreigners in the math dept. I guess they were
smart enough to know there are no jobs available in mathematics.
--
Etherman
etherman
Wally Anglesea <wang...@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
news:37bca4c9...@news2.ozemail.com.au...
> On 12 Aug 1999 03:49:55 -0400, borg166 <bor...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> <SNIP>
>
>
> >
> >I hope kansas gets nuked...before the disease spreads....
>
>
> Wasn't it Kansas that once passed a law stating pi was 3?
>
> sad really. The state of American education is very, very, sad. If
> it continues to decline thusly, brought on by the fundies, then I can
> see the day coming when the US will no longer be the nation it once
> was, capable of sending people to the Moon.
>
>
America is a nation in decline. Find a better country and emigrate.
--
Etherman
etherman
Brian Hartman <bhar...@scils.rutgers.edu> wrote in message
news:37B3020B...@scils.rutgers.edu...
> I'm just going to toss this idea out there: The problem in Kansas is
indicative of a
> larger problem: The fallacy that parents have any business giving their
children
> formal education, and, even larger, the idea that parents "own" children.
IMHO, the
> need of the nation to have educated citzens trumps any ignoramus's right
to fill
> their child's head with any ignorant/bigoted/brain-dead idea that pops
into their
> head. This Kansas thing is what happens when education takes a back-seat
to
> "parents' rights" to raise their children. *grumble*
Who owns them, the government?
--
Etherman