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.
Oh, that's mature.
if you didn't read the thread, how could you possibly know what's in it?
I don't. It is very possible there was "bashing" going on in the thread. I was only commenting on the tittle.
Christians advocated imposing a religion on everyone at the point of a gun.
Care to cite an example?
Stupid, fascistic, intolerant, so-called Christians - just like you.
Sigh. More baseless namecalling. Are you in 2nd grade?
Thanks. I'll do my best to keep it up.
I think maybe you should check your facts.
The theory of gravity is very easy to prove. Gravity can be predicted with great accuracy, where it will exist, and how much of it will exist there. It can easily be tested, has been tested, and it works every single time.
The Theory of Evolution, is not the equivilant to the Theory of Gravity. It is equivilant to the Theory of What Makes Gravity Work. And in that regard, schience has no bloody idea.
Read the post and try to understand it.
"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."
Read the post my post is a reply to. Then show where the church in question is the poster's church. I referred to "IDers" in general and called their art a con.
It is a scientific con. That's a sin. If you have a problem with my pointing out that Pope Innocent IV sinned as I clearly showed, then show he didn't. I brought up Pope Innocent IV's sin, because the poster proposed that the religion of the Pope's victims might be a suitable arbitrary designer. Now I know damn well folks aren't going to honestly consider that a possibility.
" You do not do the cause of advancing scientific understanding any good with such rhetoric."
I exposed the con Behe and the other leaders are playing. That regards sin, not science. The science was addressed elsewhere. I made no claim that anyone other than the IDers are involved in it. That means the perpetrators of it.
You're doing a good job and I know you're stuck in a bad spot, the middle.
What exactly is the ID supporters' religion? And why are you trying to pretend that this religion is science or belongs in science class?
Behe made the bold claim that it is impossible for any IC process/system/organ/organalle to evolve in a Darwinian fashion. This claim has been falsified.
Everytime something IC has been shown to be evolvable he either, a) ignores it b) claims it's not really IC c)demands every last detail of its evolution be described or d)ignores it.
Oy vey.
I urge you to knock off the personal attacks.
Wideawake and Behe are both Catholic. This is a matter of public record.
And why are you trying to pretend that this religion is science or belongs in science class?
I'm not. If you cared to read my profile or my other posts, I oppose ID.
Care to expand on that and show how that is in fact the case, or is there really nothing behind your personal attack?
This little gem "ID's" you as a bigot. If you don't know the meaning of the word bigot, you can look it up.
You've got chutzpah though, you make a sick, bigoted assertion with no proof and then whine about being personally attacked. Not only are you a bigot, you're a clown.
Surely you jest? Spunkets makes bigoted statements accusing everybody involved in ID of wanting to torutre and murder and curiosity calls him on it and you tell curiosity to "cease and desist"?
I read both. You undeniably stated that ID advocates would resort to torture if they could. That, sir, is not only hateful rhetoric, it is slander.
Then show where the church in question is the poster's church.
Wideawake has frequently confessed on this forum that he is Catholic.
I referred to "IDers" in general and called their art a con.
Yes, that's fine. I have no objection to that. It is only your accusation that ID advocates would use torture that I objected to.
I did look it up. I don't think you know what it means.
"whine about being personally attacked."
I didn't whine. I simply asked for you to explain your remark and you did.
That IS the Theory of Gravity. All the measurments of gravity are stuff that has to be explained, not theory.
Yar! Thanks for the link, matey!
BFLR = Bump for later reading.
Get your thinker fixed, it's as fouled up as your moral compass. Asserting groups of people are wont to torture and murder because they have differing beliefs than you do is bigotry. You're a bigot. Learn to live with it.
I didn't whine. I simply asked for you to explain your remark and you did.
Sure you did, you whined about personal attacks.
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