Evangelical war on evolution

[Eclipse]

Quote by: Dirty Name Dude, if there is a misconception about evolution - it's because public schools in the United States indoctrinate students at a very young age.

No. We can't help it if little Johnny and Sally don't do their homework. We can't help it if some parents choose not to take an active hand in their child's education. With so many teacher's around, there is bound to be some less reasonable then others.

Quote by: Dirty Name Further, does the average person really give a crap about intraspecies variation? No. The average person is interested in the Theory of Evolution because it attempts to explain how we got here

I give a heaping pile of crap. It's quite important. If the average person understands Evolution then this should not be a problem. Unfortunately that seems to not be the case with all this Jesus Camp stuff (atleast they are not indoctrinating kids for dying for Jesus and making war. Oh wait, some of them are).

Evolution: Change in form over time. This does not account for the origins of life. This is not Darwin's theory. Darwin made attempts but he got it wrong. He knew his model diluted. Genetics was needed for the theory to take hold. Darwin's theory is the Theory of Natural Selection; survival of the fittest. This is where is best work is found observing the variations between things like finches in the Galapagos.

Quote by: Dirty Name Translation - evolution utterly fails to explain how we got here, but you're never going to consider the possibility that God had something to do with it because you've been indoctrinated in the public schools for so long you actually believe archeaopteryx really is a transitional fossil.

Not quite. You can believe in evolution and God. You can't believe in evolution and the Genesis because the Genesis story created the world in 6 days and there is a fixity of species.

[Gods_Mercenary]

The whole fundementalist evangelical movement scares the sh** out of me, not to mention that the republicans are dominated by them.

[Dirty Name]

Evolution is a scientific theory, tested and proven repeatedly

Again, no one is disupting that creatures evolve. But the debate, in case you honestly don't know, is about whether creatures can evolve into a completely different species.

I challenge you to prove right here and right now that any species has ever evolved from within a species into another creature of a different species. The very idea is absurd on its face.

If you can't do it, you might want to shut your pie hole.

[Dirty Name]

No. We can't help it if little Johnny and Sally don't do their homework. We can't help it if some parents choose not to take an active hand in their child's education. With so many teacher's around, there is bound to be some less reasonable then others.

Are you really so blind to your own hypocrisy? Zhavric opens the thread by claiming creationists are trying to indoctrinate students, and I counter by pointing out the same is happening on the other side with Darwiniacs.

Then you show up and try to say that people should do their homework on evolution - but apparently not for creationism?

Come prepared if you're going to debate here or don't bother me.

[Boetie]

Quote by: Dirty Name Are you really so blind to your own hypocrisy? Zhavric opens the thread by claiming creationists are trying to indoctrinate students, and I counter by pointing out the same is happening on the other side with Darwiniacs. Then you show up and try to say that people should do their homework on evolution - but apparently not for creationism? Come prepared if you're going to debate here or don't bother me.

Correction the teaching of evolution is not indoctrination. The reason why is because science is subject to change if new theorys are introduced and with new facts being found out. Science is not set in stone.

On the other hand religion is set in stone with no change whatsoever. Even if evidence were introduced that sheds light on religion. The religion community will put their blinders on and refuse to rethink their stance.

Science is flexible, Religion is not, hence science is not an indoctrination, science is a learning and ongoing dynamic.

[RickSp]

Quote by: Dirty Name Again, no one is disupting that creatures evolve. But the debate, in case you honestly don't know, is about whether creatures can evolve into a completely different species. I challenge you to prove right here and right now that any species has ever evolved from within a species into another creature of a different species. The very idea is absurd on its face. If you can't do it, you might want to shut your pie hole.

"Shut my pie hole"? What a wonderfully childish rant! Fit for any five year old.

A fitting rant perhaps for someone who apparently knows so little about that which he is posting. I know that this is hopeless but here are a few links that address speciation.

Observed Instances of Speciation

Speciation

An Origin of the Species

“Evolution Happens”

The evidence for evolution - Can the formation of a new species be observed?

