Posted on 11/12/2004 4:54:43 AM PST by fr11
ATLANTA - First, Georgia's education chief tried to take the word "evolution" out of the state's science curriculum. Now a suburban Atlanta county is in federal court over textbook stickers that call evolution "a theory, not a fact." Some here worry that Georgia is making itself look like a bunch of rubes or, worse, discrediting its own students.
"People want to project the image that Georgia is a modern state, that we're in the 21st century. Then something like this happens," said Emory University molecular biologist Carlos Moreno.
The federal lawsuit being heard this week in Atlanta concerns whether the constitutional separation of church and state was violated when suburban Cobb County school officials placed the disclaimer stickers in high school biology texts in 2002. The stickers say evolution should be "critically considered."
Some scientists say they are frustrated the issue is still around nearly 80 years since the Scopes Monkey Trial — the historic case heard in neighboring Tennessee over the teaching of evolution instead of the biblical story of creation.
"We're really busy. We have a lot to do. And here we are, having to go through this 19th century argument over and over again," said Sarah Pallas, who teaches biology and neuroscience at Georgia State University in Atlanta.
Moreno and dozens of other science instructors, along with the county superintendent, argued that the stickers only make the state look backward. And high school teacher Wes McCoy worried the issue could tarnish his students.
"I didn't want college admission counselors thinking less of their science educations, thinking they hadn't been taught evolution or something," McCoy testified.
Moreno recalled how, after graduating from Georgia public schools, he headed north to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (news - web sites), only to find that people were less than kind about his educational roots.
"They felt Southerners were not only less well educated, but less intelligent," Moreno said.
Doughnut shop worker Maria Jordan, 48, said her Atlanta customers were shaking their heads over the latest dispute. "Lord, don't we have more important things to worry about?" she asked. "It's just a flat-out embarrassment."
As for what they are saying elsewhere around the country, she said: "Whatever Georgia's getting up north, we're putting it on ourselves."
Kangagroos have larger feet and bigger hops than kangaroos so this is not that far fetched.
In your imagination......
A one-foot touch-and-go by a hang glider.
> We all have faith-based assumptions, even you
Yes... but in such matters, my faith is based not on *faith*, but on past experience and experimental evaluation.
> You have to exercise faith to pretend to know that a foot and all living things arrived by a series of random events.
Only the "faith" to believe that the physics we experience today was the physics of the past.
So you really do 'believe' in spontaneous generation?
When is Theory Fact? When broadcast by Dan Rather on DNCBS News!
> Do they repeal the conservation laws?
Sorta. But that should not be a problem for a Creationist, as they can believe that Nicole Brown Simpsons head spontaneously self-decapitated since there were no witnesses...
> So you really do 'believe' in spontaneous generation?
Nope. I'm not a Creationist, I'm an Evolutionist. Evolution does not include spontaneous generation.
> But what if there were only one footprint in the middled of a 5 acre field of snow.
Some years ago, I was walkign through a large field of snow in Iowa. For no apparent reason, I was followign the tracks of a squrrel. Tracks that just ended... no backtracking, no digging under the snow... just ended.
For a Creationist, this would be proof that the Squirrel Rapture came, and Rocky got borne up into Heaven. For the Evolutionist, this was evidence that Rocky was borne up into the heavens... probably by a large owl.
The only great revolution that would upset my deeply held religious worldview would be the one where science proves that matter spontaneously appears. Any movement on that front?
Your answer indicated that you may believe this is how matter and life itself came into being, spontaneously...as in spontaneous generation.
You replied to the question with this answer on post #94.
Yes. Look up "virtual particle pair production." Also see discussion of the zero point.
Are you sure you are not leaning toward the old spontaneous generation?
> Your answer indicated that you may believe this is how matter and life itself came into being,
Uhh.... no. I *really* suggest you read it all again, and then consider long and hard what your conclusions are. Here, I'll help you:
1) Assume photons spontaneously appear from the quantum flux.
2) This means spontaneous generation of mass-energy (matter)
3) This says *nothing* about the generation of *life*.
> Are you sure you are not leaning toward the old spontaneous generation?
Of life? Not in the slightest. This is not, after all, a thread about cosmogenesis, but one about biogenesis and evolution. "Spontaneous generation of life" is a concept used today SOLELY by Creationists, as a form of strawman arguement against science. It is lame, it is dishonest, it is intellectually lazy, it is at it's core evil... but then, that's Creationism in a nutshell.
List o' placemarkers
I will ignore the hyperbole.
> Oh, just matter itself is what spontaneously generated. I see.
Perhaps. Physics may support this. But no physics anywhere supports the Creationist views that life suddenly "poofed" into existence.
> I will ignore the hyperbole.
Well, then you'll have to give up your faith, then. It's *all about* the hyperbole. "Believe this or EVERLASTING DAMNATION!!!"
If the sticker people are so worried about "dogmatism," why not apply the disclaimer globally and make it apply to all theories in science?
I can hear it now... preach it,...amen, it all just came into being spontaneously..amen,..it just happened...on its own...long ago...I can't prove it but I have faith..and I will preach it...amen, amen, amen, ya gotta have faith.....just like at a brush arbor in the deep south.
If the sticker people are so worried about "dogmatism," why not apply the disclaimer globally and make it apply to all theories in science?Hear, hear!
But of course, it isn't about "dogmatism" but about targeting the theory of evolution specifically as it doesn't fit their world view. It's quite sad actually.
> You sure get all worked up over your faith in the spontaneous generation of matter.
I have no such faith. I merely mentioend the possibility. More tellingly, however, the fact that you see any views other than yours in strictly religious terms says far more about *you* than it does about the target of your ire.
Seek help.
> about targeting the theory of evolution specifically as it doesn't fit their world view.
Well, with luck this too shall pass. The same mindset that today demands that Poofism have equal place alongside evolution in the biology texts would hav ebeen the same mindset that would have demanded crystal spheres and epicycles alongside Copernicus and Kepler's "Theory" of heliocentrism.
They are to be pitied, not hated. For they know that they are doomed to extinction and the ridicule of history.
> about targeting the theory of evolution specifically as it doesn't fit their world view.
Well, with luck this too shall pass. The same mindset that today demands that Poofism have equal place alongside evolution in the biology texts would hav ebeen the same mindset that would have demanded crystal spheres and epicycles alongside Copernicus and Kepler's "Theory" of heliocentrism.
They are to be pitied, not hated. For they know that they are doomed to extinction and the ridicule of history.
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