anthrosub
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Sinergy
quote:
ORIGINAL: amastermind
I don't know the details of the debate in Kansas but I do know this: Evolution is just a theory, and not a very good one at that.
This is simply incorrect.
You can make a culture of bacteria, in, for example, a coffee cup on your desk, and watch bacteria mutate in a couple of weeks. The mutations which make it more effective survive, whereas the ones that dont, make it die off. Or take HIV, which evolves (that would be changing into something (resistant to something killing their brethren off) other than what they were last week using that flawed theory known as "Evolution") within the patient to gain resistance (i.e. "evolving" a resistance to) to protease inhibitors. Or some staphlococcus bacteria which (because of that silly theory of evolution) have evolved (the ones that were resistant survived the patient being medicated) and are now two families of antibiotics away from being unkillable by modern medicine., the fact that wild almond trees produce a nut that is 99% fatal to eat due to cyanide in the nut, yet farmers found the 1% that was not poisonous (and bred them together, relying on the principle of evolution to ensure that the baby trees also produced non-poisonous almonds) and formed the Almond Growers Association so you could enjoy eating them, the list of examples supporting the theory of evolution is freaking endless. Im rather shocked you would state it was not a good theory.
Believe what you want to believe, but unless you can empirically prove a statement like "evolution is not a very good theory" expect to appear to be un uneducated bumpkin at parties.
Well, maybe not in Kansas.
Evolution has been proven so many times and in so many ways that it is considered by the scientific community to be fact. Insofar as anything in science is considered fact, which simply means that until somebody can actually prove it to be incorrect, it is accepted as being true.
While ID people bemoan the fact that they dont want to be descended from monkeys, the only actual "proof" they offer to support their theories boils down to "Im too ignorant, obtuse, or downright stupid to understand it, so it must be the result of an Intelligence Designer (who, curiously enough, has a name in the United States that rhymes with Todd, as opposed to all the other Intelligent Designers you might hear people talking about in other places)."
Just me, etc.
Sinergy
About a year ago, I saw a newscast about a group out west (in Colorado or California...I can't remember) who were a bunch of creationists running a special program for children who's parents also believed in the creation story and wanted their children to get exposure to the counter-argument against the theory of evolution.
One of the group leaders took some time to explain to the reporter on camera what their principle beef with evolution is. He said evolution theory teaches children you don't need God because if you believe the theory, then God must therefore not exist or be necessary. They took the children to a museum of natural history, filled with the skeletons of dinosaurs, murals depicting what the world might have looked like back then, charts showing the organization of species from the earliest forms to the present, etc.
The museum director accompanied the group as they took a tour through the museum, stopping here and there where the leaders would give their take on what evolution theory is trying to say, and all the while tried very hard to maintain his composure. At one point he had to excuse himself and went to a backroom and the reporter followed with the camera crew. Once away from the creationist tour, he told the reporter he was upset to the point of feeling like he was going to vomit listening to the garbage the creationists were telling the kids.
When I heard the stuff they were saying, I felt pretty much the same way. It's really sickening to see young children under the age of 10 being told what is essentially crap if it were being told to an adult with a developed thinking mind. But to hijack the minds of children, supposedly for the good of God, really is a crime.
I don't say this because they were attacking evolution theory but because they were basing everything they believe on what amounts to a "just so" story. None of them had any idea what they were talking about as they described the theory of evolution to the kids. You would think they'd have the decency to allow someone who's an expert in the field to talk about the theory but that would obviously not work to their ends. To me, this sort of "education" of children here in the United States is no different in principle than the education young boys got under the Taliban in Afghanistan where the only textbook they are allowed to read in school is the Quran.
anthrosub
_____________________________
"It is easier to fool people than it is to convince them they have been fooled." - Mark Twain
"I am not young enough to know everything." - Oscar Wilde
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RE: God, Darwin, and Kansas - 
I speak both languages, seeks: that of our reality and that of the spiritual one. 
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at least he makes me giggle, though!
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