Posted on 08/18/2008 9:35:10 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
With five seats on the State Board of Education up for grabs this year, education advocates say how children learn about evolution hangs in the balance -- and who voters choose could affect Kansas' national reputation.
A frequent flip-flop between moderate and conservative majorities on the 10-member board has resulted in the state changing its science standards four times in the past eight years.
Conservatives have pushed for standards casting doubt on evolution, and moderates have said intelligent design does not belong in the science classroom.
In 2007, a new 6-4 moderate majority removed standards that called evolution into question.
This year, none of the three moderates whose seats are up for election are running again. Only one of the two conservative incumbents is running for re-election...
(Excerpt) Read more at kansas.com ...
When will you prove you have a working knowledge of science to make this plausable?
So far you espouse the random, purposelessness of your unintelligent “ideas” and not much more!
Your “accident” model simply shows a lack of imagination.
There are all kinds of ideas about how existence works, all of which are the inadequate musings of mortal men. And Women.
Some people believe that everything has a cause and is determined, or that God knows everything that will happen in the future. I find this rather depressing, since it implies that our lives and everything that will happen to us and all our decisions have already happened in the mind of God. We are like a butterfly collection pinned to boards.
I have no argument against this. I’m just saying I find it unappealing.
From my admittedly limited point of view the word accident is just an emotionally loaded word for that which is unforeseeable. Regardless of what happens in the mind of God, we do not see the future.
But we can see patterns in how things work, and we can plan for contingencies. Call it intelligence if you will; I have no fear of such words. I think of it as learning, a generic process that happens in every creature that has neurons. Obviously humans have a dramatically greater capacity for learning that any creature we know of.
Learning or intelligence is about “predicting” or at least planning for the future. It involves modifying behavior as a result of experience. Changing as a result of repeating patterns in experience. Humans have a possibly unique capacity to imagine possible futures and to plan multiple strategies.
Evolution is a kind of learning. Living populations change as a result of changing conditions. Populations of living things engage in a kind of trial and error learning, and those trials that improve the chances for survival and reproduction become more common.
There is a mistaken notion that evolution only preserves changes that are “selected” or that could be considered “improvements.” this has been shown by experiment not to be true. All changes, except ones that are instantly fatal, have a statistical chance of being preserved in a population. This is not conjecture. It can be observed in the laboratory. The same thing happens in learning. In psychology it is called superstition. The preservation of bogus connections between cause and effect.
The upshot of all this is that I find your question about accident to be meaningless. We, and every living thing, adapts to change and adapts in ways that reflect the consequences of trials and errors. In a sense, the behavior of living things is caused by the future, or at least as a result of consequences.
So what does this mean for me as an individual? It means that by whatever means, I have been given the capacity to learn how things work and the capacity to anticipate the future and plan strategies. In means, in the only way that can be objectively described, that I have free will.
On metaphorically level, the capacity to learn how things work is a talent. We as individuals have different capacities to learn, or different sized talents. But we can all choose to learn or we can choose not to learn.
The word for learning how things work is science. We can choose to increase our store of knowledge, or we can hide our ability to learn.
Oh, I wasn’t serious, I was merely attempting to show godless liberals their own tactics, but I suspect too many are incapable of seeing it anyway.
Agreed on the New Age comments, but they don’t get to have it both ways, when they argue they’re in the minority and thus somehow have more rights than any majority, are protected by the constitution because of their minority status, blah blah blah,
so either Christians are in the majority or they are not.
No one, regardless of credentials, will satisfy your childish demand for proof. You have already chosen to reject the work of tens of thousands of professional biologists, so you would reject whatever I say, regardless of my credentials.
Everything I say can be checked against the work of professional biologists -- textbooks, blogs by specialists, professional journals. All it take on your part is time and effort.
ah, the fallacy of neutrality, and the assertion that evolution falls in the same category as mathematics.
“Natural Selection”, yes,
“molecules to man evolution” forced model and extravagent extrapolation, no.
“Natural Selection” could be close to “neutral”, as the conclusions do not force an assumed worldview and could be interpreted either way.
Forcing this model to extrapolate to the “origins” question is not, it is a theological assertion based on an assumed atheistic/materialistic worldview,
just as if I were to say that 2+2 always equals 4 and then telling students that I’d extrapolate from this that God made the rules.
So, then, you don’t get to teach “origins of man from evolution” if I don’t get to teach 2+2=4 means God.
Teach that on your own time.
no need to write him out of anything either.
There never was, unless the godless liberals are afraid of something, or angry.
Which is the entire point.
more irony.
In other words you just confirmed that very premise.
