It’s nice to see the Kansas Board of Education rethinking Evolution again. We can’t let faith guide science.
After victory at the polls in November, a moderate majority on the 10-member board in the central U.S. state plans to overturn science standards seen as critical of evolution at a board meeting on Tuesday in Topeka.
New standards would replace those put in place in 2005 by a conservative board majority that challenged the validity of evolution and cited it as incompatible with religious doctrine.
However, I don’t like this discussion over whether or not to delete unpleasant passages of history from textbooks. That isn’t teaching, that’s pedagogery and censorship.
A national group is urging the Kansas State Board of Education to reject on Tuesday a plan to delete coverage of the historical misuses of science from state curriculum standards, including a reference to the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment targeting African-Americans.
“It is only by studying these past abuses that students — our scientists of the future — can learn about the critical importance of science operating within ethical standards,” wrote West to the board. “As has often been said, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'”
You can’t stifle the truth, and to deny knowledge from children only places them at a disadvantage to those who know the facts.
UPDATE:
The Kansas Board of Education on Tuesday threw out science standards deemed hostile to evolution, undoing the work of Christian conservatives in the ongoing battle over what to teach U.S. public school students about the origins of life.
The fight to banish religion is one that must be won at all costs. Religion is the anchor that stops the ship of progress. This is a black and white issue. Do we follow the failed path of religion, or walk toward the light of reason and enlightment? To borrow from the venacular of faith, science is our salvation, and our one true hope to overcome the doom that awaits us if we buy into Christianity’s death cult of guilt and repression and useless useless useless prayer.
ew… got… to… wipe… spittle… off… my… face.
Is that the new atheist manifesto? I do not know where evolutionists get this idea that scientific methodology is their exclusive province – and that you have to be a caveman to think that God exists.
Thus said one caveman to another, “Y’know there is no way to prove that this world was terraformed by a being who uses technology more advanced than my wheel and bone – therefore I conclude that you are just full of shit.”
63,
Do you have an answer for my questions in comment #60?
Smartalix – you’ll notice that repeated requests for evidence or answers are rather ignored by anyone in the ID side of the camp.
It’s not that I’m surprised… I’m just saddened by it.
“Was man created all in one shot, or did God use some kind of process? If ID says evolution is wrong, then what theory does ID put forth that takes into account the fossile record and geologic data, both of which are easily observable and verifiable?”
Using our wheel and bone? Nope we do not have the tools yet. But very soon. In the meantime, let’s evolve a little.
66,
Cute non-answer. it doesn’t even make sense in context.
#61 – Hmp. You give yourself too much credit. And take upon yourself credit that belongs to others.
And thus, the case is rested.
#63 – ew… got… to… wipe… spittle… off… my… face.
Is that the new atheist manifesto? I do not know where evolutionists get this idea that scientific methodology is their exclusive province – and that you have to be a caveman to think that God exists.
Took me just a second, then I realized… you actually think I’m ranting. You picture me in your feeble head shouting these words. You can’t imagine that maybe, just maybe, I’m having a great laugh at your expense.
You fairweather netizens aren’t members of this community. You are just bible thumpers who scour the net looking for any mention of your pet issue so you can jump on it and pitch your dumb dumb and dumb opinions about creationism (or as you pretend to call it, Inteligent Design).
Where are your views on any of the other stories here? They aren’t. You are like a train on a track headed for a cliff. One singular obsession. I have my fun with hyperbole, but you think its part of your holy crusade. I don’t care about you and I don’t care about your feelings. You are not part of the debate and you are not part of the community. Your kind are just the yokels wailing at the revival and I am amazed that Gregory and Alix are kind enough to even humor you.
Maybe you really think your god is handing out gold stars to the member of the flock with the most clenched anus, and you covet that star so badly that you waste away your hours jumping from blog to blog attacking the right minded and the logical with your hellfire bullshit. Leave it in the tent preacher, because you aren’t relevent. You are just another Foghorn Leghorn caracature with his bible under one arm and his other arm raised toward the heavens in the fruitless hope that God will grant him a place in the kingdom…
I wish it were gonna happen for you, but it isn’t. Whatever you do, you are worm food. Why not just accept that, get thee to a school and fuck the church, and use your declining years to some good for the future instead of wasting so much time trying to condemn your children to the same sad miserable life you are living.
For my part, I need the sound of keys clacking so folks will think I’m always busy, so i amuse myself with you. I generally believe what i say, because I’m right… but I don’t really care if you read me or not because all conversations with Xians are one sided anyway. I could write this in latin and you wouldn’t respond any differently. But eventually, John and the gang will post a few more stories and this one will drop off the page and I’ll be chatting about solar cells or comic book collectors or survallience cameras and you’ll be long gone… Until another story about your poppycock belief system crops up, and then back you’ll come, like a tourist in Aspen, pushing your way around and spouting your bullshit.
I’m done typing for today. Your kind is wrong and we don’t need to prove it to you.
But I will say this much, and this little bit is about the only thing I’ll say all day to that you really ought to give serious consideration to. Keep to yourself and there will be no trouble. Try to force your fucked up God into my kid’s school… Well, people don’t like me on a good day. How do you imagine I’ll act when you make my children a part of your life?
It’s not so much that I’m humoring him, it’s that I honestly wish that one, just a single one, of these people would do more than spout off the same tired talking points that can be easily dismissed.
I’d like just one to actually have put some thought into their arguments and be willing to actually discuss them and present their evidence and logical arguments.
But they don’t.
I admit – it’s very hard for them to do so, because it starts from an illogical premise, but I’d like to see the effort put in, you know?
