State Legislators Seek Bills to Allow Questioning of Evolution Theory in Schools

Indeed.

Certainly one wouldn't have to guess, after reading the above, that Darkest Noir isn't far removed from high school at all.

Language is slippery. I wouldn't use "the" dictionary as "the" authoritative source, but I'd be willing to consult several dictionaries to synthesize my own definition after considering a word's roots and current usage.

What is your authoritative source?

What is your definition of supernatural?

What is your definition of "understood"?

(What is your definition of epistemology and how do you know it?)

A scientist wouldn't use a dictionary to define the meaning of words? Where are you getting this stuff from Async?

The supernatural is not a scientific concept. Full stop. If the supernatural was inherently understandable by science it would not be supernatural at all, it would be natural.

Some one could say that with in reason, only though I did say my statement flippantly, I guess I apologize? I don't take back my claim. You can't prove yours. Epistemology follows relativism, it isn't realistic. Relativism is just a poor echo of Existentialism, which also doesn't work. How bout when you make a claim, you back it up. How is Epistemology even fundamental to begin with?? I change my argument. THAT is bullshit.

Thinking in relation to logic and knowledge is not meant to be interpreted differently. You call my views limited because they contradict yours. I don't want YOUR view on Epistemology, I want the TRUE definition, the true meaning. If THAT means my thinking is limited, then at least it's limited to truth, and not...dare I say it again? Bullshit.

This is all a distraction and has nothing to do with the argument. Yeah, I graduated in 2006 from high school, you can see my age by clicking my profile.

What's your excuse? Indeed. Unless you really just didn't have anything to add...and you wanted to try and pick apart someone already in discussion with someone else. Your argument in a debate breaks down when you start to attack the other person, instead of their argument or let's say, the issue at hand. What I'm trying to say is, you only hurt yourself.

The Force!?

What was Einstein's midoclorian count!?

And Einstein never believed in a *personal God*
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/einstein.htm

:rofl3:

You're an idiot. I think we can all see that by now. No point in you embarrassing yourself any further.

I'm glad you've stopped trying to argue...although I'm sure this might spark some colorful remarks... and how you use the term "we" as if the whole forum is laughing with you.

Webster's Dictionary says this:

synonyms hypothesis, theory, law mean a formula derived by inference from scientific data that explains a principle operating in nature. hypothesis implies insufficient evidence to provide more than a tentative explanation <a hypothesis explaining the extinction of the dinosaurs>. theory implies a greater range of evidence and greater likelihood of truth <the theory of evolution>. law implies a statement of order and relation in nature that has been found to be invariable under the same conditions <the law of gravitation>.

I'm sure I'll get blasted for (heaven forbid!) using a dictionary or facts, but there it is.
THEORY does NOT mean fact or law. It is still called the THEORY of evolution, not the law of evolution.
Yet even in this small thread, anyone who challenges this THEORY is immediately called a fool or religious zealot or crackpot. It is still NOT proven law, therefore it can and SHOULD be challenged. Any scientific theory should be able to stand up to scrutiny.

One of the cornerstones of science is that all ideas can be challenged. That doesn't mean you'll be taken seriously for doing it.

You're using theory in a way that suggests that evolution is less than proven. But if we accept that usage it would also mean the germ theory of disease, atomic theory, and the theory of relativity are also suspect.

We're not questioning the fundamental validity of these ideas though. We know they're factual, they provide an important framework to understanding the universe, and they continue to be improved upon all the time.

Evolution has not been proven, it's just widely accepted in the scientific community, based on the information they have at hand. This goes with the others, they may be more completely understood, but they are not completely provable, there is information they do not know or have gotten wrong...that is why they "continue to be improved upon all the time". That is also why when a theory is proved wrong it is thrown out.

YOU may assume they are factual, they are man-made explanations that attempt to try and understand the framework of the universe, they are still "in theory", beyond hypothetical, but not completely true, understood, or right. That is why they are constantly improved or added or thrown out, because they are NOT definite.

