ACLU sues over Evolution in Textbooks.

[Vic]

Now there you go, getting violent over religion. My my my.

So tell me, is the assertion that "those same people would kill each other for another reason" a theory or a fact?

And by the way, evolution is isn't only a Theory and a Law, it's a fact. We are Chimpanzees. Have a banana.

Who's getting violent?

A fact according to you, but not to me and lot of other people (including most scientists, they themselves call it a "theory").
But just because you think it is fact, does that somehow give you the right to push it upon everyone else's children?
Because you think it fact, does that give you the right to use the government (through the public school system) as a way of pushing it on everyone else's children?
Like I said, who's getting violent? There are other ways of violence besides physical force, and you obviously have a real issue with religion there.

Anyway, we may have once been chimpanzees but we are not now.

 

[Moonbeam]

That religious people don't want their kids brainwashed by the fact of evolution in school because it conflicts with the Theory of God they teach at home is exactly why the teaching of religion in the home should be banned. I mean, come on, look at how the real brainwashing done in the home by previously brainwashed parents is affecting this debate. There are people here arguing that evolution is not a fact. Can you imagine. Come on, you religious nuts aren't ever going to get back sex on demant from your God fearing subservient wives. The day of the Taliban has passed. You will just have to live with sexual insecurity like everybody else. You will just have to accept second rate status. The women are goint to tell you when you can have sex, not you telling them. You'll just have to mature emotionally a bit more but you can do it, I'm sure.

 

[BL0RT]

Originally posted by: PSYWVic

Originally posted by: Electric Amish

Originally posted by: PSYWVic

Originally posted by: NogginBoink

Originally posted by: CocaCola5
I would think its not a bad idea to atleast teach the difference between theory and fact...

Right!

I say we bring a lawsuit against the schools and demand stickers in textbooks that read:

This textbook contains material on gravity. Gravity is a theory, not a fact, regarding the attraction of bodies to each other. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

Gravity is a law, proven fact. NO ONE disputes this. Evolution is not and is a theory. Don't be a tool.

Yes, evolution is a theory.

The thing is, we need to teach children something in school about where they came from, don't we?

Creation is also a "theory".

So what do we do? There is more physical evidence pertaining to evolution than there is of creation.

amish

Yes, creation is also just a theory.
I see nothing wrong with evolution being taught in schools, as long as it is presented as theory and not fact (because it's not fact). When it comes to things that evolution and creation, I feel that parents should have the right to instruct their children as they see fit. It is not the purpose of government to teach children religion (science being religion in another guise).
Funny thing here is that I'm a dues-paying ACLU member, and I really think they've gone off the deep end for the last time and that it's time for me to stop supporting them. I appreciate what they have done to protect the Constitution but their constant anti-religion focus is simply misguided. Religion is not the big threat to freedom, government is.

NogginBoink, get a clue man, it's the Law of Gravity, not "theory of gravity." And scientists may not know exactly how it works but they have been able to put a mathematical formula behind it that has worked without fail for roughly 400 years. That makes it a law.
Evolution, on the other hand, is far more complex, is not repeatedable in the laboratory, and there's no single mathematical formula behind how it happened. No one knows for sure how it happened, if it even happened at all, and there are flaws and gaps in theory you could drive a Mac truck through.

Moonbeam, get the hell over it. Without religion, those same people would kill each other for another reason. Perhaps you should actually try studying religion for a change, so you would know what you were talking about?

go take a physics class sometime, gravity is a law. no really it is. a theory becomes a law after someone backs up this theory with observational fact, and others review this person's findings, conduct their own experiments and find the same results. this happened with netwon and his gravity theories which then became laws.

 

[BL0RT]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
That religious people don't want their kids brainwashed by the fact of evolution in school because it conflicts with the Theory of God they teach at home is exactly why the teaching of religion in the home should be banned. I mean, come on, look at how the real brainwashing done in the home by previously brainwashed parents is affecting this debate. There are people here arguing that evolution is not a fact. Can you imagine. Come on, you religious nuts aren't ever going to get back sex on demant from your God fearing subservient wives. The day of the Taliban has passed. You will just have to live with sexual insecurity like everybody else. You will just have to accept second rate status. The women are goint to tell you when you can have sex, not you telling them. You'll just have to mature emotionally a bit more but you can do it, I'm sure.

rofl!

