State Board of Education member Connie Morris was at it again. This time she interrupted a science class at Wichita’s Stucky Middle School to tell the teacher that she was offended by a picture of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, an anti-evolution parody, that was hanging on the classroom door. She then told the principal that she wanted it removed. Fortunately, fellow board member Sue Gamble was also along on the tour. “I advised the principal that Morris has no authority,” she told The Eagle. “I told him to deal with his staff as he saw fit, not by what a state board member says.” Especially Morris.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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169 Comments
In my opinion the only reason that so many people backup ID, is that they want to feel special. People want to feel that they have a definite purpose in life so that they do not have to do, or think anything for themselves. I would also like these supporters of ID to ask themselves if they really want a “sign from god to” be used to forward a twisted political agenda. So many people who believe in intelligent design only do so because they will not take the time to look at certain facts. The body of these supporters are not well versed in biology, contrary they base their opinions on believing that Jesus was magic and on a book that was written 2000 years ago in a world that needed a god for divorce and legal papers, so these people have no right to make any assertions against an ideal of which they know nothing about. They want “evidence”. If this evidence is so important to them I ask them to give me proof of their own religion, and please do not tell me that a special sci-fi book is your evidence.
If the IDers want THEIR brand of Creationism taught they have to allow for MY brand as well.
I think the meatballs must have looked to suggestive to her!
Ben, that’s exactly how I feel about it. So maybe they should have mandatory comparative religion classes in school. I wonder how the Fundies would feel about that…
I must be on a ‘mandatory’ kick today. Sheesh!
Oh, just ignore the ignorant ****. She’s too stupid for comment, let alone the front page.
Touched by His Noodly Appendage
May the FSM forgive poor ignorant Ms. Morris.
Thanks WE editors for carrying this thread. I emailed the offending teacher today to let him know that he needs to keep the poster up. When you’re making Connie Morris mad, you can be assured you are doing something right.
Where does that IGNORANT IDIOT get off, trying to tell a teacher what to display in a classroom? Is Morris so far out of touch that she thinks she can order people around?
Obviously, in her warped, confused, and tiny little remnant of whatever brain she might have left, she has this need to convert everyone to HER brand of religion.
Here is a thought…send her to Baghdad to ‘reform’ Islamics….that could be fun to watch!
The word I am hearing is that Connie Morris is able to amass a good sized war chest to defend her position on the BOE by way of out of state contributors. I fear she may not one who can be taken lightly. That mistake was what let her get elected in the first place.
This is a link to a PAC that is working to defeat her and the other conservative members:http://www.ksalliance.org/
I do think it is interesting that Connie’s brand of politics can generate derision from so many different political corners and ideologies. This Blog has conistently shown that.
See the link below to a letter to the editor of _Scientific American_. Does he have a point, or is he humorless, as he concedes some could see him?
http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=the_flying_spaghetti_monster_and_i&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
Maybe ms morris had an acid flashback
If you really want to defeat Connie whoever runs against her needs to hammer home the fact that shes an ex acid head/nude model/home wrecker/free love ect
It probably doesn’t make much difference. We may defeat Connie & Co, but as soon as we let our guard down they’ll vote in another quasi-Taliban school board. That’s just the way it is in Kansas.
In Connie’s brand of conservatism, it is a plus if one can talk about about one’s sinful past, because that leads up to the counter-point of “I’m saved now”. This whole racket was worked this year by Brenda “let me tell you about my abortion” Landwehr. It is better to not hammer them on their distant sinful past, I’m telling ya.
What Connie needs to hammered on is her recent sinful past:
“How much did you charge the state to attend a magnet school conference?” “Wasn’t your hotel room $300 or $400 per night?” “How many magnet schools are there in western Kansas? That’s what I thought, zero” “We understand when you were forced to, you repaid the state, but did you repay for all of the scam you pulled?”
“How have you improved the BOE, since you have served? Oh, by appointing the ever-so qualified Bob Corkins and voting to change the science standards … hmmmm….”
KFG has said that people in Western KS may not understand the nuances in the changes in the science standards, but they clearly get it when a public figure steals from them.
There are going to be rallies in Hays and another town this spring. Be sure to bring your pitchfork.
In Connie’s brand of conservatism, it is a plus if one can talk about about one’s sinful past, because that leads up to the counter-point of “I’m saved now”. This whole racket was worked this year by Brenda “let me tell you about my abortion” Landwehr. It is better to not hammer them on their distant sinful past, I’m telling ya.
What Connie needs to hammered on is her recent sinful past:
“How much did you charge the state to attend a magnet school conference?” “Wasn’t your hotel room $300 or $400 per night?” “How many magnet schools are there in western Kansas? That’s what I thought, zero” “We understand when you were forced to, you repaid the state, but did you repay for all of the scam you pulled?”
“How have you improved the BOE, since you have served? Oh, by appointing the ever-so qualified Bob Corkins and voting to change the science standards … hmmmm….”
KFG has said that people in Western KS may not understand the nuances in the changes in the science standards, but they clearly get it when a public figure steals from them.
There are going to be rallies in Hays and another town this spring. Be sure to bring your pitchfork.
In Connie’s brand of conservatism, it is a plus if one can talk about about one’s sinful past, because that leads up to the counter-point of “I’m saved now”. This whole racket was worked this year by Brenda “let me tell you about my abortion” Landwehr. It is better to not hammer them on their distant sinful past, I’m telling ya.
What Connie needs to hammered on is her recent sinful past:
“How much did you charge the state to attend a magnet school conference?” “Wasn’t your hotel room $300 or $400 per night?” “How many magnet schools are there in western Kansas? That’s what I thought, zero” “We understand when you were forced to, you repaid the state, but did you repay for all of the scam you pulled?”
“How have you improved the BOE, since you have served? Oh, by appointing the ever-so qualified Bob Corkins and voting to change the science standards … hmmmm….”
KFG has said that people in Western KS may not understand the nuances in the changes in the science standards, but they clearly get it when a public figure steals from them.
There are going to be rallies in Hays and another town this spring. Be sure to bring your pitchfork.
In Connie’s brand of conservatism, it is a plus if one can talk about about one’s sinful past, because that leads up to the counter-point of “I’m saved now”. This whole racket was worked this year by Brenda “let me tell you about my abortion” Landwehr. It is better to not hammer them on their distant sinful past, I’m telling ya.
What Connie needs to hammered on is her recent sinful past:
“How much did you charge the state to attend a magnet school conference?” “Wasn’t your hotel room $300 or $400 per night?” “How many magnet schools are there in western Kansas? That’s what I thought, zero” “We understand when you were forced to, you repaid the state, but did you repay for all of the scam you pulled?”
“How have you improved the BOE, since you have served? Oh, by appointing the ever-so qualified Bob Corkins and voting to change the science standards … hmmmm….”
KFG has said that people in Western KS may not understand the nuances in the changes in the science standards, but they clearly get it when a public figure steals from them.
There are going to be rallies in Hays and another town this spring. Be sure to bring your pitchfork.
Sorry folks about the triple post, it was caused by that deal you sometimes see which is supposed to stop the posting by alleged robots. I know, I know that was a softball lob for some of you.
Oops, make that a quadruple post.
Hey DD?
We ALL miss KFG. 5 posts in 6 minutes reminds us of her to be true. But they should not be duplicates!!
Actually KFG would have a ball with this one. I’ll have a ball with it later myself.
Ramen
Pancho – how do you know she is “ex” and not current. It could explain a lot …
Shes an idiot. End of story.
Ben, maybe she’s up to date. Acid is so 1970s. Crack? METH?!?!? Don’t they cook a lot of meth out her way?
You are being misled by flake-O stories.
Ask your children’s high school principal if the school is teachig AP Biology, AP Chemistry and AP Physics C courses. (Forget AP Physics B, and IB “Higher Level” physics: these are traditional 12th grade trigonometry-based physics courses. High school-level physics with a “college credit” label is a joke. It’s creditable for humanities and social science majors, who probably aren’t even taking it.)
Does your kids’ school offer AP Calculus BC? If it only offers AP Calc AB, your kids are are a generation behind the curve.
If you don’t think your kids are smart enough to take these courses, who told you this?
hey ConnieBaby… relax and chill. You’d better find some semblance of a sense of humor if you’re going to insist on going around and making yourself a laughingstock.
Ahhhhhh Connie doesn’t like pictures of the flying spaghetti monster. They are a no-no on a classroom door.
But her brand of religion should be taught in that classroom if she had her way.
Steve Abrams calls the picture “juvenile” while he also wants the schools to preach as to his god. (this guy is a veterinarian. Shouldn’t he be saving the lives of and helping animals? Nope never mind. I wouldn’t let him treat my dog. He’d probably tell me that my dog should die cause it’sthe will of god)
So Connie and Steve don’t like pics of the spaghetti monster.
Anybody got links to pics from Connie’s past? Maybe she and Abrams would enjoy them more.
In the mean time, anybody got an email for Connie? I want to send her not just a pic but the entirety of the truth of the spaghetti monster. She converted once, maybe she needs further enlightenment.
Hey JR, you’re right. We shouldn’t have to put up with this level of repetition. But surely I can be forgiven due to the repeated B.S. from the dark side.
I’m also thinking that KFG (who has the best tan of any woman I have seen in Wichita) may be out working while the rest of us toiling at this ill-gotten gain.
Take care all,D.D.