You said 2+2=4 is something we know without appreciating it as a gift from God...which therefore means it arose ultimately from a purposeless, random, unintelligent series of initial events.
and lots of things they HAVE wanted to believe...
like your ideas arose from an initial purposeless, random and unintelligent “event”.
Come to think of it...
Here’s a nice paper on free will by someone who can write and think better than I can. Not that that’s a big deal.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0803/0803.1367v2.pdf
“Then there is no need to write Him into the curriculum.”
or OUT of the classroom...if a child asks “Why did God make mosquitoes”?, the godless liberal NEA types don’t need to reply to him “this is science class”.
Science should be big enough to stand without God if this is your wish, being impossible to remove something that doesn’t exist in the first place.
Unless of course godless liberals are worried that their worldview won’t stand up to truth.
Liberal ideology in general cannot withstand the existance of opposing views, especially the truth.
That’s why they have to use thug tactics and the government force to silence dissent.
I've asked a dozen times in the last couple of days what the folks in Louisiana should be teaching, now that they have official legal authorization.
What is the scientific alternative to evolution?
These questions are a good example of the problem. The first group of questions—not the “why” part, but the 2+2=4, constant speed of light, etc. parts—can be answered the same way by anyone, no matter what their religious (or non-) belief. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, Arapahos, Eskimos can all add 2+2 or measure the speed of light and get the same answer.
>>>>CLEARLY there’s order and purpose found here.
Like it or not, evolution is in the first category. Scientists from all over the world, for 150 years now, have been counting and measuring the evidence for evolution, and the vast majority of them have come up with the same answer, even though they may all have different answers for the “who” question. That’s why evolution is taught in public school science classes and answers to the “who” question are not. So put your kids in a school that teaches the “who” answer you like, or teach it yourself when they get home. Or join wintertime in the quest to abolish the public school system entirely. But you don’t get to demand that your answer be taught to everyone else as the right one.
>>>>>>>AGAIN, no one is demanding anything other than equal time! At least that’s my quest. Scientists can teach evoilution as they wish till the cows come home, b ut what are so afraid of by people FREELY understanding OTHERS INDEED have different ideas of theories of origins?
The constitution doesn’t apply to ONLY one group, once again, I’d hope you understand it applies to EVERYONE, yes including Christians!
These questions are a good example of the problem. The first group of questions—not the “why” part, but the 2+2=4, constant speed of light, etc. parts—can be answered the same way by anyone, no matter what their religious (or non-) belief. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, Arapahos, Eskimos can all add 2+2 or measure the speed of light and get the same answer.
>>>>CLEARLY there’s order and purpose found here! This idea that all we now know and experience isn’t fully and rationally explained as having arisen from unexplained, random, purposeless, accidental matter arising from nothingness!
Like it or not, evolution is in the first category. Scientists from all over the world, for 150 years now, have been counting and measuring the evidence for evolution, and the vast majority of them have come up with the same answer, even though they may all have different answers for the “who” question. That’s why evolution is taught in public school science classes and answers to the “who” question are not. So put your kids in a school that teaches the “who” answer you like, or teach it yourself when they get home. Or join wintertime in the quest to abolish the public school system entirely. But you don’t get to demand that your answer be taught to everyone else as the right one.
>>>>>>>AGAIN, no one is demanding anything other than equal time! At least that’s my quest. Scientists can teach evolution as they wish till the cows come home, but what are they so afraid of by people FREELY understanding OTHERS INDEED have different ideas of theories of origins?
The constitution doesn’t apply to ONLY one group, once again, I’d hope you understand it applies to EVERYONE, yes including Christians!
What other scientific theory is there? If you were in Louisiana, and had legal authorization, what specifically would you teach that explains all the evidence?
Are you saying that explaining the fossil and genetic evidence surrounding the current human physical form (note I didn’t say “man”) in terms of evolution requires an atheistic worldview? That’ll be news to the Catholics and Jews.
We can choose to increase our store of knowledge, or we can hide our ability to learn.
>>>>>>>>OR we can enhance it, understanding that our own limited insight will always be exactly that and science is and will rmeain for the forseeable future open-ended.
People genuinely interested in science do not allow their own bias to interfere with truth seeking, and this is true for ALL humans.
People should understand that science is capable of withstanding presentation of new ideas, theories, etc.
I have zero problem for people to continue to limit themselves by and through their own limited cognition and natural insight.
Intelligence, learning, growing, all traced back to unexplained, random, purposeless, matter arising from noin-matter through some “event” is fine if that’s what they’d wish for the rest of their existence.
My problem is when they demand it of others.
yes, and continually misunderstand “freedom of” does not mean “freedom FROM” religion.
Or obsessed with removing nothing from their midst.
WOW....project much?
Any luck with understaniding the word IRONY yet?
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