Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

~~~

~~~

Thursday, March 13, 2008

ANTI-EVOLUTION FLORIDA

(Click on comic for larger image.)

With the aid of Florida lawmakers, Allen Hayes, and Ronda Storms, Ben Stein is putting his money where his anti-science beliefs are and making a documentary--it will out in April.

The purpose of the documentary will be to sell Florida lawmakers on just how bad their new teaching standards are that include the word evolution.

Stein's buddy, Allen Hayes, had this to say:

"I want a balanced policy. I want students taught how to think, not what to think," Hayes says. "There are problems with evolution. Have you ever seen a half-monkey, half human?"


Good luck, Ben Stein, to you and your idiotic, anti-evolution ninnies.









4 comments:

Patrick M said...

Let me begin by saying that I do believe in the concept of creation, and that I don't think evolution is an airtight theory.

Having said that, though, the obsession of some on the right in pushing intelligent design, which is creationism with God omitted to satisfy the ACLU, is embarrassing at the least and patently stupid at worst. Trust me, there are plenty of state representatives here in the great state of Ohio that talk the same twaddle.

Put bluntly, creationism is not scientific theory, and cannot be proven or disproven because it relies on faith and belief. Evolution, while less than a perfect theory, involves actual science.

The problem is that the religious right tend to force their faith on people, to the point of stifling debate. Science and religion can coexist, and should coexist.

And the people pushing creation as a competing scientific theory need to evolve. Really.

Shaw Kenawe said...

Evolution, while less than a perfect theory, involves actual science. --Patrick

Patrick, ask any biologist and they will tell you evolution is a FACT. How it works is the THEORY, which is supported by mountains of evidence.

Trust me on this.

The fact that people don't understand this can be attributed to a failure of our educational system.

45% of the American population believe that the earth is 6,000. 45%! You'd have to go across the Atlantic, past the European continent and land in the Middle East to find that sort of ignorance.

Shaw Kenawe said...

That should have said 6,000 years old.

And for further elucidation:

When non-biologists talk about biological evolution they often confuse two different aspects of the definition. On the one hand there is the question of whether or not modern organisms have evolved from older ancestral organisms or whether modern species are continuing to change over time. On the other hand there are questions about the mechanism of the observed changes... how did evolution occur? Biologists consider the existence of biological evolution to be a fact.

It can be demonstrated today and the historical evidence for its occurrence in the past is overwhelming.

However, biologists readily admit that they are less certain of the exact mechanism of evolution; there are several theories of the mechanism of evolution. Stephen J. Gould has put this as well as anyone else:

"In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect fact"--part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus the power of the creationist argument: evolution is "only" a theory and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory. If evolution is worse than a fact, and scientists can't even make up their minds about the theory, then what confidence can we have in it?

Indeed, President Reagan echoed this argument before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in what I devoutly hope was campaign rhetoric): "Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science--that is, not believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was."

Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty.

Facts are the world's data.

Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts.

Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them.

Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."

Patrick M said...

Any biologist that says evolution is a fact is treating it as a belief, not as a theory. While you are correctly taking the creationists to task for their pseudo-science, I suspect you may be defending a belief in evolution, which may be grounded in logical thinking, but still involves a belief. I don't believe in evolution. I accept evolution as the only logical and credible theory to answer the question: How did we get here? In this, semantics are important. I can't help it of the creationists fail to open a dictionary.

I have no arguments with evolution, but it still has gaps and questions that still need answered, despite the mountains of data. And anyone who wants to say "the debate is over" is certainly not a scientist.

Also, the education system is a whole different topic where political agendas trump thought.