I can not understand the overeaction to the spaghetti monster, though I understand the frustration of people making a joke out of things others believe in. I am a creationist and know many folks are taught things that simply are not true. The things have been so much a part of the literature that even when they are shown to be false, people still teach them, because the evidence, though false, supports what is beleived. I am somewhat new at the blog sights, but if any of you, especailly the person who thinks creatioist have no evidence would like to engage in some problematic an even fraudulent evidence used by evolutionists let me know. I would gladly do this. If you know of a better format, let me know.
Agreed that DD. 4 times may be not enough given the capacity of the right!
KFG is by the way on a well earned vacation with her partner in love if not law.
Present your facts chuck. We welcome new posters.
Wait wait wait! I know this one! Are you going to start with “irreducible complexity,” Chuck?I love a good evolution debate!Some of my favorite examples of the “evidence for ID”:
Bombordier beetlesPolonium halosMan tracks in Puloxy”We’ve never observed speciation!”
Eh. I have to run. I’ll be back tomorrow!
I apologize, I just had my computer lock up and lost everything I was writing. I will try to do this in small increments and start with the biogenetic law also called recapitulation theory. Can I assume you know what that is?
The fact that we are still teaching this should be an embarassment to any scientist. Dr. Michael Ricardson from St. George’s Hospital Medical School assembled a team of international collaborators to prove this idea was true. He found just the opposite. You can read a news paper version of the story “The Times” (London, UK) Monday August 11 1997 on pg.14. or what he wrote in “Anatomy and Embryology”,196:2 pp91-106, August 1997. A few of his statements ” It’s shocking to find that someone I thought was a great scientist (Earnst Haeckel-my inset)was deliberately misleading. It makes me angry.” “What he did was to take a human embryo and copy it, pretending that the salamanderand the pig and all the others looked the same at the same stage of development. They Don’t” “These are Fakes” “This is one of the worst cases of scientific fraud”
Aw, crap. I suspect you’re right about KFG, DD. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to robbing liquor stores.
You might say, well they just learned it was wrong give it some time to get around. The fact is this has been know for years, but since it supports the evolutionary theory, and most students do not know the true facts, it is continually taught.Let me give you examples of how long it has been known to be wrong
1)1969 Walter J. Bock of the Department of Biological Sciences of Columbia University in “Science” 164:684″…The biogenetic law has become so deeply rooted in biological thought that it cannot be weeded out in spite of its having been demonstrated to be wrong by numerous subsequent scholars”Is not the scientific method about demonstrating the thoery to be true. Here it demonstrates theeory to be false and scientist says the scientific community is being dishonest. I will not send you to all of his subsequent scholars. just remember, he said that in 1969 and it is still being taught.
2)1932 edition of “Quarterly review of Biology” 7:98 Waldo Shumay of U. of Illinois wrote about the theory of embryonic recapitulation (biogenetic law) that when considering the results of experimental embryology it “seemed to demand that the hypothesis be abandoned”
3) 1874- five years after Haeckel presented his drawings which gave support to the idea Prof. William His of Leipzig University exposed the drawings as frauds as Haeckel admitted that he relied on memory and used artistic license in prepairing the drawings according to Dr. Scott Gilbert, Developmental Biolgy, Swarthmore College, Pa.
Regardless of your belief in creation or evolution, why are we still teaching it in the schools in 2006? Thanks for welcoming me to the debate. I realize I went off the topic of the spaghetti monster-truly irrelevant- to much meatier stuff. No matter what our beliefs can we at least agree that when it comes to science we do not think it is right for students to be taught things that are clearly false, and I would even say partially taught in order to suppor our view of things?
Chuck,
You’ll have to do WAY btter than that. That’s old news… Has been for a while. Might I suggest you start repudiating, point by point, the information at:
http://www.talkorigins.org/
That should keep you busy for a while…When you’re done there, I’ll give you another to work on.
Oh, and just for giggles, why don’t you try offering an explanation for the fact that over 100,000 hits are returned when you do a search for papers on evolution, common descent, and the like in the peer reviewed literature. Yet, only 1 hit is returned for papers supporting ID (in peer reviewed journals, that is), and that one paper in a low impact factor kind of biostatistics journal. I hope you’re not seriously suggesting that the 100,000:1 ratio is just a fluke or that the scientists who performed the work were so seriously undertrained that they didn’t consider other alternative explanations. Where are the other 99,999 papers from IDers/creationists to at least make the debate from your side somewhat tenable.
BTW, the 100,000 and 1 are from 1989 forwards…a bit more “modern” than 1932 and 1969.
I think you are all missing something here.
Why is it ok to have a poster of an obvious joke of religion against evolution but it is not ok to have an actual poster of a religion on display?
Seriously.
All of you who support this poster of the FSM, do you also support a teacher having on display religious posters with Jesus or other Christian sayings?
Last time I checked the ACLU and all you anti-Christians have done everything in your power to have any and all religious symbols removed from the public area.
I bet if the teacher had a poster of Christ and the 10 commandments on display you would all be throwing a little tantrum and go into convulsions.
Sasnak warrior, will you engage in the exchange of thoughtful ideas, or will you be satisfied with name calling. I am not afraid to look at anything, will you do the same? Any of the rest of you willing to deal with the issues I bring up. After all, all the scientific evidence is suppose to be on your side. Can you defend the teaching of the biogenetic law or recapitulation theory in our schools? If you can not, then why do you think it is still being taught?
Chuck, I’ve also been wondering why:
1) men have nipples. They don’t serve any purpose and they can actually endanger men since they too can get breast cancer. Funny how all embryos start out as female and the intervention of certain hormones lets the male develop…hardly an “intelligent” way of doing things.
2) Why man can suffer retinal detachment but a squid can’t. Certainly God made man more advanced than a squid. From an engineering perspective the human eye is a terribly inefficient organ. The human eye has blind spots, and it suffers from the interference of blood vessels positioned in front of the nervous terminals, which can cause detachment of the retina. Squids, octopuses, and other cephalopod mollusks, have a very similarly constructed eye, but with the blood vessels positioned at the rear of the nervous terminals. Consequently, they do not suffer retinal detachment. Why would an intelligent designer design squid eyes to be better than human eyes?
Goosebumps are the result of contractions around hair follicles. In hairy primates these contractions served to cause the hair or fur to stand erect, thereby improving its insulation value against the cold. In dangerous situations this reflex would also make the animal look larger and more intimidating to an attacker. Since humans have relatively little body hair compared to the other primates, goosebumps are another vestigial reflex we inherited from our primate ancestors that serves no purpose. Why would an intelligent designer give humans a vestigial reflex?
Brian, other than the fact the scientific reseach says the biogenetic law was not part of Darwin’s theory is really irrelevant. the face is we are still teaching it in the schools today as if it were true. Does that bather you at all?
Brian, other than the fact the scientific reseach says the biogenetic law was not part of Darwin’s theory is really irrelevant. the face is we are still teaching it in the schools today as if it were true. Does that bather you at all?
Nathan,
No one is making fun of religion. It’s the dogmatic nonsese that’s being ridiculed. You seem to be of the opinionthat if science and religion conflict, so much the worse for science. Rather than having science reconsider its position on what are essentially God-given facts, why don’t you go back, have a church council, and adjust the dogma to fit the facts.
Brian,
Perhaps you would care to comment on my post instead of the strawman?
Sigh, chuck, the biogenetic law is old news, as I stated…Your quotes from 1932 and 1969 are non-sequitors. Try starting in the 1990s. Please respond to my questions about 100,000:1 and unintelligent design features with some supportable theories or speculations.
Remember that science, by its nature, makes mistakes and ADMITS them, moves on and finds a better explanation. Why don’t you check out the second law of thermodynamics? Sadi Carnot developed the idea of the ultimate efficiency of heat engines based on the flawed concept of an invisible fluid called caloric. Yet, almost 50 years later, after caloric had been debunked, Rudolph Clausius, J. WSillard Gibbs, and Ludwig Boltzmann found the basic concept and mathematics correct (although couched in the wrong terms). From this the idea of entropy, entropy conservation (or lack thereof), phase stability, phase equilibrium, and all the rest of modern thermodynamics that keeps oil refineries running, cars running, etc., continues to work. The funny thingis the second law is stated as a negative, and negatives can’t be established. Yet, NO experiment has ever been found to violate the second law. The US Patent Office stopped accepting patents that violate it over 100 years ago…and this for a relatively “simple” theory held together by massive amounts of scientific evidence.
There is no doubt that the details of evolution, common descent will change over time. Can you say the same for the details of your creatuionist views? If not, then you concede that no scientific fact will ever be enough to change your position..Ibelieve we call that a zealot or a partisan.
Nathan, I did..
Religion is religion..to be taught in religion classes. Hang up your poster ridiculing the flying spaghetti moster there. If you cannot see the difference between a comment on logical fallacies (i.e. the FSM “theory” explains everything as well as creationism), then perhaps you need to to step back, take a deep breath, and lay down the characteristics of the creationist position beside the FSM position.
I would like to see creationist answer the questions posted herehttp://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.htmld I have asked these types of questions before to people who try to debunk science but that can never ansewer these logic probelms in their own views.
Brian,
The web site you suggested does nothing to deal why are we teaching the biogenetic law in schools. In fact it says the biogenetic law is not accurate. So why is it okay to teach it in the schools.