Sure it has. Check out the Ken Miller speech I poster earlier. Here's a short little snippet:

[YT="Ken Miller on Human Evolution"]zi8FfMBYCkk[/YT]

The only thing that's debated is the method and speed.

The fact that our understanding of evolution gets better all the time confirms its reality, not questions it (just look at the discovery of DNA).

By way of analogy, what you're saying is that because a Ferrari is exceedingly more complex and tinkered with than a Model-T the entire notion of internal combustion must be in question.

For whatever reason you want to insert doubt where none exists.

You're wrong.

Hardly.

Name one.

All of whom are quacks, I'm sure.

No, it turns high-school education into a farce under the banner of theoretical discussion when everyone knows damn well that these students (and usually teachers) are ill equipped to critically asses it.

Yes it is. High school education (which this legislation is largely aimed at) is all about instruction. This wastes taxpayer dollars and harms the student by giving them a sub-standard education, which leaves them unprepared for higher education which would prepare them to critically asses the issue.

Because, issues for the academics are best left to the academics, not gawkers in the street or the public harlots in office.

Completely different. Global warming is a doomsday theory supported by alarming data (that admittedly goes back only so far), people are naturally going to panic over it.

This nonsense over evolution has gone on for far too long. You see it every day; when children are born they carry on the genes of their parents and resemble them.

This whole issue is a hyper reaction from shallow and insecure idiots who feel the need to interject their faith into every issue. They and their darling proposals need to have their throats crushed; they are ruining the next generation with their childish bullshit.

God gave you miserable fuckers a brain, so fucking use it.

Give it another read henryhill:

No where have I even commented on Biology.

To put it more simply, public schools should be about educating students and not resolving the religious/ideological differences of adults.

But if you want to talk about the value of evolution as it relates to Biology that's fine.

Would you agree with this definition of Biology?

It sounds about right to me. Evolution is definitely part of Biology yet deeming any one component of Biology as the central component of modern biology is silly.

And why did you choose Biology instead of say, Physical Anthropology? I'd argue the theory of evolution is equally significant to both subjects.

With your every statement on the subject, you show how little you understand of it.

Epistemology is fundamental because it is the study of how you can know anything. Until you have a solid epistemology, you have nothing but claims and counter-claims, with none of them having any solid basis for priority over the other.

Once you have a solid basis for epistemology, you can begin to assign values to statements: This is true, this is not, this is likely to be true, this is likely not to be true, and so on.

Since you think you're so smart, how would you refute anything without first having a way of saying that such and such a statement is or at least might be true, and such and such a statement is not or at least is not likely to be so? Without such a system, you cannot. But as soon as you have such a system, by definition that is epistemology. It might be good or bad epistemology, it might be solid or silly epistemology (just as there can be sound and faulty logic, rational and irrational science, and son on), but that is what epistemology is.

How many college-level classes have you taken on epistemology? I have taught them. Have you even taken any college-level classes on formal and informal logic? That doesn't yet get you into epistemology, but it at least gets you into semantics, which is the stepping-stone to epistemology. You just come across as an uneducated person who is too ignorant of a subject to even realize how ignorant you are of it. And yet you dare to say that what others have studied rigorously is nonsense.

You have failed to impress me. If you were one of my students, I would give you a failing grade. As would any other professor of logic and/or philosophy and/or epistemology.

It could one day be a theory. Right now, it's at best a hypothesis with no substantiation.

Every state that mandates intelligent design or some similar scam should be forced to teach that progenitor aliens came down and fathered the human race.

Obelisk, perverts, whatever.

God created evolution to piss off ideologues.

I maintain that no state should mandate the teaching of intelligent design or anything else. As scientific theories evolve, educators and parents should be able to choose for themselves what is and is not appropriate to teach, without having to deal with "officially approved truth."

Even though I am a convinced creationist myself (albeit not in the most traditional sense of the word with the "6-day creation 6000-years-ago, just like the inspired King James Bible teaches it" outlook), there is no way I would want any laws requiring teachers to have anything to say on the subject. It comes from also being a pretty convinced libertarian. I want teachers to be able to teach what they think is appropriate, and parents to be able to choose what schools they want for their children's education, without the government being involved in the process any more than is absolutely necessary. (And I am not yet completely convinced that any government intervention is "absolutely necessary.")

