US textbook omits evolution

[CharacterFirst]

I'd like to have a look at the teacher/priest pedo count.

Well, there is a Royal Comm', so I guess we might get some figures - from Oz anyway.

 

[Bennett.]

People like you make me feel sorry for blokes like C-first. I make a statement he doesn't agree with he highlights where he believes I'm wrong and addresses the fact, and vice versa.

You however attack me, a sure sign that you, yourself are unable to address the issue at hand.

I didn't attack you at all. I said that you are completely wrong in your
understanding of what the scriptures say, but you were going on
as if you an authority. All I did was point out that you were incorrect.

 

[CharacterFirst]

ah, the superiority thing again. humble!

No mirrors in your house?

I am reminded of this -

or this -

 

[bombermick]

So?

Are schools just for Christians? They exist to prepare you for employment and hopefully to teach critical thinking.

 

[CharacterFirst]

Are schools just for Christians? They exist to prepare you for employment and hopefully to teach critical thinking.

Who said they were? The issue is that schools are "banning" God - i.e prayer, Xian content, etc.

 

[bombermick]

Prayer? That's what the church and the home are for. Not to have state - sanctioned indoctrination.

 

[Pie eyed]

You have made an incorrect assumption.

I wasn't implying that "God would stop any and all violence at schools if they didn't teach things the contradicted the bible" I was explaining the scripture passage, and the pointed irony of the tee-shirt, which is that people want to blame God for the bad stuff, but don't want anything to do with him either.

If you really want to learn about the intellectual problem of evil, I can provide you with links to various philosophical and theological sites dealing with that.

What a total crock of shit.
God escapes the blame for nearly everything.
For a omnipotent entity he/she sure is a bloody let down.

 

[Upton Sinclair]

Ok then great condescending one, WHOM do you consider to be valid? Are they only sources that you agree with?

Peer review is a bloody good start - we'll take it from there. If you can't provide peer reviewed evidence when talking about evolution then your opinion is meaningless and doesn't even warrant being taken into consideration.

If you want to mentally masturbate over "belief" then be my guest, just don't try to misrepresent science.

 

[Monniehawk]

How can anyone seriously believe we shared the world with dinosaurs? If any of the great civilizations had come across a T-Rex, I'm reasonably certain someone would have cared to write that down.

Agree!
...but, it kinda makes you wonder about the near-universal concept of dragons, eh?

 

[Monniehawk]

Yep. I guess that is the whole point.
Jesus was saying don't stop the little children coming to me, but the schools want to do just that, and have done just that in the States.

A little disingenuous, I think.
The US charter outlines freedom of religion and belief. By not allowing a prevailing belief to infiltrate and dominate, it maintains that freedom and actually permits dialogue rather than monologue. So, the 'little children can go to him', rather than being hearded along a predefined path. That is anathema to the concept of salvation, I would think. A bit like 'I chose it because it was the only option', rather than a conscious personal choice.
It is fair to say that the most prominent proponents of xian education (or any religion for that matter) in secular schools are intolerant of others' beliefs. It is the nature of the beast. Hence the outcry over the teaching of evolution and denouncements of other religions that emanate from the pulpits.
I doubt that the world of xianity would countenance all schools being taught only the Pentecostal or Baptist line of xianity.
Better none at all - and allow the discourse to continue on an equal footing - than have one suffocating all others.
Politics, for example, is a subject that does not confine itself to western democracy.
That comment is by way of a support for the teaching for comparative religion rather than, say, a strictly sectarian xianity. I believe that religion is an important philosophical part of all societies and should be examined in that light.

 

[Partridge]

http://richarddawkins.net/foundation_articles/2012/8/23/censorship-of-a-textbook-to-remove-evolution

It's a strange place, the US. The only western country that has a problem with us coming from apes.

Does anyone think there is a case to be made for "teaching the controversy" or teaching creation/intelligent design alongside evolution in the US, or elsewhere?

As someone who grew up a Christian, like most I think it's a load of shit. It's pseudoscience, and it's entire philosophy comes from "God said so", rather than the evidence.

edit: Should religious schools here be allowed to teach creationism and omit evolution, if that's what parents want?

Absolutely not. The truth is not democratic. I might want to be able to jump off a 10 storey building and land safely, but it's not going to happen no matter how many morons vote for it. No parent who is sane would vote for creationism, unless they are religious themselves, or scared of upsetting people.