You obviously must have missed the post about Dr Richarson and the reseach he did in 1997. The 1969 and 1932 quotes were to show you that the biogenetic law has been known to be fraudulent for years, and yet we still teach it, Why? I do not care if there are 2 trillion to one ratio of web sites, fraud is fraud and should not be taught to students.
P.S. why do you not deal with the question at habd instead of trying to bring other things into the discussion. is it because you have no answer?
huck,
If the biogenetic law is still being taught, lobby the school board for more modern texts.
I guess the link I provided didn’t work but just a couple of the questions raised were how did Noah get 2 of every kind of animal in to a 400 ft boat. The weight of all the animals would have sunk the ark. How did they feed all the animals some have special diets, pandas only eat bamboo, Kolas only eat Eucapylats,Silk worms, mulberries ect. What about the carnviours animals, Lions Tigers over a year the ark was in the water some species would have gone exinct feeding the lions. The zoo here has a army of workers the feed just a small fraction of the animals the ark held and noah did it with six other people feeding removing waste thats a lot of work. And what about the dinosaurs did they get left behind along with Mammoths and sabre tooth tigers.
Chuck, do you go to school in Kansas? If so then that in and of itself will explain why it is being taught. Kansas is backwards.
Pancho, I am not debunking science and I can not answer for them. If you go read my blogs you will see I have been dealing with scientific research while the other guys are back on the “FSM”.I will look at the sight you suggested and see what it says/asks.
Brian, if you try and deal with the scientific things I bring up you might even realize there are some creationist who understand science and it will seem much different than some fake story. Stay with me and you might be suprised. Even the sight you sent me to agreed with me. Recapitulation is not true. My point is why do we continue to teach something that is not true? Try answering that
Pancho, the religious nut jobs tend to pick and choose what they want to believe from the bible. And if something clearly contradicts scientific fact they will ‘interpert’ the bible passage to fit thus proving that god does exist and the scientific evidence just supports their ideas.
Pancho,
Don’t forget the fact that after a worldwide devastation, planed and saweed wood would be a valuable commodity, re-used after the flood. Why would anyone expect to find any remnnants. When Medieval battlefields are investigated, then find skeletons but no armor, mail, weapons. Why is that? Because these were valuable commodities stripped from the dead soon after the battle. Same principle at worki..Re-use what is valuable and haed to make.
Chuck, I did..
Lobby your school board for accurate texts.
“My point is why do we continue to teach something that is not true?” -chuck
For the same reason school kids are told about the Earth centered solar system. Historical reasons. Learn from the mistakes of past scientists so you don’t repeat their blunders.
Chuck,
Back atcha. Why doe classical Calvinist Christianity still insist that man was created perfect and immortal and lost that, so that Jesus had to come to restore it to us. It is clear that this is not true.We came from lower animals, mortal, imperfect.. Thus were we made and therefore what need is there for someone to restore what we never had?
Also consider the movie the “Passion of the Christ”. Certyainly man did the whippings, beatings, etc., but who decided that this would be the means for reconciliating mankind to God. It certainly wasn’t us. It was, after all, God who made that decision. So, we swapped the sin of disobedience in the garden for the sin of (minimally) involuntary homicide in order to aloow God to release his pent up anger with us. Kind of a stretch, don’t you think?
K, thank you for at least trying to deal with the question. The problem is it is not being taught as historical mistakes it is being taught as the way it is. If any of you can find a text book that does not include the biogenetic law and saying mamals have gill slits as they develop in the womb, let me know. Last report I know of in 2002, all the science text books included it. You may have had a teacher that ignored it , but it was in the text. It seems to me the scientific community would want to get out of the text books, but even when the USA today ran a whole page with all the pictures and every thing not one word came from the scientific community, nor when carl Sagan used it to justify Abortion in a Parade Magazine article, not one scientific response to the faulty science used in his reasoning. Go back to the 1969 quote by an evolutionist. K I hope by the time we are done, you will see I have a thought out and reasonable religious belief and you can pull me out of the “nut” categorie.
Pancho, I have some answers for you, I will get back to you tomorrow.
Will this sight still be around?
K,
I can not let this one go. If Kansas is backwards for trying to question the evolutionary principle of the biogenetic law which was included in the standards recommended by the National Science Teachers Association, and you agree that the biogenetic law should not be taught as true, you would have been on the side of the Board of Education that said that critical information contrary to what is being taught in the evolutionary theory should also be dealt with. Congrats, you are now taking one postion along side the “ID” and creationist camps- that is until you get the NSTA to agree to take the biogenetic law out of the standards.
Until later today.
“If any of you can find a text book that does not include the biogenetic law and saying mamals have gill slits as they develop in the womb, let me know.”Actually, it wasn’t taught as fact in my bio text. I believe it counted pharyngeal slits (which eventually evolved into gills or into jaws and ear structres) as one of the criteria of classifying an “animal”, along with the dorsal hollow nerve cord, notochord and postanal tail. In the entire chapter covering animal development, it doesn’t even mention recapitulation. Since the text teaches biology in the context of evolution (at the end of every lesson is a way to tie the chapter into the theory of evolution), it makes sense that they wouldn’t present a theory that makes it very easy for creationists to claim that it’s “proof” that evolutionary theory is deliberately misleading. Ie, since one theory has been debunked, the entire model must be thrown out.In high school I remember seeing that drawing where there are a bunch of embryos of different species, and they all look really alike, and thinking “something smells funny”. I was an avid reader back then, too! So I agree, update the damn textbooks to reflect science’s nonstatic nature. I would also imagine that if high school biology teachers know evolutionary theory well enough (I hope!), they wouldn’t teach it as fact even though the outdated text might present it.Oh, and if you’re interested in the textbook, it’s wonderfully written. Campbell Biology, 7th edition.
Chuck, I hope that I addressed your first point well enough. Yes, recapitulation theory in Haeckel’s original form has been debunked (though biologiststs do maintan some interesting connections between embryonic development and phylogeny). As such, it SHOULD NOT be taught as fact in biology classes; it should be presented as a theory that has since been debunked, emphasizing how science constantly reexamines and reevaluates theories as new facts emerge. You brought up an excellent point, but it didn’t do anything to poke holes in evolutionary theory.
Honestly, every biologist in the world would LOVE to find evidence that solidly debunks the entire concept of evolution. I mean, that would be a surefire way to make your name as well known as Charles Darwin’s…(Poor Lyell! Gotta give THAT Charles a shout-out!)
Nathan, I would say that FSM is NOT making fun of Christianity or any religion. What it’s doing it making fun of the idea of lumping religion and science together. If the proponents of ID were overwhelmingly, say, Muslim or Hindu instead of Christian, FSM would still exist.Biblican creationism should most certainly be taught in school–in a comparative religion class, along with other religions’ creation stories.
“I would also imagine that if high school biology teachers know evolutionary theory well enough (I hope!), they wouldn’t teach it as fact even though the outdated text might present it.”
I meant they wouldn’t teach recapitulation theory as fact, not evolutionary theory. Sorry for the lack of clarity.
Again, you all miss the point — regardless of what each of you may believe, the fact that a “teacher” is displaying this puts it beyond humor or poking fun — they are critizing the thought processes of their students who may believe differently (and THIS IS the intent of this individual teacher) — every Board member as well as the Principal and every parent should be critical of this lack of educational respect…
Mike, what’s wrong with criticizing others’ thought processes?
Examining thought processes leading to different conclusions would seem to be a great, in fact a natural, way to learn.
I also find it suspicious that you object only to the “lack of educational respect” directed to Connie Morris. What about the lack of respect shown by KBOE memeber Morris to the local school district? To the principal? To the teacher? And by way of disrespect shown to the teacher, the disrespect shown to the schoolchildren?
Science classrooms are precisely places where critical science thinking should take place.
They are not a place for you and others, including Connie Morris, to display hearts worn on sleeves.
Chuck,
You wanted a textbook that doessn’t teach the biogenetic law:
Gilbert, S. F. (1997) Developmental Biology. Fifth edition. Sinauer Associates.
There you go.
” Some evolutionary critics wrongly think that because Ernst Haeckel’s “Biogenetic Law” is false, embryology can no longer provide evidence for evolution. However, this is a curious assessment, since neither modern evolutionary theory nor modern developmental biology are based upon Haeckel’s observations and theories. The discussion above is in no way an endorsement of either “Von Baer’s Laws” or Haeckel’s Biogenetic Law. Both of these fail as scientific laws, and both are incorrect as generalizations. Evolutionary change can proceed via these patterns, but it often does not.
The ideas of Ernst Haeckel greatly influenced the early history of embryology in the 19th century. Haeckel hypothesized that “Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny”, meaning that during its development an organism passes through stages resembling its adult ancestors. However, Haeckel’s ideas long have been superseded by those of Karl Ernst von Baer, his predecessor. Von Baer suggested that the embryonic stages of an individual should resemble the embryonic stages of other closely related organisms, rather than resembling its adult ancestors. Haeckel’s Biogenetic Law has been discredited since the late 1800’s, and it is not a part of modern (or even not-so-modern) evolutionary theory. Haeckel thought only the final stages of development could be altered appreciably by evolution, but we have known that to be false for nearly a century. All developmental stages can be modified during evolution, though the phylotypic stage may be more constrained than others.” TalkOrigins archive.
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This is for upChuck-“Skepticism is the best therapy against nonsense. We’re overwhelmed by nincompoopery and gullibility.”–Paul Kurtz, professor of philosophy
Nathan?
