Creationism strikes back

Kansas crawls back into the primordial soup.

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051107/full/051107-6.html

It seems that evolution has taken a step back in kansas and allowed for monkeys to be members of the schoolboard. These monkeys couldn't tell the difference between a banana and a fart and voted Intelligent design back into the class room. A victory for the students apparently. Well, maybe if they are a species of primordial slime and not rather intelligent hominids.

If I want to describe this with a word I would pick 'sad'.

How could this happen in an enlighted society. Can we draw the conclusion that we are living in the dark ages? And that we may need a new renaissance.

 

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Tangent:
The rate at which new inventions are invented these days is at the same rate as that of the dark ages.

The USA is going to lose the lead in science in the next couple generations. Oh well, it was good while it lasted.

 

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Perhaps their's isn't so enlightened. Them Kansanians.

I don't really know how you can say that. Not saying you're wrong, but our inventions today compound on other inventions, rendering more drastic applications and implications. Trust me, we're going to be seeing some crazeeee shit in the next decade or so.

Besides, what do you consider an invention? Think about all of the Internet-enabling technology that drives the economy. There is a shitload of it. ASP.NET, PHP, HTML, mySQL, MSSQ, Flash, etc. But really, I don't understand why I hear people talking about how slow technological progress is these days.

Yeah. It certainly is looking that way. Our schools aren't pumping out nearly enough engineers and BS's to compete with foreigners. And those are the kinds of people that really drive the economy.

 

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Their victory was short lived in Dover, Pennsylvania. 8 out of the 9 members of their school board that voted for including intelligent design in science class lost re-election.

 

Ape,

I'm just repeating what I've read. Some guy did a study of all the major inventions for the past 2000 years or something, and he found that, after controlling for population, there are less inventions per capita than 100 or 200 years ago. According to his models, we're going to enter a period of almost no new innovations in the next 100 years ago. Of course, that's just tracing his graph out.

Well, there's some controversy over what he calls inventions, but improvements aren't really inventions. Going from vacuum tubes to chips would be an invention in computing, but doubling processing power every 3 years (or whatever the law is) is hardly an invention. It's kind of like making a knife sharper.

I hardly consider Flash a noteworthy invention. In the scheme of things, HTML is gonna be a little footnote. Again, these are just improvements on existing inventions.

In the stone age, they figured out some really sweet ways to make their stone tools better, stronger, sharper. But they weren't really inventions, as stone tools had already been invented and all their little improvements didn't create the sort of paradigm shift that metal tools did.

Another criticism you touched upon was that in the next decade we'll see some "crazeeee shit." Critics say this guy doesn't at all take into account possibilities in genetics, biotech and especially nanotech.

I think most of the advances in the next few decades will be in nanotech. As soon as we figure out how to work with really small stuff, that is.

 

Re-the opening post: sad, yes, but on the plus side it will provide an opportunity to see natural selection at work. Watch Kansas sink back into the primordial slime as persons with brains leave and those without move in.

 

I find it very interesting. On one hand, not one of us would like to give up our "freedoms" and be told what to do and how to live. Yet each of y'all are seemingly perfectly willing to FORCE Kansas residents how and what to teach their own children.

If a town or city wants to teach their children creationism, why should you care? And more importantly, why do you think YOU should be able to tell them what and what not to do? Would you like some outsiders telling YOU what to do and how to raise YOUR children?

And while ye're at it, why not force other nations of the world how to live and what to teach THEIR children? Why stop at Kansas? Let's force everyone on Earth to live the way we live and teach their children what we say to teach ...what's the difference?

Baron Max

 

Think before you do that. There is NO WAY that

Our knowledge is growing exponentially, not decaying. ... Of course, banning teaching science might help reduce the growth of knowledge.

So this guy arbitrarily discounted inventions to prove his point and since that didn't work, he divided the invention rate by the population. There are 6.36 billion people on the Earth today. The vast majority are extremely undereducated (by Western standards) and are not making what qualify as <i>major</i> inventions of today. This guy fudged and fudged again. Dang.

"There are lies, damned lies, and statistics".

Kansas has been in the primordial soup for a long time. For example, see www.godhatesamerica.com .

My question: Will this decision hurt the rest of the country? For example, school book publishers might feel compelled to modify their books so they can sell them in Kansas.

 

In the civilized world we don't teach children creationism. We would like to see the same thing happen in the US.

 

I normally agree with you Bmax, and I sort of do here, but not totally.

IMO, if they want to teach creationism (or ID, or whatever label you want to put on it) it should be done in another class, philosophy, sociology, or whatever. a SCIENCE class is a place to study theories, not untestable hypotheses.

 

Baron:

Parents shouldn't get to dictate what is taught in a science class, end of story.

If you don't like what a public school is teaching your children, then don't send them there. Send them to a private school, or home school them. However, science is taught in SCIENCE class. And what constitutes as science isn't decided by ignorant laymen, because science isn't about democracy.

