Posted on 08/24/2005 6:51:49 AM PDT by Quick1
Topeka — From Darwin to intelligent design to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
The debate over teaching evolution in Kansas public schools has caught the attention of a cross-country Internet community of satirists.
In the past few weeks, hundreds of followers of the supreme Flying Spaghetti Monster have swamped state education officials with urgent e-mails.
They argue that since the conservative majority of the State Board of Education has blessed classroom science standards at the behest of intelligent design supporters, which criticize evolution, they want the gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster taught.
“I’m sure you realize how important it is that your students are taught this alternate theory,” writes Bobby Henderson, a Corvallis, Ore., resident whose Web site, www.venganza.org, is part FSM tribute and part job search. Karl Gehring/Journal-World Illustration
Karl Gehring/Journal-World Illustration
“It is absolutely imperative that they realize that observable evidence is at the discretion of a Flying Spaghetti Monster,” he wrote to the education board.
Henderson did not return a telephone call for comment. He says in his letter that it is disrespectful to teach about the FSM without wearing “full pirate regalia.”
Board member Bill Wagnon, a Democrat, whose district includes Lawrence, said he has received more than 500 e-mails from supporters of FSM.
“Clearly, these are just supreme satirists. What they are doing is pointing out that there is no more sense to intelligent design than there is to a Flying Spaghetti Monster,” Wagnon said.
Intelligent design posits that some aspects of biology are so complex, they point toward an intelligent creator.
ID proponents helped shepherd a report and hearings that have resulted in science standards that criticize evolution and have put Kansas in the middle of international attention on the subject.
John Calvert, of Lake Quivira, the lawyer who was instrumental in writing the science standards that criticize evolution, said he had seen the FSM e-mails, and was not impressed.
“You can only use that misinformation so long,” Calvert said. Calvert said the science standards do not promote intelligent design, but show that evolution has its critics.
Wagnon and the three other board members who support evolution have written Henderson back, saying they appreciated the comic relief but that they were saddened that the science standards were being changed to criticize evolution.
Blasphemer!!!
There is only one true noodle!
The glorious Rotini!!!
DK
Again, bad jokes are no substitute for good arguments.
Your side continues to lose ground in this debate partially because of the weakness of evolutionary theory and partially because of your childish attitude.
Ramen.
Help me out wide...
Why, in discussions about ID, is the a discussion about the designer off limits? It's fine, in Behe's estimation, to infer design from that which is irreducibly complex, but there is a firm refusal to discuss the nature of the designer. Why do you think that is?
I would be extremely interested in a good argument as to why we can infer design but not discuss the designer.
Shhh, if they say it often enough and nobody corrects them it becomes the truth.
Hardly. When ID presents evidence worthy of something other than laughter get back to me.
That would indeed be the best of all pastable worlds.
According to the pic on post 50, that's the pesto of all pastable worlds.
Unnngh.
Probably because the design (if it is proven to be a design) does not necessarily provide definitive information about the designer.
The designer is not necessarily God according to the Judaeo-Christian definition, for example.
Where did I say anything about creationism?
Evolution is a catch-all term for theories.
Should we usher in the theories of man made global warming and homosexuality as a birth defect into public schools? The dominant culture does not want those theories questioned either.
I don't believe that we do students any favor when scientists pretend to have all the answers. Research into the origins of life and the origins of the universe continue and will continue. Some student may be inspired by such questions to devote his/her life to such research.
The book is not closed.
Read my post 29 and then get back to me.
Not to mention The Great Gnoccho!
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