Nice try.
If you don’t tell the kids in the class about the Flying Spaghetti Monster it is unlikely they would even know what it is, beyond merely a picture on a door. Now they MIGHT be inspired to do research and find out what the picture is. In a SCIENCE classroom? Perish the thought!!The same is NOT true of depictions of Christ, “under god” in the pledge of allegiance, or teacher led prayers (which would by popular acclaim be of a Christian nature) in class.The basic idea of Christianity being already pervasive in this culture, Christian symbols WOULD be recognizable to kids…..(If you doubt this I cite my own son Nathan. I have told him nothing about religion. He has never been to church. Yet he does manage to pick up enough to question me on the subject)……. Thus their presence in a classroom would serve to lend them the credibility of something scholarly or factual as opposed to articles of faith.Morris was as ever out of line.
Kind of a funny thing. Where are all these dinosaur fossils dug up? In river bends. Exclusively. Science tells us that some sort of great flood piled them up. I’m not a biblical scholar, but didn’t Genesis talk about a great flood?
I almost forgot. Ramen
The theory of evolution is a lot less about biology than it is about economic and political science. It was used to justify capitalists’ takeover of Africa and Asia–the English were “more highly evolved” than the natives–as well as to justify a stratified industrial economy–the rulers were more highly evolved than your ancestors. Charles Darwin was married to a daughter of the Wedgwood china company. He couldn’t make a living on his own. Where do you see in his writings, “I’m a parasite? I’m living off my wife’s fortune? I don’t know how to support a family myself?”
Chuck…
Your ongoing debate proves one thing, that is you cannot change anyone’s mind about this.
The primary objection to the advocacy of ID by the school board is the injection of ONE type of religious thought into schools (creationism) while ignoring all others. This is intolerable in a country where freedom of religion is absolute.
Connie Morris and her ilk are trying to convert Kansas students by virtue of her elected position. That is just wrong. If she wants to preach on street corners, that is fine and dandy, but not in the schools
heartlander, you’re an interesting mind I’ll give you that.
The scientific method’s all about the evidence, baby, and you’ve shown me on this blog that you probably know a thing or three about chemistry.
But when it comes to evolution, you seem to want to switch to the Big Intuition channel of thought.
Which leads naturally to the casual conclusion that when it comes to biology you’re less naturalist than supernaturalist.
Why not let ID get in the queue of the scientific method and earn its chops the way evolution has for the past 150 years? How could a mind so obviously in love with science take a 180 for intuition when it comes to biology?
Nathan, the last time I checked, FSM wasn’t a valid, tax exempt, religious institution. It’s a JOKE.Geeezzz….get a sense of humor, will ya?
Long live pirates!!!
flike,You have nailed my thoughts about heartlander. Obviously smart, knows what he’s talking about; why then this detour when it comes to evolution? Hmmm….
Git, flike, et al.,I have nothing more to add – you’ve said it all.
Brian,May the FSM bless you. You are so patient. I admire that.
Thanks. And, RAmen
DD,
Thanks, but, to paraphrase Bugs Bunny, “you don’t know me vewy well, do you?” :-))
Chuck, I am not an ID proponent for several reasons not the least of which is that I am and have been an atheist for well over 20 years. My training is in physics, and while I try to keep up on developments in other branches of science my time is limited so it is a superficial knowledge limited to what I am able to read. I rarely have time to go into depth comparable with an advanced university class and when I do I prefer something physics related. I believe you misunderstood my statements about biogenetic law. I admit I had to look it up because I didn’t remember it (if I even learned it) but my statement was in response as to why something that is known to be false may still being taught in a science class. I made no statement as to whether or not it should be taught (again, not my specialty). You would do much better to read what has been written instead of rephrasing it and altering the intent/idea.
Heartlander, fossils are found in river beds not because of a flood but because of the way bone becomes fossilized. Science (none that I have read anyway) never mentions a great flood that piled them up. If that were so then I would imagine that there would be one a few places where fossils are found instead of the hundreds around the world.http://www.unmuseum.org/fossil.htm
flike: obviously, you took my comment the wrong way — the teacher here is not opening the subject up to critical review, which I’m not against — he’s not poking fun at the issue, he’s chastizing his students and stifling any critical discussion of the issues (oh, I forgot, the discussion can only go one way — that’s science for you…)
besides, you don’t know my position on the science standards… just because I’m Repulican doesn’t mean I agree with Dubya, either…
Mike, the thing is it’s a science classroom. How is displaying a poster of the FSM on a window stifling discussion of science issues?
I guess I might cede that it stifles discussion of theology issues – or maybe it opens them up – but again, it’s science not philosophy.
Meet you halfway: I would fully support a mandatory course in something like “applied philosophy,” a course that might include an intro to logic, including the propositional calculus, epistomology, including a module on the scientific method, and metaphysics.
Students who do not “believe in” evolution could pursue metaphysics in a public high school by taking a further optional course in The Bible. Students who wish to pursue a career in science or application of the scientific method (engineering, medicine, etc.) could take a more advanced optional course in predicate logic and other topics in epistomology.
Call it the Kansas full-employment act for philosophers if you want. ;)
Sorry, but that’s about my limit of support for Connie Morris and her “issues” with the FSM.
Epistemology. Stem…*sigh*
I would imagine the poster was put up for humor. A week after it was up the students wouldn’t even notice it anymore. As for Connie Morris, she needs to get a real life. One not attempting to marry her religious convictions to politics.
Brian, Thank you for the text book you mentioned, please tell me if they have an updated edition and whether or not it is a high school or college text book. I still do not think a General biology book which teaces the concept to the general population excludes biogenetic law. Developmental Biology, if I recall, is an upper level college course. Can you find a text book for a General Biology class. Brian, can you explain why no one ever spoke out about the public presentations of the biogenetic law I posted at 2:59 in the USA Today or By Carl Sagan in Parade Magazine. If you want the dates I can find them for you. Those were clear and blatant lies that NO SCIENTFIC COMMUNITY RESPONSE OR CHALLENGE was ever given. Why not clear it up in a public format like it was presented? If they wanted it cleared up and they could have done on either one of those occasions in a public format. I do not blame the teachers. They are teaching what they have been taught. Maybe because many college professors still do believe it to be true. Dr. Richardson was not taught the error all the way through med school. Why did he need to discover it for himself?
Tara, you said you hoped biology teachers might know biogenetic law well enough to teach it. See above. Obviously those that taught Dr. Richarson did not. I think you would be hard pressed to find many high school teachers that do know it that well. I was just told by another high school student Wednesday, the biogenetic law was taught as proof of evolution. Before he (the teacher) even started he said if any of you do not believe in evolution I am probably going to offend you. I have kids every year come and ask me about it. I know folks in at least 7 different states that have had that taught to them. I know it is not true, apparently everyone is conceding the fact that it is not true, so why is it being taught so frequently as proof of evolution. Surely the scientific community should be able to get the word out if it really wanted too. They can surely get the texbooks cleared up. Are all of you telling me you were never taught the biogenetic law in school as anything other than a mistake. I’d like to know where you went to high school. Most high school teachers and college/university basic biology professors still either teach it wrong or do not touch it. I’m late for a meeting, I’ll check in later.
Gettin’ madder by the minute,Please understand, I started from an evolutionary viewpoint. I approach most things with a skeptics eye and was put off by what was being taught and promoted as true when in fact it was not true. In other cases there was evidence I thought both were interpreting and when I studied them out the things that I saw better fit the creatioist interpretation of the evidence. When I get back and someone can explain why biogenetic law is still being taught and not challenged in a more public way and so many textbooks still contian it I will go on to an example of this. Namely polystrate fossils. Must go.
My father was a biologist. As a young student, I far more biology than most of my teachers. I collected insects before I could read. Watched a mother moth lay thousands of eggs and then the hatchling caterpillars spread themselves throughout the house. Watched a swallowtail caterpillar pupate, and emerge as a gorgeous butterfly. At age 6. I collected frogs, salamanders and lizards. At age 11, I caught a wounded meadowlark and nursed it back to health. I used Christmas-gift money to buy a microscope at age 9. HS bio was a joke: I knew far more than my teacher.
I majored in biochemistry, which was the New Biology three decades ago.
But I’ve also learned a lot about people. Millions of American parents don’t want their kids to be indoctrinated in evolution. Millions of Americans don’t want their kids to be indoctrinated in the biblical creation.
The issue is a conflict between world views. This is why I favor a non-confrontational science curriculum. For example, k is a physicist. Has he/she been able to get AP Physics C courses for Wichita high schools? Why not? Are kids here not sufficiently evolved to absorb this knowledge, in an advanced high school physics course (actually two, mechanics and electricity&magnetism) that are taught all over the country, like JoCo for example?
It would seem to me that carbon dating poses a big challenge to biblical creationism.
k may understand better than most that our science education system is backwards. To understand biology, you have to understand chemistry. To understand chemistry you have to understand physics. To understand physics, you have to understand mathematics.
So schools should be teaching: establish a strong mathematics foundation, physics, chemistry and biology, in that order. Also physics-class equipment is a lot less delicate than biology-class instruments. Like, you don’t really want bio students grinding an oil-immersion lens into the slide.
I remember tagging RNA with C-14 and watching the detector’s liquid-bath photon generator emit an eery blue light, known as Cherenkoff radiation, which was caused by electrons moving faster than the speed of light in a liquid medium, sort of a relativistic “sonic boom”. Really cool.