Red herring. This is a domestic issue, not an foreign policy issue, so don't even try this diversion.

 

Ah. Another 'bad Kansas' thread.

First of all. This isn't new. Kansas has been teaching creationism since sometime in the 90's. I found this out belatedly from a friend of mine who is still condemned to life in Kansas (Yes, dear friends, your faithful narrator, invert_nexus, is a *gasp* Kansan. I believe I actually made it through with a rather good education, of course my time was before such things as creationism were even thought about being taught in schools.)

I despise the thought of children's minds being poisoned with this creationist agenda. However, the truth of the matter is that, by and large, the argument is moot as the children are indoctrinated long before reaching science class.

Anyway. This isn't new.


Second.

Ah. Look at that. Kansas teaches creationism. And the argument is extended to 'the US'. Is that fair?

Speaking of 'the civilized world', why don't you mention Italy? They have banned the teaching of evolution as well, you know. A couple years back. Supposedly there has been a public outcry and they intend to restore evolutionary teaching eventually, but no timetable (that I'm aware of) is in the works. "Eventually" might mean a very long time.

So. Since Italy teaches creationism, can we extend that to the entire 'civilized world'? (I.e. Europe.)

How many other backwater locales in Europe have similar situations that nobody ever hears about?


Third.

Somewhat yes. Somewhat no.
There are a great number of fundamentalists in Kansas. People that are not willing to listen to reason. But, there are also a number of people who, perhaps because of their forebears, are able to remain rational and escape the attempted indoctrination by the school system.

Of course, it's already been mentioned that the intelligent will leave and the ignorant will flock. This would occur with or without the teaching of creationism. Kansas is a dead end state. Great for farmers, but not so good for people who don't want to grow wheat or livestock. There has been a diaspora of their best and finest from Kansas for generations. This is most likely at the source of the current debate. Only the retards remain. (Actually, mostly the uncaring and unthinking.)

 

Kansas schools are NOT doing away with science classes! Is that really what you thought?

No! They want to teach science, but ALSO want to teach creationism as an addition to the normal science classes. I don't see a damned thing wrong with that.

But then, I also don't see anything wrong with Kansas citizens/voters teaching most anything that they want or not teaching what they don't want. Why should people in, say California and New York, have anything to say about what Kansas residents want to teach? How is it anyone else's fuckin' business?? Please explain that to me.

Baron Max

 

You don't see anything wrong with teaching religious myths in science class? Then you don't mind if we teach alchemy and astrology is science class as well?

 

If we use the logic of the US yes. If some muslim terrorists perform acts of terrorism is it fair to invade a random muslim country. You as a nation answered yes to that question. But when we stop being anal I would still say, yes, it is fair. You are either a country or you are not. If you aren't then get a divorce and split up.

Hence I didn't mention the word Europe.

 

One of the fundamental principles of US government is that there are some things that the government is simply not supposed to do, ever, under any circumstances - even if the majority of local people want the government to do it. This includes such things as imprisoning people without a trial, punishing people for criticizing the government, not allowing people to vote because of their race/gender/religion, and - the part that's relevant to the case at hand - forcing people to undergo religious indoctrination.

 

Not if that's what the residents of the state voted to do! Or doesn't our votes mean anything to you? Why do you think others should tell Kansas schools what and what not to teach? Why do you think you or anyone else should force their teaching methods and subjects onto residents of Kansas?

Actually schools do teach that ....and should. In some schools it's taught by the history departments, but it should also be a part of the science curiculum as well. There would probably be no science if it weren't for alchemy and astrology ...as well as other such ancient studies.

Baron Max

 

Baron,

As long as Kansas residents are spending my tax dollars, it's my fuckin' business.

 

Spurious,

Going off on a pretty far tangent with this, aren't you?

I don't think so. But that's not relevant to this topic.

What is relevant to the topic is that we as a nation didn't decide to teach creationism in our schools.

What? Divorce Kansas?
The US is a country.
Kansas is not. Kansas is a state.
There is no federal mandate on teaching creationism in schools. Kansas decided in its power as a state to do it.

Perhaps you're simply confused by the balance of power in the US between the federal and state government? You also have to figure local government into the mess as well, but they've far less power than the state or federal.

Did you know that the original government of the US was more along the lines of a confederacy? That is the states held the power. But, the states fell to squabbling with each other and nothing was getting done 'as a nation' and so the balance of power was modified to more federal power. The states are not neutered though.

Do you think they should be?

 

Didn't McDonnell-Douglas / Boeing help defeat this the last time around by threatening to vacate the state? Did they fight then proposal this time around?

Then again, Boeing has had plenty of time to move all the creative work out of Kansas since the merger is now ancient history. Does Boeing still care about the quality of education in Kansas?