I'm not scared, it's nothing but fabricated and dishonest bullshit. Unless of course there are people here who are happy to have their children taught outright lies and have their curiousity, morality, reasoning and learning skills destroyed. Hands up who's in favour of that?

You can have the following choices too:

- Magic or Physics
- Alchemy or Chemistry
- Astrology or Astronomy

Now ask yourself, which one of those two choices in every case has contributed anything to the modern world? You know, things like computers, television, motor cars, refrigeration, electricity, the internet, jet airplanes, and about a million other things we take for granted.

 

[Partridge]

Time scales like "50,000" years are simply evidence that the sites authors are mental short people.
Lucy, Australopithicus, is 3.2 million years old.

I often wonder if people actually read even the basic tenants of the theory of evolution when it comes to man?

Doubt it very much. There are sadly many more people who think they understand it than those who actually do.

 

[Partridge]

Surveys also show that approximately 60% of the US population believe that the earth is about 6000 years old

I thought it was 40%, either way it's an appalling statistic.

It's like saying the distance between Melbourne and Sydney is 3 feet. Not a trivial error.

 

[Partridge]

from the australian museum website..

Humans did not evolve from an ape - we are apes, and our closest living relatives include chimpanzees and gorillas.

Exactly correct. We're also equally related to bonobos as we are to chimpanzees.

 

[Partridge]

It doesn't offend me but pie eyed said everyone can believe what they want as long as they keep it to themselves and that's his argument as to why creationism shouldn't be taught....last time I checked macro evolution was still a belief not fact so by that logic it shouldn't be taught. I believe it should be taught but not as a fact but a theory as to the way we are.

Firstly, nothing in science is taught as a "fact". The truth is always provisional and always capable of being disproven. If your theory isn't falsifiable, it's can't be a scientific theory to begin with. That's why it's called the Theory of Evolution, it will never, and can never, be taught as the "Fact of Evolution". Such things don't exist in science. Here's a few other theories:

- Theory of Gravitation
- Germ Theory of Disease
- Theory of Relativity

and so on. Now you may not believe in the Theory of Gravitation (it's only a theory after all), but you're welcome to falsify it by jumping from a 500 foot cliff onto solid rock.

Or you can cover your food in deadly bacteria and eat it. It's only the Germ Theory of Disease after all.

You're not willing to? Why not?

People need to understand the distinction. No one minds at all if schools want to each religion as part of say Comparative Religions or Ancient Mythology. That's fine, and it can be instructive and interesting. Where the line is drawn though is that these nutjobs want religion taught as SCIENCE. And that is what it definitely is not.

There's also NO controversy or equality between these ideas. The Theory of Evolution has a literal mountain of evidence to support it and independently corroborate it. Evidence from biology, taxonomy, phylogeny, comparative anatomy, geology, genetics (a new branch of science that didn't exist when Darwin postulated his theory, but unfortunately for creationists supports it utterly), astronomy and so on. It has and does make predictions that have and are being fulfilled, such as the transition from land-living ancestors to whales, the transition from dinosaurs to birds, reptiles to mammals, origins of marsupials, distribution of species around the planet (biogeography), and transitions from fish to amphibians.

The evidence for Creationism is this (an exhaustive list):

1.
2.
3.

The end.

 

[Mani]

I thought it was 40%, either way it's an appalling statistic.

It's like saying the distance between Melbourne and Sydney is 3 feet. Not a trivial error.

The statistics do vary, depending on the survey.
The USA also has the highest level of global warming denial in the world, totally unique in this regard.

There was a recent survey of the general adult population in the USA which showed that about 1/4 wrongly identified where Australia was located on a map of the world. Not exactly hard to miss, it's one the continents

The level of religious fundamentalism in the USA is similar to that seen in countries like Iran and Saudia Arabia

And the US military blesses all its weapons, and its money and stock market for that matter.

Big worry

 

[Niximus]

It doesn't offend me but pie eyed said everyone can believe what they want as long as they keep it to themselves and that's his argument as to why creationism shouldn't be taught....last time I checked macro evolution was still a belief not fact so by that logic it shouldn't be taught. I believe it should be taught but not as a fact but a theory as to the way we are.

Macro evolution is a myth.

There is no macro/micro distinction, there is just evolution.