Wait, so now you are pro-I.D?





(Just picking on ya - I'm on you side. Galileo said it best in a past confrontation between religion and science...he said: "I cannot believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason and intellect would intend us to forgo their use.")

You can't be a theist and not be, but there is a stark difference between trying to understand the world and then ascribing everything to magic and Jesus.

Maybe God gave that spark to the primordial ooze, I don't profess to know.

Again, now we're failing to really look at what "supernatural" actually means.

Just because we haven't found mountains of evidence on the existence of a creator, doesn't mean that intelligent design lends itself to the supernatural.

If this were true, then no scientist would have branched out to understand anything, because anything that seems unprovable is supernatural.

We assume that God is unobservable, and therefore supernatural.

Again, there is a difference.

We KNOW the Great Green Garglwhoop was created.

Wow.

That was a vague, elitist little rant, now wasn't it?

Well illustrated, though, I must say.

Don't worry, though, I dont think too many people are expecting you to offer much to the debate any longer.

Have another go?

But then you go and say something I agree with...

I am conflicted.

I posted agreeing definitions from five different dictionaries. I'm not too concerned.

Well, anything that's unprovable wouldn't be science. If you're trying to say scientists regard unexplained phenomena as supernatural you're dead wrong; one of the bedrock principles of science is methodological naturalism.

If you have an idea on creationism why not develop a hypothesis and test it? That's how science works. What you're doing is basically arguing from ignorance ("You don't know..." rather than the scientific "I can prove...").

Unless you have personally conducted the research yourself, you have faith in:

1. the researcher
2. his work
3. that it was reported to you accurately
4. that no bias exists either in the researcher, the peer review process, or the reporting of the findings - or in your own willingness to accept them.
5. that you are capable of understanding what you have been told completely, that you are insightful enough to understand all the limitations and implications of the research, the possible flaws, and the alternative explanations for the findings. And that you are willing to face those conclusions if they lead to an end you do not prefer.


Yes sir. You have faith in a great many things, as do we all.

Unless of course you are a more skilled researcher in the field than you have revealed - but even then you only shorten the list, not eliminate it.

Can you drive a truck without it? Or build one?

Can you move a sofa? or Build one?

Can you make a cake? A dress? A ship? A book? a stock purchase?

Can you balance a ledger, change the oil in a car (or the engine) pilot a tug, pour concrete, tan leather, change a diaper, or about a billion other productive things in life without believing one theory or the other?

Yeah. You pretty much can.

Do you assume things cannot move from one realm to the other?

Wasn't it Clarke who said "any sufficently advance technology would appear to be magic?"

Take your modern whatever - hell, cigarette lighter - and show it to the Neanderthal and he will grunt whatever word he uses for "MAGIC!!"

To HIM - you have displayed something that is supernatural. It will forever be supernatural to him until he understands it, then it will be "natural"

The fact that YOU understand it does not change HIS definition of it.

Likewise, that which we do not understand and cannot be explained by natural laws as we understand them is, by all the definitions cited here, is supernatural....but if we discover an explanation for, shall we say, Black dove's ghosts, then they are by definition moved from the category of supernatural to natural.

Therefore, for you to sling the word supernatural about as a slur that supposedly ends the conversation is not valid.

The extreme unlikelyhood that an asexual life form might evolve both a male and a female, fully compatible and able to reproduce, in the same generation and in geographic proximity to each other.

Evolution is said to be driven either by environmental pressures, or by freak mutation.

If we postulate the former, then a species which is successfully propagating asexually has no environmental pressure to evolve a bisexual process, especially given that asexual reproduction would be more likely to produce results in a harsh environment.

Thus, he thousands of generations necessary to modify the reproductive organs to the new process would have had infinite potential for evolutionary dead end.

Contrawise, if we postulate mutation, then we must postulate to random freak mutations, of opposite genders, which are compatable, occur within the same generation, and in the same location.

A statistical impossibility.

How does evolution account for the rise of bisexual reproduction?