 

[gopunk]

maybe we should put disclaimer stickers in the bible

no but seriously, i think publishers should rewrite their textbooks to make it clear what things are theory and what things aren't.

 

[Moonbeam]

No, gopunk, what test books should say is that theory is the word we use for the best available truth we have today and that any attempts to twist the word theory into anything but the very very best best fact fact that we have today is just an attempt to subvert your mind in the hope of replacing the very very best best facts with substitute second third or fourth class bunk that has as it's only claim to fame the fact that it appears in a solipsistic Book that proclaims itself to be truth.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: BL0RT
go take a physics class sometime, gravity is a law. no really it is. a theory becomes a law after someone backs up this theory with observational fact, and others review this person's findings, conduct their own experiments and find the same results. this happened with netwon and his gravity theories which then became laws.

I... ummm... said that gravity was a law. In fact, that was my point. Perhaps you meant to quote someone else?

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
That religious people don't want their kids brainwashed by the fact of evolution in school because it conflicts with the Theory of God they teach at home is exactly why the teaching of religion in the home should be banned. I mean, come on, look at how the real brainwashing done in the home by previously brainwashed parents is affecting this debate. There are people here arguing that evolution is not a fact. Can you imagine. Come on, you religious nuts aren't ever going to get back sex on demant from your God fearing subservient wives. The day of the Taliban has passed. You will just have to live with sexual insecurity like everybody else. You will just have to accept second rate status. The women are goint to tell you when you can have sex, not you telling them. You'll just have to mature emotionally a bit more but you can do it, I'm sure.

And this makes you different from the people you hate... how? Looks to me like you are exactly like the religious zealots, just the flip side of the coin.

And I didn't bring forced sex with my wife (whew... good thing I'm not married, eh? ) or any such thing up. I certainly don't believe in such things.

What I do believe is that government has no place in telling people what to believe. What it appears that you believe in is that you don't like the world the way it is so you're going to force everyone you possible can to conform to your ideal... or else. And, to me, that makes you exactly like the people you claim to hate.

 

[Moonbeam]

Evolution is a theory in time. Like all science that deals with time it is particular to a time. Here's where the Creationsits start to slaver. Time can't be repeated. Ah ha, you see. Real science has to be repeatable to be science. But this is just sophistry. That would mean that we can never confict anybody of murder on circumstancial evidence because we can't ever prove the evidence is anything but a theory. Not a problem. Execute them and claim that theoretically they are still alive.

It would mean that we might as well not record earthquakes because the pen line on the rolling drum can never be duplicated. Well we have the fallen buildings and we have the squiggly line and no religious fundamentalists claiming the line dowsn't stand for reality.

The fact of evolution is based on millions of similar graphs that all self confirm with high statistical probability to one inevitable conclusion. Life on earth has evolved for millions of years and all life is related. Furthermore, no matter how distant the relationship between any two living forms, the further back in time progenators are compared, the more similar they are. Similarly, on a macro level, the further back in the development an organism we look the more it resembles the course of evolution. We were once a single cell like the simpler forms of life then and now. All life on earth came from some single celled creature. The time for the transformation by mutation is so vast that it is beyond human comprehension.

Society owes it to children to teach them the very best truth we know. It's time for the religious bigots to get our of the middle of the freeway. Anything good about their religion doesn't require absolute belief in what is obviously an absolute lie. The earth isn't 6000 years old and God didn't make people a few thousand years ago. AND it doesn't matter. That error doesn't mean diddly. Yup your Book is wrong. It's not the absolute truth. It still might be the very very best best Book for finding God.

 

[Draknor]

Originally posted by: PSYWVic
What I do believe is that government has no place in telling people what to believe. What it appears that you believe in is that you don't like the world the way it is so you're going to force everyone you possible can to conform to your ideal... or else. And, to me, that makes you exactly like the people you claim to hate.