When I hear someone say something along the lines of "Yes, micro evolution is real, but macro evolution doesn't exist", I hear "Yes, centimetres are real, but metres don't exist".

What people refer to as 'micro evolution' is just small differences in the genetic code of an organism. What they call 'macro evolution' is big differences.

There is not two different forms of evolution. 'Macro' evolution is exactly the same as 'micro', only there is more of it. Just like metres are just a lot of centimetres.

 

[Niximus]

...suffer the little children.

Dear God,
Why do you allow so much child abuse and rape in churches?
Signed,
A concerned human

Dear concerned human,
I'm not allowed in chur.....****!
God


Actually though, there is absolutely nothing that stops children bringing their bibles and praying in school....nothing.

What has stopped is forcing them to do so. That is what the creator of this shirt is really angry about.

 

[Mani]

Macro evolution is a myth.

There is no macro/micro distinction, there is just evolution.

When I hear someone say something along the lines of "Yes, micro evolution is real, but macro evolution doesn't exist", I hear "Yes, centimetres are real, but metres don't exist".

What people refer to as 'micro evolution' is just small differences in the genetic code of an organism. What they call 'macro evolution' is big differences.

There is not two different forms of evolution. 'Macro' evolution is exactly the same as 'micro', only there is more of it. Just like metres are just a lot of centimetres.

...actually biologists routinely distinguish between macro and micro evolution. They defined the terms. Macro evolution merely means the evolutionary changes that occur at the species level or above.

The terms are used in peer reviewed scientific literature.

(These terms have been distorted or misinterpreted outside the scientific community for various reasons, but their use in biology is by no means a myth)

 

[tb_fanboy]

I am reminded of this -

or this -

it reminds of Richard Dawkins and if he had his way religion wouldn't exist and he'd lose half his earnings hahah

 

[Monniehawk]

When I hear someone say something along the lines of "Yes, micro evolution is real, but macro evolution doesn't exist", I hear "Yes, centimetres are real, but metres don't exist".

Pedant Post!
Officially, centimetres don't exist. The official lineal metrics are based around a metre and millimetres (down to the micron, etc.). So a building or engineering measurement must be shown to the third decimal point - hence: 1.800 rather than 1.8.
Centimetres are still in common use, so there is no real issue I reckon, but try to tell a kid what a decimetre is!

Add it to your fund of useless information. It might be handy to get rid of the boor at the bar!
Certainly glazes the eyes of my kids....

 

[Partridge]

it reminds of Richard Dawkins and if he had his way religion wouldn't exist and he'd lose half his earnings hahah

Nice story. Be even better if it were true.

He was a world renowned biologist well before - decades before in fact - he wrote anything about religion. The Selfish Gene - still his most famous work - was written in 1976. He also wrote The Extended Phenotype, The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable and The Ancestor's Tale among others. All are acclaimed popular science works. All were written before The God Delusion.

 

[Mani]

Pedant Post!
Officially, centimetres don't exist. The official lineal metrics are based around a metre and millimetres (down to the micron, etc.). So a building or engineering measurement must be shown to the third decimal point - hence: 1.800 rather than 1.8.
.

The number of decimal places or uncertainty/accuracy in engineering is application dependent.

There is no such UNIVERSAL 3 DECIMAL PLACE law in engineering that I'm aware of.

(Sometimes accuracies greater than 3 decimal places are needed, sometimes less is needed)

 

[Monniehawk]

The number of decimal places or uncertainty/accuracy in engineering is application dependent.

There is no such UNIVERSAL 3 DECIMAL PLACE law in engineering that I'm aware of.

(Sometimes accuracies greater than 3 decimal places are needed, sometimes less is needed)

True! I actually mentioned that the micron was an extension of the metre, so I'm sorry if it came out wrong.
When measuring in microns, I think the um symbol is applied for the entire measurement calculated in microns, not metres and mm.
I could be wrong. It has happened. In true pedant mode, I do recall once making a mistake in 1968....

 

[Monniehawk]

I am reminded of this -

or this -

Great point, actually CF!
That graphic sums up the belligerence in the argument. The shirt is a provocative challenge rather than a call for reasoned dialogue. it precludes any opportunity of open dialogue by suggesting that the religious are totally wrong. If so, why bother to debate?
It isn't a bloody contest, it should be a discussion.
Of course, this applies to either side.