[Eclipse]

@ Dirty Name

Quote by: Dirty Name Dude, if there is a misconception about evolution - it's because public schools in the United States indoctrinate students at a very young age.

This is what I was refuting. Misconception is not due to indoctrination in public schools. If there is a misconception that's because people adopt the exact same method of "set in stone" reasoning as some religious extremists and apply it to their science. They do the best they can with the resources available.

I also stated that yes sometimes people are indoctrinated in a sense due to things like, lack of digging to find all possible hypotheses whether it be religious or not (I know there is reasoning behind some religion), poor teachers, who slander religion, which children trust as a teaching authority, or something like that. As responsible citizens it is our job to make sure things are presented to our children as they should be. I have never had a science teacher who indoctrinated theories as absolute truths and during my younger ages or introductory stages to a science they usually developed my ability to think and reason and understand first. Whether they were religious themselves or not.

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In the clip in discussion, they do not provide any evidence, they just throw cartoons at the children and make them laugh at the idea without giving them reasons besides a book from 2000 years ago said so. They insult scientists and claim that scientists are untrustworthy because only God knows everything. This is completely misguiding. Scientists don't claim to know everything but they try to understand why or how or what. This does not make them untrustworthy.

Indoctrination against religion would be to throw cartoons at children where God is some kind of a magician and say that "Hey, kids, wizards aren't really real and we all know that's silly. Magic isn't real, so God isn't real because all God does is magically do stuff. In fact, this book was written 2000 years ago by some carpenter. Can your daddy write a book like this? Nooo, of course not. 2000 years ago? People were cavemen back then anyhow. Har har har." It leaves behind any method of reasoning and just insults the issue.

[gallo]

Quote by: Dirty Name As if liberals haven't been using that strategy in the public schools.

Examples please.

Quote by: Dirty Name Your "war" against evolution is justified.

So imposing your religion on all children in public schools is justified?

Quote by: Dirty Name Darwinian theory is pseudo-science that is not supported anywhere in the fossil record.

Please tell us at which university your degrees in biology were earned. You certainly wouldn't make such a statement unless you had actually studied biology. (I'm still waiting for your discussion of Archaeopteryx in a different thread.)

Quote by: Dirty Name The oft-cited "Miller-Urey Experiment" has been panned by contemporary science,

That's a lie or you have been duped by someone who told you a lie. It hasn't been panned by contemporary science because most contemporary scientists understand the purpose and the results of the experiment. The experiments are perhaps passe, but only because better and more informed experiments have been done.

Quote by: Dirty Name and then there's the Darwiniac scientific community, though they've tried desperately for more than 50 years, they cannot create life in a laboratory, even if we generously spot them all of the basic building blocks of life.

Really? Name 10 examples of scientists trying to create life in the lab - cite the papers if you will. Creating life without completely understanding what it is would be foolish. However, you are awate the bacteria have had there genomes altered, artificial genes have been constructed and inserted into bacteria, and working viruses have been artificially constructed in the lab. Besides that, there are self reproducing molecules that only require the correct components to continue to reproduce. They evolve too. Some even form lipid membranes like a protocell.

Quote by: Dirty Name Face it, the Darwinian "Theory of Evolution" is little more than an explanation of intraspecies adaptation.

Right. Evolution. But it is more than that.

Quote by: Dirty Name If that's all you want it to teach, fine. But please stop pretending it explains the Origins of Life, as most public school evolutionists try to teach.

I want to teach science and the best explanations that we can devise to explain nature and how it works. If you want to teach your children the mythology of nomadic, bronze age herdsmen, then fine. Just don't pretend that it has anything to do with reality.

[gallo]

Quote by: Dirty Name Again, no one is disupting that creatures evolve. But the debate, in case you honestly don't know, is about whether creatures can evolve into a completely different species.

Not only can they, they have been observed to do so. The theories of evolution attempt to rationally explain the mechanisms of that evolution.

Quote by: Dirty Name I challenge you to prove right here and right now that any species has ever evolved from within a species into another creature of a different species. The very idea is absurd on its face.

Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean that it isn't true. Apples were introduced to the U.S. from Europe. None of the typical pests that preyed on apples came with them. In the early 1800s apples were planted extensively in the Ohio Valley (ever hear of Johnny Appleseed?). However, in the late 1800s worms were found to infest apple crops. These are the larvae of what is now known as the apple maggot fly. Research indicates that the source of these flies must be either creation ex nihilo by some supernatural being, or the speciation of a fly that infested the hawthorn, a common native plant in the Ohio Valley. The hawthorn maggot fly and the apple maggot fly are reproductively isolated - in other words, they do not interbreed. Since that time, the maggot flies have also speciated to infest cherries, pears, and other fruit.

The European herring gull has a wide range. It is found all over northern Europe, westward to Iceland, southern Greenland and to North America. It can be found quite commonly across the northern part of North America all the way to Alaska with only slight differences in appearance. It is slightly different in appearance to the Vega herring gull from Siberia but they interbreed. And the Vega herring gull interbreeds with Birula's gull to the west, and that gull interbreeds with Heuglin's gull, and that with the lesser black-backed gull. The range of the lesser black-backed gull overlaps with the European herring gull, but they do not interbreed. Thus, the extremes of a single large population that encircles the globe have become different species. They look different too.

Quote by: Dirty Name If you can't do it, you might want to shut your pie hole.

Need more examples? Perhaps you should take your own advice.

[RickSp]

A new spin by the evangelicals - Evolution is a conspiracy dreamed up by the Jews!

Ga. State Legislator: Evolution A Lie, Earth Flat, Jews In Control

A memo circulated among Georgia state legislature under the name of State Senator Ben Bridges claims that: Indisputable evidence — long hidden but now available to everyone — demonstrates conclusively that so-called “secular evolution science” is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate “creation scenario” of the Pharisee Religion. This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic “holy book” Kabbala dating back at least two millennia. Naturally, the memo went on to urge readers to get more information at the Fixed Earth Web site, which rejects Copernicus as well as Darwin and is also very poorly designed.

Not content to let the Georgia legislature have all the fun, the memo was also circulated in the Texas state legislature.

Not in Kansas anymore

Just when Kansas returns science to the classroom, Rep. Chisum tries to goad Texas toward Dark Ages. It started off as a such a good week — both for science and for the American students who must understand it to compete with their peers abroad. The Kansas Board of Education finally joined most of the United States in accepting the teaching of evolution in public schools. Then Texas' own state Rep. Warren Chisum, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, had to mail colleagues a freakish memo denouncing evolution as a religious plot disseminated by one "Pharisee Religion." The mix of nonsense, free-floating anti-Semitism, misuse of power and seeming obliviousness to all of the above were like a dip into the Dark Ages. Evolutionary science, Chisum's memorandum told lawmakers, was the creation of "Rabbinic writings" in the "mystic holy book Kabbala." As such, the memo went on in a medley of type fonts, underlined sentences and misplaced capitals, teaching evolution in public school violates the Constitution.

Here is the web pages that these brain dead legislators were recommending to their collegues.

The non-moving Earth & anti-evolution web page of The Fair Education Foundation, Inc.

[Athena]

The Genius is Muslim and he flatly denied evolution. Evidently, the literal interpretation of Genius is just as important to Muslims. On the other hand we have atheist Jews. If a Jew doesn't believe their part of the bible is the word of God, what continues to make them Jew? Jews excommunicated none believers. I sure wouldn't claim to be Protestant because my grandmother and mother were Protestants. Anyway-

Instead of going round and round on the same old arguements, how about searching for the information needed for a broader understanding of religion?
May be as we learn how ancient thought, we can better decide if we want to think as they did, or do we want to update our beliefs with better information?

[RickSp]

You act like you take these redneck politician bigots seriously. They do not deserve that level of respect.

[Boetie]

Please take a look at RickSp's post number 30 above.