I don’t know why it’s still being taught as fact, Chuck. It actually weakens the evolutionary theory–presenting information that has already been debunked. It’s lose-lose for both sides when blatantly false information is being taught. That said, I remember it being touched on in high school, but never in college. You got me. Let’s revise textbooks to exclude that theory as fact. Where do we start to get that done? I’m there, dude.
Polystrate fossils–go.I don’t know much about this…I’ll have to do research, but I understand it’s the concept of trees (or other organic matter) sort of cutting through strata layers. So, imagine a bunch of horizontal layers, with the bottom ones being the very oldest and the top ones being the newest, with all sorts of fossils buried in between (and these layers sort of serve to date the fossils). Then, you have some sort of tree branch or something that cuts through all of these layers vertically. The creationist argument is that these layers (strata) must have been put down in a rapid fashion, instead of over the hundreds of millions of years postulated by evolutionary theory, since these tree branches aren’t visibly rotted.Before I go on, I would like some assurance from Chuck that I’m on the right track about that argument, or if I’m missing anything.
Is everyone in agreement with Tara’s April 14,10:52 p.m. Thanks for not being annoyed at me coming back to this one thing. Are the rest of you just throwing out questions because you do not want to deal with the problem I have brought up, you have no answer other than like Tara’s, you do not want to try and answer for the scientific community that would not even challenge the things written in USA Today, Parade Magazine and taught by teachers of teachers, or something else. Brian I know you did agree biogenetic law is bogus, but why will it not be challenged in public forum. I think even in von Baer’s embryology ides there are some problems with it. Maybe later. I’m bushed.
Chuck, I’m not throwing out 11,993,287 other arguments that are meant to debunk creationist theory. I’m trying to stay on topic with the points that you bring up. If I wanted to bring up “proof of evolution”, I could do so quite easily. But I’d rather try and address your specific arguments.In your last post, you brought up challenging things that are written in “USA Today, Parade Magazine and taught by teachers of teachers, or something bogus.” And I’m asking this not be difficult (because as far as I know, may be quite right) but because I need a point of reference: Do you have the sources that show USA Today and Parade saying that recapitulation theory is a fact? If so, I’d love to see them!
But my main question is, are you bringing out the bogus recapitulation theory as proof supporting ID? IF NOT, then we have no disagreement, bruddah! It shouldn’t be taught as fact in basic bio classes, and I suspect the scientific community fails to address it because, sadly, they think it’s not that important for the layperson. Students who move on in their biology education will soon learn that recapitulation theory doesn’t fly. I don’t agree with the scientific community’s apathy, but I only offer it as a possible explanation.
IF SO..I fail to see how one failed theory can merit tossing out an entire model that years and years of research supports.
But you wanted to talk about in situ trees, right? I just want to know if I have the gist of the “polystrate fossil controversy” down before I focus further on it.
Tara,
Polystrate fossils are something like that though in many cases it is much more than a branch. There are areas in the U.S. where from the tops and bottoms of the trees are in three different layers. i.e. the bottom in a coal seem cutting through a layer of rock dated to be a certain number of years old, and the top being in the coal seem above the rock dated to be a million or more years younger. There are also plenty of cases where the top of a tree is in the lower coal seem.I would like to here some of the rest of you explain that in light of how we know fossils are preserved.
heartlander,I do not know of any AP Physics classes in Wichita, though there are AP Chemistry and AP Biology classes here. I do not know wether or not the order should be Physics, Chemistry, then Biology.In every school district I have been involved with, of these three Biology has always come first. I suspect it is due to the fact most students take Algebra 9th grade year and really need that before they takle the Physics. K. could a person make it through a physics class without at least an Algebra background? Chemistry and Physics I have seen in both orders
k,Have you read any of Dr. Larry Vardamin’s work? How about Harold Slusher (spelling?) who used to be down at North Texas State University?
Tara you have the right idea. The dates for the USA today was July 27, 1993, and the Sagan piece was in Parade Magazine April 22, 1990.
No I am not bringing up the recapitulation theory as proof of ID. I just want to see if there is something that can be done to get bad science out of the classroom. As I said earlier, I was an evolutionist who became a creationist. And I totally agree that you have been on topic. I was responding to you and then said are the rest of you. I am sorry you missunderstood me. Please accept my apology and forive me for not being clearer when I wrote that. Thanks
Oh, and I just noticed you brought up von Baer. Is the germ layer theory bogus, in your opinion? Would you like to address that, or would you like to address in situ trees first? Either way works for me :)
I’m listening to Jack Johnson’s “In Between Dreams” album right now. It’s wonderful. I just thought I’d share the love.
Flying Pasta is very funny. However, I would like the big minds who created the Spaghetti Monster spoof to ridicule objects concerning Islam. I think that making objects mocking Christian symbols and not ALL other religions is a case of discrimination against one particular religious group. They MUST RIDICULE ALL RELIGIONS to remain p.c.
Chuck, it appears you posted before I finished typing my last entry! Excellent timing.
So you’re saying that instead of branches (as I understand), there are entire trees that penetrate through strata layers?
The only answer I can offer right now is that scientist don’t always discount the burying of upright fossils in a rapid fashion. But I imagine that a theory like a great flood would imply all of the upright fossils in the world to have the same timeline/depth of burial/etc to consider it a possible theory. Like, a tree trunk fossil in modern North America would have the same burial pattern as one in South Africa, and thousands of upright fossils would follow the same pattern.
Also, tree roots have incredibly powerful rootcaps that can penetrate dense substances. This is only a theory, but it’s possible that these polystrate fossils are just roots that happened to penetrate the strata?
I haven’t done any research, and it’s 8:00 PM here, and I’ve drank almost three glasses of wine. So I can’t be that accurate right now. How about I research this some more and we meet back here tomorrow? :)
Crux,How is FSM ridiculing only one religion? THey make no references to Christianity! They make no references to any religion!What they do is poke fun at the idea of an organized religion demanding equal time in the classroom. If creationism can have equal time in Bio 111, then so can Pastafarinism (or whatever it’s called). I think the same could go for ANY religion demanding equal time in the science classroom!
Chuck, you’re right about the math requirement for physics. You have to know quadratic equations, trigonometry and vectors. So science is taught in a backward order because kids don’t have the math skills necessary to teach physics early, then chemistry, then biology.
REAL biology is extremely complex. The hs version is a joke. It has been a 9th grade course for decades. Why hasn’t this changed? Because it is heuristically sound to teach biology before chemistry? No, it hasn’t changed because people are lazy. They aren’t THINKING.
The sad fact is, America has imported hundreds of thousands of engineers, mathematicians, scientists and doctors, because too few American kids have been sufficiently educated in science and math in high school to prepare them for university math and science coursework.
I recall once looking at the math classes schedule at KSU. I think there were something like three times as many algebra lecture-sections as calculus lecture-sections. Algebra is a high school course. There a lot of university students who don’t need to take calculus. But to qualify for a flagship university entrance, wouldn’t you think that applicants should be required to be proficient in algebra, particularly because most of them have taken algebra I and II in hs? Why do they need remediation? KSU students aren’t dummies. So why are they being undereducated in hs?
Hee hee, you guys are so funny. I missed you all too.
Dont forget your checkbooks along with your pitchforks. We need to support Tim Cruz with money, not just cheers.
Now, back to working on my tan, but the gloves are making my hands white. Sort of a reverse farmer’s tan.
I am planting ‘taters for salad…
http://www.venganza.org/
Tara,I’d like to see them “poke fun” at Islam. Why doesn’t anyone do that? Oh I forgot.. They’re a MINORITY and they’ll chop your f*cking head off if you ridicule their religion. Picking on Christianity is so much… safer.
Crux,
Bobby Henderson’s line about “pissing off Jesus” was probably ill-advised, but his point–obviously!–is that religious doctrine should not be taught as science. To say he is “ridiculing Christianity” is just silly.
And if ID’s prominent advocates were conspicuously motivated by Islamic doctrine, the FSM rejoinder would not have to be changed ONE BIT! The point would be the same.
By the way, are pastafarians also anti-Raelian? The Raelians endorse ID, you know.
Answer Tara’s question.
P.S. While we’re on the subject of Islamic faith and intelligent design:
http://www.islamonline.net/english/Contemporary/2004/09/Article02.shtml
The author doesn’t pretend to speak for all Islam (which at least puts him one-up on too many ID advocates!).
But you were saying, Crux?
CrusX–
Flying Spagetti doesn’t make fun of Christianity. It makes fun of inanity that literalists call Christianity.
BTW, Islam rejects Darwinism more than Christianity does. So they ARE getting ridiculed too . . .
Does evolution occur? I think so. Does the scientific evidence prove evolution from lifeless chemical processes to blue-green algae to single-celled protista, to notochords, to fish, to amphibia, to reptiles to mammals to humans? Not even close. It’s a story. Is it true? Science cannot tell us. The story may be true. Or it may be false.
Physicists have recently conjectured that there must be a thing called dark matter. We have no instruments to examine it. But dark matter, having anti-gravitational properties, would explain why galaxies haven’t collapsed into black holes.
Is dark matter real? Nobody knows. Science isn’t about “absolute truths”. It’s about EXPLORING. That’s hard for Kansans to grasp, because Kansans are not explorers. Which is why in an explorational global economy, Kansans are being left behind. Insert a mandatory evolution presentation, or delet it. Does either matter? No, because in either case Kansas schools don’t know how to teach science as an exploratory endeavor. They think that teaching “scientific facts” is teaching science. Sorry, that’s incorrect.
