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.
Thats my dad's name.
he he!
As Kenneth Miller points out, ID advocates make two seperate claims, one of which is falsifiable, and the other of which isn't:
1) Irreducibly complex biochemical systems cannot have evolved through Darwinian mechanism. This claim is falsifiable, and indeed has been falsified. I'll get back to that.
2) Irreducibly complex biochemical systems were directly designed by an intelligent agent. This claim is not falsifiable.
ID is not science because it makes non-falsifiable claim #2 and the falsifiable claim it has made have been falsified, yet its advocates deny it.
How has #1 been falsified? Well, as Miller points out in his book, the biochemical system certain bacteria use to metabolize lactose is irreducibly complex. Scientists deleted the gene that produces the proteins in the process. Then they subjected the bacteria to selection pressure for lactose metabolisis, and low and behold, after several generations, the bacteria evolved a new, irreducibly complex biochemical process to metabolize lactose.
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/DI/AcidTest.html
In your initial post, you demanded that scientists evolve a new, irreducibly complex organ in the lab. Well, that's demanding the impossible, for whole organs take thousands of years to evolve. However, we can observe how an irreducibly complex organ, the mammalian ear, evolved in history.
The mammalian ear has three bones, each of which it needs to work. Yet it evolved from the reptilian ear, which has only one bone. Paleantologists have a step-by-step sequence of how it evolved, by appropriating parts from the Reptilian jaw. Falsification #2.
Hmmm...the Great Rottini. Where might I find him. Being close to supper time and all, maybe... he's hungry.<<
It depends on your own spiritual needs. If you wish to worship with others, the Olive Garden may be a place.
If you wish to worship with your family, Safeway may be the place. Even it's name implies salvation.
I can feel the spirit taking you over, may the great collander bless you and yours.
DK
Why such hostility? I must have struck a nerve.
Also, I wasn't trying to BE funny in the post you were replying to.<<
It's water through the collander. Assume he is off his noodle.
DK
I'm an opponent of ID, but I can't help recoil in disgust when I see such gratuitous bashing of the ID supporters' religion. Such tactics have no place in civilized discourse, and they do nothing to advance scientific understanding.
I formally request that the moderators not tolerate this kind of hateful rhetoric.
You can ask to have the post or the thread pulled, but I have seen numerous FReepers defend the treatment of Galileo.
Did you happen to miss the idiotic "Atheism is a Religion" thread? Or maybe when Christians do the bashing it doesn't register with you?
Oh sure, ignore a poster who brags about pooping a deity into an outhouse, but get all righteous about trivial things like torture, murder or prison. I won't name the blaphemer's name, I think he is coming around. But where are all the outrages?
We're talking NOODLES man!
DK
No, all I ask is that people refrain from ad hominems, like the absurd and unsupported claim that someone wants to resort to torture.
but I have seen numerous FReepers defend the treatment of Galileo.
Really? Who? Surely you don't mean me. I never once defended the treatment of Galileo. I have merely pointed out innacuracies in what has come to have been popularly believed about the affair, while at the same time condemning the Church's actions.
THe comment was relevant and not a personal attack. It was relevant to the history that accompanied my conclusion.
"Such tactics have no place in civilized discourse, and they do nothing to advance scientific understanding. I formally request that the moderators not tolerate this kind of hateful rhetoric."
The given History is not a tactic, nor was the conclusion. Your use of the word hate is also inappropriate, since "hate" was in no way a motivation for the post, or any of it's contents.
Yes. I did. I don't have time to read every thread.
Or maybe when Christians do the bashing it doesn't register with you?
How is it "bashing" to assert that Atheism is a religion?
Seems like a perfectly reasonable topic for debate.
Why recoil from bigots?
Hey, Hey!!! this is a pasta thread. Keep it nice!
You'd think we were on post 2499 on 2500 post Creationist/Evolutionist thread.
Next time think what Rotini would want! Even if you're a Zitiist (I don't agree with them but he's seems like a good egg) ask what Ziti would do.
Remember the Great Collander judges us all!
DK
Oh yeah, sure. Claiming without any basis that someone would countenance torture is not personal.
The given History is not a tactic, nor was the conclusion.
First of all, it was not your historical comments I was referring to. I was referring to your insinuation that religious ID advocates would use torture if they had the chance. Saying such a thing is a debating tactic, albeit a bad one.
But come to think of it, dredging up irrelevant, unsavory 800-year-old events from the history of your opponent's Church is also an innappropriate debating tactic.
Your use of the word hate is also inappropriate, since "hate" was in no way a motivation for the post, or any of it's contents.
Baselessly claiming someone is willing to torture innocent people is hateful under any reasonable definition of the word.
You do not do the cause of advancing scientific understanding any good with such rhetoric.
I urge you to cease and desist.
That's better. You can stand for science and against bigotry, no mutual exclusivity there at all.
I'm sorry, but we have some sense of decorum here. Take it to a relevent thread. This is a PASTA thread!!!
If you don't have something tasty to say, don't say anything at all!
DK
It's point of a sword...Moron. Moron was capitalized because it referred to a particular individual.
Boy, is the Great Collander going to be tough on me.
The First Church of Ron Jeremy also worships His Noodly Appendage.
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