Well you definitely have to admire (?) Moonbeam for his no-pulled-punches-here posts, don't you?

I agree that the government should not tell people what to believe. But at what point does something stop becoming a "belief"? The theory of evolution is well-established, and while details are still controversial, the concept itself is accepted.

In fact, not that I really think about it, I don't think it's fair to talk at all about "laws" or "theories" because evolution is not the same manner of science as thermodynamics and electromagnetics. It's more like biology - it's a discipline for understanding how complex things work and interact. Thermo & EM have defined "laws" that are observable & repeatable. They describe what is happening in nature given a certain set of conditions.

Biology (AFAIK) & anthropology & evolution don't have such "laws" - instead, they seek to understand much more complex things, including history. So of course they are theories. We have understandings of how certain things work, and how they came to be. We "know" that oxygen is carried to the cells of the human body by red blood cells. It's not the "Third Law of Biology" - it's just what we know about human processes. Likewise, what the scientific community knows about the history of species is the theory we call evolution - it's the best theory we have based on scientific evidence. It's not faith-based. There are observable effects of evolution on a short-term scale. We have strong evidence suggesting our short-term observations can be extrapolated into the long-term. We share like 98% of our DNA with other animals. None of this proves evolution, but it's scientific support for it.

 

[Moonbeam]

Plese Vic, I don't hate them. I just don't want them killing me. We're at war with religious fundamentalists and we're winning. We got all the good stuff, all the best chemical and nuclear and biological weapons and stuff. We got science and they got faith. The theory of evolution is fundamental to the biological sciences. We will be able to make germs that kill everybody on earth but Americans who get innoculated, but we aren't gonna be able to do it if bozo parents raise bozo childern. We just have to stamp out religion so it doesn't get in the way of weapons production. Otherwise we're gonna wind up beating them in the head with bibles while that slug us with Korans. You see that don't you. I mean we could make them out of lead and use catipults, but my way's better, don't you think?

I mean, were you thinking of some middle ground?

 

[glenn1]

ACLU sues over Evolution in Textbooks.

Yes. Lord forbid (or Darwin forbid, depending on your feelings on the matter) that the little tykes possibly be allowed exposure to anything which might lead them to reasonable doubt of your version of the "truth." It's a war between those who peddle their "truth" of evolution vs. those who peddle their contrary view of the "truth" of creation, and as we all know from famous quote, truth during war is so precious that it has to be rationed.

 

[Moonbeam]

Well I suppose I could invision some sort of senerio where science tells the facts about the world, and religion informs us about the facts of ourselves, our sone and spirit, or our inner being, such things as the moral use of technology and the application of ethics to human relationships. That could be cool. But it would mean that scientists and religionists would have to evolve out of the joker age and synthesize the best of each.

 

[jaeger66]

Originally posted by: glenn1

ACLU sues over Evolution in Textbooks.

Yes. Lord forbid (or Darwin forbid, depending on your feelings on the matter) that the little tykes possibly be allowed exposure to anything which might lead them to reasonable doubt of your version of the "truth." It's a war between those who peddle their "truth" of evolution vs. those who peddle their contrary view of the "truth" of creation, and as we all know from famous quote, truth during war is so precious that it has to be rationed.

"Religion has no place in schools, just as facts hav eno place in religion"

-Super Nintendo Chalmers

If you want your kids to learn creationism, send them to Catholic school. Otherwise, leave the fairy tales at home.

 

[HombrePequeno]

Ohio is considering state science requirements that would allow teaching of alternatives, including intelligent design.

Maybe we should also teach other alternatives with no evidence like the electrical Sun theory and how the moon was created when Venus flew out of Jupiter's orbit and passed by Earth. Creation 'theory' has no real evidence so it can't exactly be a theory.

 

[Darein]

I'm personally completely for evolution, but they are teaching evolution, the scientific theory in a science text book. I don't think they should have a disclamer; the bible sure doesn't talk about the other theories on how life came to be, so why should a science textbook be any different?

 

[glenn1]

If you want your kids to learn creationism, send them to Catholic school. Otherwise, leave the fairy tales at home.