Everybody is dumping on Connie Morris. She is by her own reported admission a former slut and drug addict. Does she know s**t about science? What science courses did she take in college? Let her produce her college transcript for the public to peruse her science knowledge credentials.
So, let’s see, WHO elected her? And WHY did some Kansans elect her? Representatives are a reflection of the people who put them into office.
heart,Connie Morris’s bio is available on the KDOE website. It’s somewhat less than impressive, but the real problem is her born-again self seems bent on converting everyone else.
The real problem is that she’s a moron, a liar, and a corrupt fanatic.
Taking the “received wisdom” approach out of science education and subverting it with gratuitous nonsense are entirely different things. I heartily endorse the former.
As you well know, when science doesn’t have an answer, it’s not permissible to fill in the blank.
And hypotheses are just that: would you favor teaching Loop Quantum Gravity as the “latest scientific findings” (or something similar) in the public schools? I sure wouldn’t!
flike nailed it, heart. I suspect you could talk me under the table on chemistry, but you’re studiously avoiding the scientific method on this one.
I don’t understand quantum loop gravity. So explain it and enlighten me. I am not being flip. We learn from each other. I’m ignorant on this. So teach me. Teach people here. I’m sure it’s fascinating.
Wichta Eagle Becomes a Science Teaching Forum.” How cool is that? We’ll just transmogrify this Blog.
Am I challenging you? Yes. But I also challenge myself. I have challenged myself to teach a middle school student accelerated mathmatics It has been one of the hardest thinngs I have done in my life.
His parents were told, when he was a 6th grader, “He may have to repeat pre-algebra next year.” WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! With intensive teaching, he scored a 26 on the ACT math, at AGE 12. This wa halfway tthrough 7TH grade. He can do well in AP Physics B, in 8TH GRADE. He can take calculus as a 9th grader. Maybe understand quantum loop gravity at age 15. I could teach some of your kids how to do this.
They would have to take 2 hours of math and do 2 hours of homework weeknights, plus 4 hours per weekend. They would have to rise to the challenge.
Some of your kids have a lot more talent than you appreciate.
Connie Morris doesn’t have a clue. Maybe you should find out who funded her candidacy. Maybe they were people who wanted your kids to be undereducated. Then maybe you shoud say, ” That’s bull***t.” Cuz it is.
Quantum loop gravity is an attempt to unify general relativity with quantum mechanics. Gravitation is the last of the fundamental forces that remains “outside” the realm of unification.
Physicists early on developed methods for “converting” non quantim-mechanical models into their quantum mechanical analogs. In the 60s and 70s these methods were tried out on gravitation and general relativity and they failed miserably. There was one big caveat to the calculations that everyone assumed was true…that caveat was that space is continuous.
A bunch of physicists in the 80s and 90s went back to the unification schemes and did not make the assumption that space was continuous. They were surprised to find that they were able to solve some of the equations and that space appears to be quantized, just like energy, charge, matter, etc.
This is the basis of “loop” gravity. Space comes in little quantized bits…incredibly tiny, so that there are more bits of volume in a teaspoon than there is matter in the universe, but still bits of space.
Loop gravity is a quantum theory of spacetime. Spacetime has to do with gravity, time, and relativity, and the quantization of spacetime ties up quantum mechanics with gravitation.
String theory and M theory also tie into gravity but they suffer from some serious weaknesses with regard to the frame-of-reference independence of their assumptions. Loop gravity doesn’t suffer from these shortcomings.
heart,Once again, you’re back to the intellectual equivalent of comparing phallic size. Do I understand LQG? To a limited extent: I am not a physicist. I’ve never met Larry Kraus OR Lee Smolin. Is this good enough?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_quantum_gravity
I do know that are several competing theories of quantum gravity out there (string theory being the most well known), and science is nowhere near a workable “unified field theory”:
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci554508,00.html
Where is YOUR theory, heartlander? Point me to some academic work that explains HOW an intelligent designer does its work (I’ll gladly wade thru arcane jargon–I do it quite often–hehe!).
Point me to some academic work that isn’t just a dressed-up update of William Paley’s natural theology argument and/or an extended attack on evolution (as if that somehow “proves” the non-theory waiting in the wings).
Give me something less tiresome than the shell-game arguments of Boohoo or Dumbski.
Give me a theory, and I’ll take a look at it. You don’t have one now.
Thanks, Brian, that was actually better than my link! :-)
Frankly,
I’d take my kids learning string theory and loop theory over “ID” theory. At least the first two require one to be extremely well-versed in advanced physics and mathematics…good skills even if the theories are wrong. Further, they teach one about formulating a theory. Science is also about sudden realizations, intuition, and just plain guesswork. Papers are written AFTERWARDS and they make everything appear as if it happened logically, consistently, and as the inevitable result of earlier work. This is pretty far from the reality..science is just as much an art as anything else. There is tremendous satisfaction in the discovery process, and a profound sense of awe in being the “first” to be honored with some little piece of understanding of how the universe operates. Scientists, I’d say, have a deep reverence for this..they might even see the “face of God” here. But they see a divinity tied up in the beauty, elegance, and subtlety of the the ideas that spring from somewhere men’s minds that explain the universe. They don’t, in general, find the typical “fairy stories” of most “revealed religions” all that believable, interesting, or inspiring.
Rage,
You’re welcome ;-))
I would like to thank heartlander, Brian, and Rage for each’s contribution to scientific philosophy here.
I would note that each of these posters differs in one crucial aspect from chuck: heart, Brian, and Rage each write from the p.o.v. of a scientific theories, while chuck writes from the p.o.v. of exceptions to the rule of various scientific methods.
In other words, Brian and Rage ask each of us readers to understand where science stands today on a given topic, while chuck asks us to doubt evolution’s whole cloth because one theory once attached to evolution is false; heartlander asks us to doubt evolution because it’s inept if not false in explaining something both he and chuck consider paramount to science: incorporating Christianity’s theory of life origins in any theory dealing with species origination.
Just pointing out the differences, for those keeping track.
Crap, the lack of editing tools here will kill me, I swear.
Actually, that last paragraph should read that chuck and heartlander consider Christianity’s theory of life origins paramount to biology, not science as a whole.
Sorry for any mistake.
“Daddy, can you help me with my homework? Gosh, statistical mechanics is hard!” ;-)
I read somewhere that if we starting introducing calculus to kids in elementary school, they’d pick up on advanced mathematical concepts at an earlier age.
I trust you understand the point I was trying to make to heartlander. LQC may have been a bad example since, unlike ID, at least has a solid history of research behind it.
Thanks flike,
Sometimes we all can lose the forest for the trees. It’s nice to have someone trying to keep track of the general direction of the thread and who acts like a kind of facilitator for people so they don’t have to read every post from #1 down to see where things stand.
Whoa, flike where did you come from? :-)
That last comment was–obviously–for Brian.
Rage,
No worries. I know exactly what you’re saying. :-)
2x crap, I swear. :fume: (at myself)
Last paragraph reads:heartlander asks us to doubt evolution because it’s inept if not false in explaining something both he and chuck consider paramount to science: incorporating Christianity’s theory of life origins in any theory dealing with species origination.
I mean to write:heartlander asks us to doubt evolution because it’s inept if not false in explaining something both he and chuck consider paramount to *biology education*: incorporating Christianity’s theory of life origins in any theory dealing with species origination.
If that’s the last error I see in my writing I just may go to church somewhere tomorrow.
flike,I’m notorious for leaving. . out. :-) Don’t sweat it!
flike,
Not all brands of Christianity reject evolution. In fact the Roman Catholic Church stated, in the 1870s, that it saw no fundamental problem with the theory as it relates to the salvation of man.
In fact, there are many branches of “liberal” (yes, the “L” word !!) that accept evolution, reject Biblical literalism, and even doubt the truth of the gospels as “newspaper-like” accounts. They see the gospels as “propaganda” (used in the original sense of the word) to bring a wonderful new theory of man’s relation to his fellow men to life.
Does that count as a mistake?? ;-))
Brian & Rage, I’m tempted to say hellzyeah, but that would so pop my internal personal integrity bubble that I will pass. *sniff*
But thanks anyway!
Intelligent Design and evolution can go hand in hand if one takes a serious look at both. That evolution happens has been pretty much proven. One need only look at Darwins writings and it becomes obvious.
That Intelligent Design can happen is something that can only be taken on faith. That it’s possible for God to imprint intelligence at any time during the developement of man is entirely possible.
That man was an ape at one time has been shown to be a very likely scenerio. That man may have descended from a variety of “men” is also a distinct possibility. There were more than just homo erectus: cro magnum, homo habilis, Australopithecus, and all the hominidae that predated us left something of themselves in us.
I have no problem with God sitting back, watching His experiment grow, and finally instilling in our ancestors intelligence and free will (another topic altogether).
Heck, it may have even been the FSM.
Well struck JM; I have always been of the mind that ID and evolution do not have to be mutually exclusive.
V.L.R.B!!
I think there’s way too much emphasis on treating God as a being with a basically “human” personality. I think if we abandoned the theistic view, more things would fall into place. As Bishop John Spong says, he has come to the realization that God is the “ground of BE-ing”…In other words that which makes things “BE” is God.
