Posted on 12/13/2007 12:45:57 PM PST by SubGeniusX
E-mails offer Polk school officials a view of the origin of life they say is just as valid as intelligent design.
LAKELAND | The Flying Spaghetti Monster has stretched its noodles to Polk County.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster, or FSM, is a satirical group that pokes fun at intelligent design. It first emerged in 2005 during the debate in Kansas over whether the belief should be taught in science classes.
The group has sent dozens of e-mails to Polk County School Board members demanding that the idea of a Flying Spaghetti Monster creating the world receive classroom equal time with other views. The e-mail campaign began after four of seven board members said in November that they supported teaching intelligent design in addition to evolution.
While the idea that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world lacks backing in the scientific community, the point, according to those promoting the satire, is that neither does intelligent design.
FSM dates to 2005 when Oregon State University physics graduate Bobby Henderson sent a letter to the Kansas School Board saying "there are multiple theories of intelligent design."
"I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster," Henderson wrote.
"It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him."
Polk board members' support of intelligent design came to light after they learned the proposed science standards for Florida schools listed evolution and biological diversity as one of the "big ideas" that students need to know for a well-grounded science education.
Evolution, the theory that organic life developed and diversified through small changes over millions of years, is opposed by some evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews who believe in a literal biblical interpretation of the Earth's creation. Intelligent design holds that living organisms are so complex that they must have been created by some kind of higher force.
E-mails to board members can be seen on the Flying Spaghetti Monster Web site at www.venganza.org.
Here's one of the e-mails:
"I agree that children should be exposed to all sides of a scientific debate, but it is my fear you may leave out a theory that is equally as valid as traditional Intelligent Design," said one.
"I am of course referring to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I'm sure you all know that the theory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has much greater support in the scientific community than traditional Intelligent Design. You would therefore be doing a grave disservice to the students of Polk County, and science in general, if you were to leave this ever so important theory out of your curriculum."
Most School Board members declined comment, or did not return phone messages when asked about e-mails or telephone calls from supporters or detractors of the proposed science standards.
Board member Frank O'Reilly, who supports the new science standards, said he received about 50 e-mails from FSM supporters. "It's a lot," O'Reilly said. "Most of them are from the spaghetti monster."
In an e-mail, Henderson said he can't explain the idea for the FSM.
"I tell people it was combination of lack of sleep and divine intervention," Henderson said. "But the church has evolved into what it is today."
Henderson said he put out the open letter in 2005 to the Kansas School Board as a joke and it "snowballed from there."
Now, Henderson said there are more than a million Google results for Flying Spaghetti Monster.
"No telling where we will be in 10 years, 100 years, 1,000 years," Henderson wrote. "I heard Christianity started as a joke, too ... so who knows?"
Henderson said about 95 percent of the 60,000 e-mails he's received are positive.
He keeps his home address a secret and has had a "few death threats'' that he was concerned about.
"But the majority of Christians don't have a problem with our Church," Henderson wrote. "We try to be as tolerant of their beliefs as they are of ours."
Known as Pastafarians, Flying Spaghetti Monster supporters dress up as pirates. The Web site sells shirts, iPod covers and car stickers.
Currently on the Web site, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is wearing a Santa Claus hat.
Conservative voices outside of Florida also have chimed in on the science standards debate.
CitizenLink.com, an arm of the James Dobson-led group, Focus on the Family, urged its readers to take action to include intelligent design in the classroom by e-mailing the state.
So far, at least one state board member said she will vote against the new standards. Donna Callaway said she will vote against the proposed standards because evolution "should not be taught to the exclusion of other theories of origin of life," the St. Petersburg Times reported.
The state vote, which was planned for January, will likely be in February because two public meetings about the proposed standards were added in January.
The first meeting will be Jan. 3 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at The Schultz Center for Teaching and Leadership in Jacksonville, 4019 Boulevard Center Drive.
A second meeting will be Jan. 8 in Miramar from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at Everglades High School. 17100 S.W. 48 Court.
The new standards have been praised by scientists. (To see the proposed standards go to www.flstandards.org.)
Lawrence S. Lerner, professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at California State University in Long Beach, who has examined science standards in the various states, has graded Florida's proposed standards as a B+.
Lerner, who gave the previous standards an F, said that the proposals have the potential to be among the best in the nation.
"It's an enormous improvement," Lerner said. "The (current) standards were poorly written and bad all along."
The inclusion of evolution into the standards was imperative, Lerner said.