You expose your fears with your very words. If you know something is a fact, then you don't care if someone puts a disclaimer on it. It wouldn't matter to me if you put a disclaimer on a passage that states the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, or about the Law of Gravity, because it's a fact. No amount of me telling you it might not be true is going to convince you otherwise, thus the disclaimer is meaningless. Indeed, i'd be happy to have you put a disclaimer on those statements, because it would simply expose your ignorance.

That you are willing to fight to keep a disclaimer off the topic of the Theory of Evolution implies that you're less than sure about its absolute truth. Otherwise you'd happily allow the little disclaimer sticker, and point to it to show the ignorance of the people who hold the contrary view.

To be true, i think it would be MORE proper to do as others have suggested, and make the disclaimer about what the definition of terms such as theory and law mean in scientific terms, because it's more useful. But such an idea is made impossible by folks who are so blinded by their certainty in their particular "truth" that they can't handle someone questioning it, under the dubious theory that the slightest questioning of evolution is breeching First Amendment principles.

 

[GasX]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
"This Bible contains material claiming that it is the Absolute Word of God. This is a claim not a fact. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."

I would consider carrying around these stickers and putting them on every Gideon's Bible in every hotel room I stay in.

 

[mpitts]

My wife and I were talking about this this morning. What crap.

If you are going to put forth to these students that evolution is a theory, you may as well go ahead and do the same for Jesus/Christianity.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
Plese Vic, I don't hate them. I just don't want them killing me. We're at war with religious fundamentalists and we're winning. We got all the good stuff, all the best chemical and nuclear and biological weapons and stuff. We got science and they got faith. The theory of evolution is fundamental to the biological sciences. We will be able to make germs that kill everybody on earth but Americans who get innoculated, but we aren't gonna be able to do it if bozo parents raise bozo childern. We just have to stamp out religion so it doesn't get in the way of weapons production. Otherwise we're gonna wind up beating them in the head with bibles while that slug us with Korans. You see that don't you. I mean we could make them out of lead and use catipults, but my way's better, don't you think?

I mean, were you thinking of some middle ground?

Why yes, as a matter of fact, I was

My reason being that I don't see religion as being the actual motivating factor in these battles, but actually the quest for land and power. Religion is merely being used as a convenient excuse by these amoral individuals.

 

[jaeger66]

Originally posted by: glenn1

You expose your fears with your very words.

Fear has nothing to do with it. It's about not wanting to raise a generation of morons who are ignorant to the study of science. This country is in enough trouble as it is without a bunch of rubes trying to kick education back into the Dark Ages. And then there's that whole Constitution thing. Is there even one molecule of scientific evidence to support creationism? No. So what do you say to the Hindu child while you're spouting this nonsense? "I'm sorry Sanjev, but dirty heathens like you wouldn't understand. But have fun in hell."

 

[Howard]

What are you Americans doing?

 

[Moonbeam]

OK, PSYWVic, lets consider your point:

"My reason being that I don't see religion as being the actual motivating factor in these battles, but actually the quest for land and power. Religion is merely being used as a convenient excuse by these amoral individuals."

----------------------------------

Naturally your mind jumps to the Palestinian Israeli conflict. Israel is full of all kinds of opinions on what to do about the conflict. Who wants to build settlements all over Palestinian land, the religious or non religious Jews. It's the religious Jews, right, and a particular faction of them who think that God gave them the land. Now if it's not the religion that's responsible for this land grab, then you have to explain why only a particular segment of religious Jews can be amorally affected with a lust for power and land. If the total population isn't infected with this secular greed the is it something in the water that only these Jews are drinking or is it something in their religion that they are mentally drinking in. So I don't see much difference in saying that religion is directly making these Jews killers than it is to say that all Jews are immoral but only the religious ones have a rationalization mechanism that lets them act it out. Either way we are all better off with out this brand of Judaism, right?

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: Yucky
What are you Americans doing?

evidently we've lost our minds. can you canucks find them for us?

 

[Moonbeam]

What are you Americans doing?
--------------------------------------

Airing our dirty laundry. Why do you ask?