The best explanation I have heard is a compaqrison to a dreamer. The dreamer brings characters, places, events…the whole shebang…into BE-ing. The dream world would not “BE” without the dreamer. Yet, the dreamer doesn’t control the characters or the action (on the surface at least..let’s leave Freud out of this). The characters act in a manner that sometimes surprise the dreamer (after he has awoken). The dreamer is the predicate for all that occurs but is not directly involved in the action (again, forget Freud).
I find this “ground of BE-ing” description a lot more profound, satisfying, and paradoxical than a God who gets so pissed off at a couple of people that he requires mankind as a whole to participate in the murder of an innocent to satisfy his anger.
I agree, Ian.
And that’s exactly why many who disagree with the current KBOE majority are so exercised: the current KBOE *insists* that mutual exclusivity is nothing less than a policy goal and thus must be incorporated in policy.
In other words, they are going far beyond the possiblity of some “intellignent” design when it comes to species origination: they insist that what heartlander calls “stochastic evolution” – or that species origination is a function of random error – must be false because life origination by random error is in conflict with intelligent design: random error given a lower bound on time is so improbable as to be unlikely and thus impossible.
In other words, Connie Morris and Steve Abrams insist that despite the evidence evolution is below the education radar because it’s statiscally improbable approaching impossible.
Which is nutz, and I’m sure neither you nor JM disagrees, given the staggering amount of evidence to date.
flike,
I think that both sides in the debate seem to waging a scorched earth policy over the issue out of spite and damned intransigence! There are zealots on both sides and some of the evolution crowd are uber atheists and hostile to the very notion of a “creator” and religion in general. I am a devout SSPX Catholic and probably more religious than most but I never bought into the “either/or” of the whole debate and JM expressed perfectly and succinctly my thoughts on the matter.
V.L.R.B!!
YIKES!!!
Is there any vaccination for this SSPX thing, Ian?
;)
(totally teasing, as I’m sure you are more than well-adjusted enough to deduce on your own)
I agree, the Democrats are not above manufacturing political conflict in an attempt to kill ID as a goal of biology education.
“So, let’s see, WHO elected her? And WHY did some Kansans elect her? Representatives are a reflection of the people who put them into office.”
Good questions, heartlander. Connie Morris was funded by the Kansas Republican Assembly and a hodgepodge of ‘independent’ PACs who just *happen* to share the same PO Box and treasurer. Sonny Rundell, the previous incumbent, didn’t know what hit him.
Check out http://redstaterabble.blogspot.com/2005/12/right-wing-pacs-funnel-money-to-board.html .
Kudos to you, heartlander, for caring enough to have high expectations of the kid you’re tutoring. Keep up the great work.
Hey, as long as teachers can have posters of Jesus in the classroom I don’t mind the FSM.
I already addressed that and you Nathan upthread.
Thanks Brian.
So your argument is that simply because the FSM is not as recognizable as Christ is it is ok?
What kind of an argument is that?
If you are going to allow depictions of religious symbols intended solely to make fun of religion then you should allow symbols of religion too.
Fair is fair right?
Thank you too, tiredofit.
I just had an accidental conversation with an 11 year old who told me about using a plasma drive to power an interstellar probe, and when I asked him about powering the instruments, he told me it would need a nuclear reactor. So I just figured it would be useful for him to learn some serious math to make it possible for his scientific yearnings come true, and he eagerly took up the proposal.
Maybe he’ll work to develop an interstellar probe. Or maybe he’ll help figure out how to save our abused planet. It was 93 today. But we can trust our president and his friends’ assurances that global warming is not happening. Or can we?
Nathan,If FSM is a bona-fide religion, then you have a valid point.
I have a son whose majoring in physics. He believes in a stochastic universe. I haven’t disowned him. We disagree on the matter, but we still love each other.
In college we had a discussion about environmental destruction. I raised the point that even if we had a nuclear holocaust, some simple organisms would survive, and they could eventually evolve higher-order life forms. Today, I would think this could be possible. But, why would we want to do this to our planet? I’ve gone diving in Florida, Hawaii, Mexico and California in the past few years. Compared to what I saw 20-30 years ago, it’s not looking good out there.
“Compared to what I saw 20-30 years ago, it’s not looking good out there.”
No argument with that. It’s pretty scary, actually.
There is tech trouble with this thread. I was unable to access it for more than an hour and I see it is re-posted as a new thread.
Nathan?
Does the non existent church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster enjoy tax exempt status? No? I think your arguement just evaporated.
Conjob convert Moral Morris RECOGNIZED the visage of the FSM? HOW? Was she previously touched by his noodley appendage? (she has been touched by just about everyone and everything else so I hear) When and why did she hang up her pirate costume?
I think this evolution controversy is bs. Let’s have a biology class where you have four aquaria, freshwater or marine. In the first, the students control parameters according to best practices. In the second they introduce excess phosphate and nitrogen. In the third, they overheat the aquarium by 10 degrees. In the fourth, they reduce oxygenation.
Run them all for a year, and see what happens. There will be some kind of life at the end in all four aquaria. But seeing WHAT KIND OF LIFE exists is really instructive.
This is the kind of hs biology instruction I believe in. It is also why I believe that chemistry is foundational to biology.
I once had this really cool organic garden when I was a med student. French intensive, raised bed. It attracted some insects. I hand-picked them off my plants. I missed some and they chewed some of my plants’ foliage. We coexisted.
Somebody had left a wooden box that I ignored. Some bees decided to make it into a hive. We co-existed fine, until some s***head decided to raid it for the honey. He had a dark beard. I had a dark beard. So, I went to the box at night and opened it up. The bees decided to evacuate. Interesting lesson in animal behavior.
Oops, sent before finalizing my posting. After the honey raid, the bees attacked me. Not their fault, I looked like the hive raider to them.
One time a rattlesnake got caught in my garden’s chicken-wire fence. I released it and put it outside the garden. When I was a baby, my father worked at the Aransas Wildlife Refuge. My mom recalls snakes (non-poisonous) crawling over me. Maybe that’s why I love snakes.
One time in Fiji, a krait (cobra-cousin seasnake) seemed to be making a beeline for me. I got out of its pathway. It was just going to the beach to lay some eggs.
I once opened a can of tuna on a reef. Fishes swarmed in. I felt a these bumpings at the back of my right armpit. I raised my arm, and a morey eel swam buy. It was just following the scent.
Biology isn’t about evolution lessons or ID lessons, it’s about LIVING THINGS.
I had a “Mexican Red Head” amazon parrot. Every day when I came home, she wolf-whistled me. I’d take her out of her cage and we’d play. She was really affectionate. One time I was gone for three days. I opened her cage, and she got onto my shoulder. First thing, she gave me a painful ear-lobe bite. I think she was saying, “I’m really mad at you for deserting me. Where’d you go?”
Or in the immortal words of Flounder, “Women. You can’t live with them. You can’t live without them.” (Animal House ‘76)
Nathan,
Unless I misunderstand my intelligent design “theory” (giggles), Jesus might have nothing to do with it at all, while the flying spaghetti monster might.
I though that ID never went so far as to identify the “intelligent designer” withthe deity. If you’re now admitting that the deity IS the intelligent designer, and further, that it is the Christian deity, then you’ve basically admitted that ID has nothing to do with science..it has to do with your religious conceptions.
If you want to go so far as to say that the deity is the intelligent designer, then I guess you’d have to include Yahweh, Brahma, Tao, and every other possible conception of the intelligent designer/deity you could think of.
So, technically, while the FSM may offend your sense of “religious fair play”, religion has nothing to do with intelligent design theory, or so I’ve been told (giggles again). Jesus has no place in the classroom on the basis of your own ID assumptions (giggles uncontrollably and heads off for bed).
FSM is indeed a belief in a diety. The website even refers to themselves as a church and offers a gospel for sale.
I know it is a parody. It is a parody directed at not only ID but also Christianity.
If you are going to make a big deal out of seeing Jesus in the classroom then why are you in support of the FSM?
It may be a joke, but I find it disturbing that it is ok to allow poster that make fun of faith and Christianity into the classroom yet anything in favor of it is strictly prohibited.
I see that the latest Connie Morris Blog has zero respondents. Does this mean that Eagle bloggers agree she is a brainless bimbo who doesn’t deserve further comment?
Brian,
I am not making any such argument.
I am not debating ID at all.
I am saying that the FSM is purposefully set up to make fun of faith and that they link it to ID to make fun of those who are religious and do accept the theory of ID.
I think that you are patently a typical anti-Christian hypocrite if you support posters that make fun of faith in the classroom yet won’t allow posters that defend the faith in the classroom.
Actually, it kept coming up as a dead ling when I tried clicking on it earlier.
Nathan, you seem to miss the fine distinctions here. The FSM and his “church” is specifically a response to ID theory which claims a designer, but doesn’t have the ball to go so far as to admit the designer is the Christian God. The FSM IS the intelligent designer.
You can call me a hypocrite all you want. If I had wanted to hear from somebody with your IQ, I’d be at my local supermarket talking to the vegetables. To quote Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
I’m more than willing to keep the blog free of name-calling, but if you want to participate, I’ll warn you I have a black belt in mouth karate.
Brian,
I did not call you any name at all… unless you believe what I said.
Which was:
“if you support posters that make fun of faith in the classroom yet won’t allow posters that defend the faith in the classroom.”