"When you ignore evolution, it is like trying to teach physics without Newton's Law," Lerner said. "It (evolution) is dealt with quite well (in the new standards)."
It’s interesting the way creationists, if they can’t argue against what someone actually said, will argue against what they “must have meant.” It’s one of the traits that distinguishes creationism from real science.
But I think I’ve found what you’re referring to. Darwin did once speculate in a letter to a friend about life forming “in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, &c., present”—but he was doing so in the context of saying why such life wouldn’t survive today. He was not saying that that’s how he thought life began originally.
And besides, it was just speculation in a personal letter. What he was willing to say in print was “[how life itself first originated] are problems for the distant future, if they are ever to be solved by man” (Descent of Man, chapter 3) and “our ignorance is as profound on the origin of life as on the origin of force or matter” (essay to the Atheneum, 1863). In other words, he didn’t know, and he didn’t think it was necessary to his theory.
Note the part about the origin of force or matter. Do you require physicists and chemists to state where those come from before you accept their theories about how they work?
And evolution is a fact. Living things once existed that don’t exist any more, and exist now that didn’t use to exist. The theory of evolution explains why that’s so.
Yeah, the FSM has almost as much credibility as macro evolution creation.
Fixed that for ya, my friend!
It is also interesting how evolutionist ignore the hard argument to postulate about their own beliefs. The fact that there are things that did exist and don,t exist now are supposedly explained by extinction I have never heard anyone insinuate they evolved out of existence. As for things that now exist that did not exist I would say they got here the same as every other thing did, but that is the root of our discussion isn’t it. Of course we don’t want to talk about how that first thing evolved do we.
What’s the difference between “extinction” and “evolved out of existence”?
The most popular explanation for extinction is the meteor that struck the earth I believe around the Yucatan peninsula that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.I would say that the reptiles did not evolve out of life but were killed off. By evolved out of life I would say that one day it was a pig and the next day it was a hippopotamus.
We are not connected to monkeys. We share a common ancestor with monkeys.
Why should we give ID anymore debate? It was dreamed up 4,000 years ago. It was dreamed up because people didn't understand simple things like gravity, air, and Mc Donalds French Fries.
Ah, the classic argumentum ad nanny-nanny-boo-boo. Haven't seen that one in a while.
Fixed that for ya, my friend!
No, I knew what I meant: macro evolution.
Actually that would be 6,000 yrs. ago. As opposed to a little over 100 yrs. ago when evolution was dreamed up.
So the speed of light, radioactive decay, and the entire field of Geology mean nothing because you believe what was written by a group of people 4000 years ago??? Granted I’m sure they were nice folks, but they could not conceptualize that air had mass? They had no conception of mass? How could they understand DNA, basic chemistry, or anything outside of there scrape by day-by-day farming and herding?
Mmmmm...Bacon.
Didn’t say they did.
I’m perfectly aware of the many extinctions in the past. Your condescending attitude just shows you are incapable of caring on a logical argument. Good day to you!!
* Dr. Robert A. Millikan, famous physicist and Nobel prize-winner, said in an address, a few years ago, to the American chemical society, "The pathetic thing about it is that many scientists are trying to prove the doctrine of evolution, which no scientists can do." Dr. Millikan is an evolutionist; but he is honest enough to admit it as a theory that cannot be proved.Millikan died 1953, in the age of 85....
I've read enough of Darwin's work to know that while he postulates a common ancestor he doesn't identify it, and if he claims it evolved from rocks then I must have missed it. Can you provide a quote?
* Professor Theodosius dobzhansky, a leading evolutionary spokesman, has admitted that "it would be wrong to say that the biological theory of evolution has gained universal acceptance among biologists or even among geneticists".Do you really think this quote represents Theodosius Dobzhansky's thinking better than his most popular quote, i.e.,
Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution (The American Biology Teacher, March 1973, p. 129)The latter is the headline of an article he wrote - and subsumes the ideas of said article. The former - not accredited one - may be just a lament that there are a few biologist not accepting the theory of evolution...
Hollywood has been beating this drum since the sixties...nothing new here.
Liberals are all the same and they think and act like...liberals.
I'd like you to show some of the "miss-characterization, and outright distortion coming out the propaganda site sourced in your link". Up to now, the only examples of distortions are from the site you cited, i.e., fishy quotations...
Merry Christmas -
perhaps, after the holidays, you'll find some time to answer my questions from #95 and #119.
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