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.
I think libel would be the proper word and a class aciton suit on the behalf of leaders of the ID movement is in order. Even so, I think you're just thin skinned and over reacting.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. Many people believe that it was created by some sort of God, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle Six firmly believe that the entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being they call the Great Green Arkleseizure.
The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the coming of a time that they call The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures . However, the Great Green Arkleseizure theory was not widely accepted outside Viltvodle Six, and so one day a race of hyper-intelligent beings built themselves a gigantic computer called Deep Thought to calculate once and for all the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.
So why are there so few practical applications of NS?
Electricity is ubiquitous. The practical application of that subset of physics is enormous.
Dynamics, thermodynamics, statics, material science, chemistry subsets, electronics, etc.
When biology grows up, and it is growing. But asserting that NS is underpinning theory of all biology, inviolate, and absolute truth...is over the top.
Even talk origins when discussing practical NS/Evolutionary applications had the following entry which is hilarious:
>>Directed evolution allows the "breeding" of molecules or molecular pathways to create or enhance products, including:
* enzymes (Arnold 2001)
* pigments (Arnold 2001)
* antibiotics
* flavors
* biopolymers
* bacterial strains to decompose hazardous materials.
Directed evolution can also be used to study the folding and function of natural enzymes (Taylor et al. 2001). <<
Directed evolution is a euphemism for Intelligent Design.
DK
Well being somebody who believes that God created it all and having walked the conservative talk during my lifetime, I found that rather inane and amusing.
Thus the tagline "Atheism is not conservative!" which of course is as meaningless as "Creationism is not conservative!".
LMAO - Bravo
FSM - Finite State Machines - will never be the same.
It's my observation from the historical record and elsewhere that folks that lie about stuff, would kill regarding the same motivation, unless otherwise sure of sanction. That's not necessarily true, because folks have a conscience. I'm not the only one to have recognized that fact. One of the tools of the tyrant is the lie. Folks weilding that tool generate proper suspicion in others about how far they would go to promote their agenda.
Now I realize the IDers have a conscience, so I would never insist that I actually knew at what point any particular IDer would stop at to promote their agenda. The same goes for the democrats in general, should the topic have included, or have been them. Pope Innocent IV did not stop at torture, nor did he stop the murder to promote his agenda. That's a matter of history. So the presumption of sainthood for liars don't apply. Proper suspicions do.
My comment was meant for those that conjure up ID, that I know are engaged in careful fraud and that is clear from the original post. If they have a problem with my suspicion that they would stop at nothing to promote their agenda in the absence of effective sanction, they can KMA and if anyone is offended because I do, the same applies.
Living life as a bigot can be very trying. My heart bleeds for you.
Evolutionary computation techniques utilising darwinian evolution have been used to search for solutions to real-life problems. There have been patented circuit designs produced, and a genetic algorithm has been used to design wing shape on aircraft. In many cases the evolutionary algorithm manages to find solutions human designers haven't even thought of.
Anybody else see the irony?
That why you pulled your tagline.
I would urge you to do your friggin job a little more consistently. Better yet, strike that, since you can't improve on something you're not even doing.
enlighten me
meltdown placemarker
OK. This thread is generally about evolution versus Intelligent design. The terms "Evolutionary computation," "evolutionary algorithm" indicate evolution occurring via ordered structure and/or formula. I.e., the terms combine and arguably reconcile both argument positions
ah i see
Yeah, whatever.
A nice moire certainly is complicated, but lovely.
One problem is that some exponents of ID are simply taking up Darwin's wager, while others are adherents to Wilberforce's natural philosophy. Not many are "young earth" fundamentalists but some of their supporters seem to be. Many scientists who oppose ID seem unaware that this debate ever happened, or that they belong to a school of philosophy.
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