It’s not even about the faith they have. Christian, Jewish, Islamic, whatever.. the same arguments apply.
What Greg said.
What, did you expect to see a © GOD ?
Why not debate these folks at http://www.creationscience.com
They’re interested in proving God to those who want to unknow God, trying to convince people to believe what they already know.
How can you convince a fish that is already swimming in the ocean that the SEA exists? It is not a question that’s going to be answered by gadgets and puny science. I say that we have wheel and bone as tool because of the mistaken assumption that many attach too much significance to the science and technology that we now have. Scientific knowledge is the only tool we have, but I am here to suggest that it is NOT the only scientific knowledge that exists in the universe and that more likely, we are not the first and the highest form of intelligence in the universe and that because someone else has that kind of intelligence – – he has created this reality so that those who will cooperate with him and not try to kill him can be brought to his realm.
I can’t explain why I am even going to… yes I can… I’m a glutton for this type of punishment…
Hal… How can you convince a fish that is already swimming in the ocean that the SEA exists? That’s what you got? Should I counter with how can God make a circle that is square and we can do a whole two-step about omniscience and omnipotence (the last two nails in the God coffin)….
Big Bang – fast forward – life has evolved and man creates his first god out of fear of the solor eclipse, or whatever… So we have this god concept… I am asked, if I am an athiest, what is the point of life? It’s an insulting question as thiests mistakenly assume that I cannot have a spiritual nature or even be happy without “knowing” God.
Man’s purpose on this planet is to be as God is. We created God. We shall transcend God. Will will replace God. We will be God. And it shall be good.
I wish you guys would actually have the courage to tackle a question instead of talking in circles like drunken shamen. Where did God come from? Where did he go to school? Who was his wife? What did his father do? Once you start prattling on about how God is not meant to be known and our minds are not wide enough to… it all snowballs into absurdist bullshit and your god illusion falls to pieces because there is no such thing as God.
If you really were suggesting alien intervention by some superior, earlier species, I’d at least grant the probability if only because it is infinitely more possible for humanity to be an experiement in an alien beaker than for there to be a god as defined by the many times over rewritten and retranslated King James Bible (which bears no resemblance to the real Bible) (which wasn’t even written in the alledged Jesus’s time) and it all goes pop out of sheer lunacy…
We invented fire… We are growing up nicely… As a species, we may not be fully mature, but can’t we please get to the age where we don’t believe in Santa Claus anymore? I just don’t want to be stuck here any longer…
Try this on for size:
Multiply millions of people by 2000 years and you get (conservatively) billions of years of human life.
In those billions of years, no one, ever, at any time, has ever produced one single fraction of a subatomic particle of evidence of God, or Allah, or Wahweh, or……..
300 different belief systems, all standing in a circle, every one of them pointing at all the others and screeching “But we’re right! All of those other are wrong!” And of course, only one of two things is possible: either ONE of them is correct, or NONE of them are correct. Every bit of evidence in existence supports the second conclusion.
It’s all superstition created by frightened, insecure humans many centuries ago and brought to the present by brainwashing children into it before they are mentally capable of examining it rationally. Fear. Ignorance. Stupidity. Peer pressure. Some of (but hardly all) the reasons why such nonsense continues to survive.
There’s little point in attempting to use logic to prove anything to dogmatic little minds.
Even though “God” is supposedly all-knowing and all-powerful, for some strange reason, religion implies, He isn’t capable of planning and setting into motion a sequence of events, starting with a single point of matter and energy, that unfolds over billions of years and has as its end result, the world around us today.
No, the God that can do absolutely anything isn’t up to that. Instead, He just snaps His fingers and it all appears, prefab. Sure. Evolution is beyond the comprehension of believers in a deity, therefore it’s beyond the capabilities of that deity to plan it and execute it.
BTW, kiddies, you persist in ignoring facts, no matter how many times you’re told, so it’s fruitless to remind you, but the word “theory,” used as a scientific term, does not mean “guess”. Evolution is a fact, one that has been, and continues to be proven in countless ways.
Ignorantly confounding what the layman loosely calls a “theory” with the strict technical definition used by science is one of the more glaring examples of the unwillingness of dogmatists to face reality.
Gravitation theory is also “just a theory” to you ignorami. So go jump off the Sears Tower; don’t tell me you’re afraid of a “theory”…
Better yet, go take another look at a picture of the WTC just before impact. There you will see, as is always the case, the products of science and knowledge – the buildings, the airplane – being ruthlessly and mindlessly abused by brainless religious cavemen in order to destroy what reason has created, in the name of a primitive superstition.
Science has given us health, long lives, instantaneous global communication, space travel, &c &c &c &c ad infinitum.
Religion has given us suicide bombers, the Crusades, the Inquisition.
Science continues to progressively improve human life. Religion continues to try to repress and destroy that progress.
Richard Dawkins is absolutely correct. We can’t let these idiots continue to work at destroying our world; religion – that is to say, irrational belief – must be eradicated if the human race is to survive.
60
First, I’m not speaking to ID. Don’t know why people start screeching about ID when s/o points out that the T of E is in tatters.
Second, the THEORY of evolution explains the subject but the facts haven’t materialized that prove the theory. Face it, its dead. Try science instead of pseudo religious dogma.
Patrick – the fact is that the only people that believe ToE is “in tatters” are two classes of people
1) poorly informed ID supporters
2) people that know nothing about the subject except what they read from ID supporters.
There is no controversy, because there is tons of proof of ToE. No scientist would claim there is a controversy.
Please – point out the holes in it if we are to take you seriously (you must know them, otherwise you’d just come under one of those two categories).