Then take a look at the following

Apology Sought for Lawmaker's Memo Linking Evolution, Jewish Text | Christianpost.com

ATLANTA (AP) - A Jewish organization is demanding an apology from a Georgia legislator after a memo using his name claims that evolution was a myth propagated by an ancient Jewish sect. The Anti-Defamation League sent a letter to state Rep. Ben Bridges Thursday chastising him for penning the "highly offensive" memo, which attributes the Big Bang theory to writings in the Kabbalah, a Jewish text

.

[Jack]

information needed for a broader understanding of religion?

We already have a pretty comprehensive understanding of religion, both what it is and why people believe in it. But since that understanding reduces religion to another philosophy, a meme, those who believe religous teachings refuse to accept it. It offends their faith. So in the U.S., that means about 80% of the population will either ignore objective findings about religion or declare them to be anti-religious, works of the devil.

On top of that, we'll never get a Mormon to accept the reasoning behind Islam, or a Catholic to validate the beliefs of a Baptist. All the various factions in religion believe they alone hold the truth, anything else being lies, misinterpretations or blasphemy. They have no interest in understanding another point of view.

[Zhavric]

Looks like several people have torn Dirty Name's argument in half over their collective knees. Not to put too fine a point on it...

Whenever we're doing detective work, we can find clues that invalidate certain hypothesis without actually providing a full explanation. This is how evolution is the study of how life changes into other life without addressing life's origin... but still contradicts Christian creationism.

Evolution & the age of the Earth completely contradict the literal account of Genesis.

[Fonceai]

Quote by: Z This is how evolution is the study of how life changes into other life without addressing life's origin... but still contradicts Christian creationism.

Which type of Creationism are you talking about?

Because there are schools of thought that believe Creationism is how it started and Evolution is how it got to where it is today, so I'm just curious for you to specify.

[gallo]

Not to take the thread off topic, but did those idiot legislatures actually consider the consequences of what they are proposing? If the earth is fixed and unmoving, that would mean that everything else is moving in orbit around the earth. This isn't a real problem for things that are really close like the sun (93 million miles), since that would mean that the sun is moving in its orbit at only about 6763 miles/sec (if my calculations are correct). But what about things like SN 1987 A, that are 170,000 light years away (calculated by several methods)? SN 1987 A would be moving at more than 12 light years/sec. (for those who don't know, a light year is the distance light travels in a year at about 186,000 miles/sec.) Yet again, if I calculate correctly, that means that SN 1987 A is moving about 378.5 million times the speed of light. And believe it or not, at 170,000 light years, SN 1987 A is still relatively close to earth.

[Fonceai]

@gallo

Shhhhh!!

Don't spoil it for me!!

I thought it was just a given that when they said that a star was 170K LY from us that it had to be superluminal in order to complete its movements.

<giggles>

[RickSp]

Gallo, introducing reality into either the Texas or the Georgia State Legislatures might have a certain novelty value but is unlikely to yield a positive outcome.

When I was growing up in Texas I recall a saying that "No man's life, liberty or property is safe when the Texas Legislature's in session." For a quite a while there was a strict limit to the number of days the Legislature could sit to limit the damage that could be done in any one session.

Boetie, the Texas legislator has already offered to apologize. From the previously cited post:

According to the Dallas Morning News, Chisum said he's "willing to apologize" about his references to Jews. He said he didn't know about the ranting on the memo's recommended Web sites. But presumably he knew, and liked, the preposterous contents of his memo itself. It's hard to know what's worse: Chisum's careless spreading of words he condemns — or his unremorseful promotion of ideas that would fling Texas' students and economy years behind their competitors.

[Zhavric]

Quote by: Fonceai Which type of Creationism are you talking about?

Evolution specifically contradicts the literal creationism that stated the story of Genesis is literal.

While it doesn't specifically contradict overlap creationism*, there is no evidence to suggest god exists nor any reason to insert him behind the scenes. It's as intellectually valid as stating "electrons are how Zeus causes electricity". There's no evidence to support this stance and is thus false.




*Wherein evolution / Big Bang / etc are held as valid, but attributed to god.