That is not name calling. That is explaining the definition of a hypocrite.
ID does not claim any specific diety.
FSM directly claims that it is indeed the FSM that is the Intelligent designer.
Big difference.
Brian, chill out. Let’s have kids do real science. Give them an evolution module, fine. But let’s have them run experiments. Let them play with parameters and observe what happens.
nathan,
I’d reconsider on the basis of…
“I think that you are patently a typical anti-Christian HYPOCRITE if you support posters that make fun of faith in the classroom yet won’t allow posters that defend the faith in the classroom.”
So, I’m not insulting you by referring to you as a vegetable based on the same standard. Take your pick.
“Let’s have kids do real science.”
Once again, I agree with you, heartlander.
But, unfortunately, the KBOE majority DOESN’T agree with you.
heartlander,
That’s fine, but remember the goal of the experiments is not the experiments themselves. It is to be evidennce in the develoipment, support of, or disproof of a theory or model. The idea behind science isn’t just to collect data and to classify…it is to offer a rational and hopefully “simple” explanation for the observations (”simple” is used advisedly here since the math can sometimes be considerable and complex..it’s the unifying idea that should be “simple”)
Nathan, I believe in an intelligent designer. But if somebody asks me, “Okay, where did He/She/It come from?”, I have no idea. Nobody does. So, let’s work on the things we can. Is Bush and Company’s Middle East end-strategy Armaggedon? Perhaps it is. But, do we all have to buy into this?
“I am saying that the FSM is purposefully set up to make fun of faith . . .”
How so, Nathan? Details, please.
Brian,
The purpose of the experiments may be experimentation. I can’t explain this. It’s a form of PLAYING. Like my son the budding physicist said about my fascination with molecular biology, “That’s just Tinkertoys.” He’s probably right. I LOVED building things with Tinkertoys. He and some friends built a light-show device that transformed sounds into colored light. He has learned a lot about electronics, stuff I’ll never know. I think they were PLAYING. This is what experiments are, in my experience. Kind of like when, at age 13, I reverse hooked up an electric train transformer to our TV transformer. It generated a nice 200k spark. Blew out both transformers, which ruined the TV, but it was fun. It wasn’t my goal to blow out the TV transformer. Oops.
It taught me what ozone smells like.
Wow,alot of discussion since I left for Lawrence. Some goofy things about religion and a few more serious. Since today is Easter, allow me to touch on this in a way the eagle has refused to print.
Though many groups of Christians seem to see no contradiction with evolution and creation one is science the other religous, and they both tell the same thing from different views, let me give you a thought to ponder in terms of origins.
” Christianity is -must be- totally commited to the special creation as described in Genesis…..It becomes clear now the whole justification of Jesus life and death is predicated on the existence of Adam and the forbidden fruit he and Eve ate. Without original sin, who needs to be redeemed? Without Adam’s fall into a life of constant sin terminated by death, What purpose is there to Christianity? none” Richard Bozarth in an article called “the meaning of evolution”American Atheist Magazine 1978, He is right
The Bible teaches Adam sinned and brought death to a perfect world, and death was passed on to mankind-Romans 5:12. According to evolution, man was a result of (not cause of) millions of years of death and destruction (survival of the fittest/natural selection). Many want both to be right, but they are exactly opposite. The real question is does it really matter? If you pick and choose what parts of the Bible you believe, no. But if you do beleve it and you are consistant, evolution and Biblical Christianity are diametrically opposed.
Does Biblical Christianity make a difference? One quick every day life application. The divorce rates in the church is now the same and even higher than non-church couples 1 out of every 2 end in divorce. If that’s the case, what difference does Jesus make? When couples both believe the Bible to be true, get pastoral pre-marriage counseling, read it regularly, pray together, attend regular services, the divorce rate I read last 1 in 1,000 couples divorce.
I probably should not have done this last part. I apologize, but many only here the negative about those “religious nuts” that actually believe what the Bible says. Which of the above odds do you want for your marriage. I’ll let this go.
Next time, I stay purely on scientific problems for evolution and as one person wrote above, maybe we can really deal with some science-even in Kansas. For now, figure out how to get bogus science out of the classroom. After all, going way back it is really about what we teach students as science.
p.s. There are many good science teachers in Wichita doing as much hands on experiences as possible. Giving them parameters to work with and then the chance to discover for themselves how what they are taught can be observed, and data collected. You may be find much of that goes on in every part of the country.
heartlander,
Certainly there is curiosity driven research and experimentation, as you describe. But it doesn’t become scientific experimentation until one posits a theory or model to explain the results…and then one does more experiments in light of whatthe model dsays to see if it holds.
The Vikings made it to America 400 years before Columbus, but it ain’t in the history books because they didn’t reveal it.
The Romans and Greeks knew the earth was round and they knew how to build machines and mechanial mechanisms, but they never wrote it all down or explained it.
In the end, it is the documented explanation which is the important thing. We would have been much further along if we’d had this documentation from the Vikings, Greeks, Romans, and Chinese…and maybe even from you..with blowing up the transformers and then explaining what happened and what ozone smelled like.
Chuck,
You make the error that most Christians make. You mistake the Pauline interpretation of the story, which ultimately won out in heated church/state councils with what linguists/archaeologists/biblical historians/archaeologists/and even religious philosophers and clericals are discovering…that the Pauline interpretation is not the only one that accounts for things.
Ask a Jew about the prophecies of the OT about the coming Messiah and Jesus will not be the answer.
You might want to try reading a book or two about the whole situation. I’d say try the one by Crossan et a. call Re-excavating Jesus (or something like that).
I’d also suggest that you look at the opinions of early church writers besides the “canonical” ones like Paul you’ve heard of or read. Try taking a look at the various controversies surrounding the nature of Christ, the nature of Jesus, etc. What you’ll find is that “concensus” was generally reached by outmaneuvering an opponent and having him excommunicated or banished.
Finally, I’[d like to ask you to explain the mechanism of the crucifixion…not the standard Gos so loved the world stuff, but the actual way in which Jesus’ death saved us. Let me start you off..there is the ‘ransom theory’, that God agreed to pay Jesus as a ‘ransom’ to Satan for Satan’s hold on the world..I hope you can see the obvious problems with that one. Then there is the theory that God was so pissed off at the infinite sins of mankind that only an offering of infinite perfection could justify his letting go of that anger..the only “perfect” sacrifice worthy would be, of course, God himself in the person of Jesus. Thus, God’s anger is quelled with the sacrifice of Jesus..this too has serious problems.
So, what’s your take on the mechanism? You got one in mind?
Another good book is “The Myth-Maker” about Saul and the founding of the Pauline Church. He took the Church in a very different direction that that advocated by many others at the time.
I notice some patterns here.
Nathan has his feelings hurt because someone(s) dared to criticize his religion. Waaaaaaa…
If the shoe fits, then wear it. I mean, it isnt as though christians have never criticized anyone or declared them evil. Or taught their religion in schools. Oh no… never! But then, turn about is never fair play with the kansas taliban.Chuck declares himself the victor because he thinks people are changing the subject and not addressing things the way HE wishes they were addressed. Where have we seen that before…?
The old “stick to the subject” meme where only one person defines the subject. Nathan even managed to work in the “straw man” meme. Dont like what is said here? Then just redefine the subject so only YOU have the answers.
Connie, nathan, others, how does it feel to be the bloody chicken? A very unfamiliar sensation no doubt. I only hope someday that you feel it in the same measure you have GIVEN it out for the last 2000 years. You arent even close yet.
But then, you CHOOSE to be christians so I guess you deserve whatever you get.
I can only say RAMEN.
Why are the fundies so upset here? I hardly think they get this upset about science.
It isnt that FSM and christianity are so different, it is the fact that they are so much the SAME that causes them outrage. That is what really hurts.
The FSM is so close to the christian fairy tale that it makes the kansas taliban furious when someone points out the obvious.
You know the one thing they really hate is when someone holds up a mirror and shows them how THEY occur to others. Reality is such a pain, ya know?
And did I mention it makes the fundies humorless as well? So much for the “dont worry be happy” conservatives. They are only happy when they are safely in the un-questioned majority.
Question anything about their sacred fairy tales, and they are shocked, SHOCKED I say that anyone would question the great and powerful oz.
It seems to me the only difference here is that the FSM has no special IRS status. Very unlike the way the taliban christians have exempted their churches from ceasar’s taxes.
But they sure want control of ceasar’s schools, dont they?
I think every 4th grade class should have an aquarium with tadpoles, to enable the students to see the magic of metamorphosis.
Then you could keep some of the frogs, watch them mate (not literally, since they do it at night),lay eggs, and watch the lifecycle begin again.
Then some kids might be moved to become biologists and figure out what is causing the tragic decline in frog populations, and reverse it.
A few years ago, in eastern Kansas, box turtles were making their spring migration, which meant they had to cross US 54. An old guy in a pickup truck gratuitously ran one over. It was sickening, particularly because my kids saw it. What’s wrong with some people?
Heheh hearlander.
You mean what’s wrong with some people like dead eye dick “I can shoot 70 pheasants in a day during a canned hunt” cheney?
“It’s just like hunting–only with a menu!”
Why not just not shoot the damn birds when they’re in the back seat? (oh right–it’d ruin the upholstery. . .)
And rage, you never know which women will be “along for the ride” while they hunt. You could hit them in the back seat too!
Or worse, shoot the cooler with the lunchtime beers!
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