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Battle Against Teaching Evolution in Texas Begins
March 19, 2008 - 3:27pm
Read it here.
Amen, brother.
Long live pond scum!
The new dinosaur exhibit is also great. Gotta love these guys who think dinosaurs and people co-existed. I think if we brought them to the ROM and stood them next to the T. rex skeleton, it just might put that particular fantasy into perspective. One framed by twelve-inch-long pointy teeth.
Or there's the allosaurus, or the albertosaurus, or the euroraptor or the...oh, I get it. We were much lower on the food chain in those days.
I actually started a thread about it HERE.
For the hell of it, I googled "dinosaurs in the bible." From the half-million hits, here's an illustrative example:
Clarifying Christianity
Hey, it's got me half-way convinced [img]rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img]
They never did.
Whatever happened to "open debate" as the modus operandi of the so called rationalists, or is that ideal only suitable when your opponents represent the status quo of authority?
I find your loudmouthed and empty tirades in these discussion to be tiresome, uninformative and counter-productive. Darwin did not originally win the field on the theory of evolution by calling his detractors pond-scum. He appealed to reason.
So should you.
Till then, insults will do just fine.
What about advocates of leaving female babies on mountainsides? Can I use loudmouthed and empty tirades against them? Or do I need to subtly persuade them with nuanced appeals to their cultivated and refined and intelligence?
Anyway, thanks for revealing how you truly feel about me, Cueball. No more late night trysts. No more snogging in the back row of the cinema. As Roy Orbison once ululated, in his loudmouthed and empty fashion:
It's over!
Obviously if the self-deluded crowd manages to subvert a state's entire curriculum, as they are trying to do, then the universities would have a tough job holding to such a policy.
There is some debate as to how much creationism should be tolerated in academia. One discussion was around a young-Earth creationist named Marcus Ross who received a PhD in geoscience for a thesis in which he discussed the K-T extinction event 65 million years ago. While the university can legitimately argue they awarded the degree based on the merits of the research, it undermines credibility to give it to someone who publicly states he doesn't believe the results of his own work.
My favorite creationist resource is Answers In Genesis.
There they explain that the dinosaurs were animals died out during the great flood. I have to assume it's because they didn't fit on the ark, or they got lost on the way to Noah's house.
I used that site recently to try to figure out how creationists can explain how penguins get from Mount Ararat, where the ark supposedly grounded, to Antarctica. I'm pretty sure that if you dropped off a pair of penguins in eastern Turkey it wouldn't end well for them. They didn't really have an answer for that, other than 'the Bible says there was a flood, so there must have been some way'.
Come on Unionist. This is Bullshit. Waste of time. Why even post it you can't formulate a reasoned argument. This is real WWF stuff. Personally I think you are great but this stuff is boring.
[ 19 March 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]
There are still crocodiles, sharks, whales, elephants and birds today. Aren't they distant cousins of the dinosaurs? I watched an animated video of a giant sea-going croc that grabbed an Albertasaurus or some such and disappeared under the water with it. Yikes!
That reminds me of a trip Ms. Sven and I took a couple of years ago to Chicago. We took our niece for a long weekend and told her to bring a friend.
One of the many things we did was go to the Field Museum to see, among many other things, the T. Rex "Sue". It's a fabulous T. Rex specimen (something like 90% complete). My niece's friend was unimpressed. Her parents--and, derivatively, her--are of the earth-was-created-6000-years-ago crowd. She made some dismissive comment about the dinosaurs and was completely uninterested in the T. Rex. But, about two minutes later, her eye lit up when she saw two stuffed elephants and she exclaimed, "Are those real elephants?!?!"
You know, that's not a bad idea, Michelle!
It's difficult--futile, really--to attempt to reason and be logical with those who refuse to discuss matters in anything but an unreasonable and illogical manner.
So, why bother?
M.
I have not observed you engaging in the rhetorical cameleonism that you seem to endorse.
To me, rhetorical cameleonism does not reflect a strong sense of personal ethics, self discipline and self perception. What I have to say on this forum, for instance, I say it in a street demonstration, an academic setting, a union hall, within the confines of a Parliamentary chamber or in a tavern (and did so in all these fora and more).
I would not call an opponents a "scum" or suggest that I "shit on Islam" on an electronic forum but change my discourse when facing them. I would feel not only hypocrite but a coward too. This, beside my belief that such language does nothing to shore up my arguments. If anything it is distractive and counter productive in that one might be dismissed as angry and incapable of self restraint and thus of clear reasoning. Especially for someone who professes rationalism and swears by unbridled freedom of expression.
As we all enjoy freedom of expression, I see no need for one to edit his/her discourse prior to delivering it beyond the confines of a virtual forum and the anonymity it provides. If my rhetoric here contains my view that someone is a "scum", by virtue of my freedom of expression that should remain.
But I am sure oratory cameleonism must fit some personalities more than others.
[ 20 March 2008: Message edited by: adam stratton ]
Cueball finds me boring these days, but I hope you and I are still on, adam.
I know your integrity at first hand. I know you don't take it personally when I describe Allah as a dirtbag, because after all, you're not a personal deity, are you?
Well I have a confession to make.
Your insults make me tingle with excitement. I know it's crazy, but I can't control it. Masochism? Perhaps. All I know is that I worship you, adam, and I'm not going to hide it any more. You inspired me to say it here, in public, because I'm tired of being a hypocrite and a coward!
Let the whole world know, what do I care?
Adam, you're my First Man!
You're my Personal Deity!
I want to have your babies!!!
I almost said "halve your babies", but that's what Yahweh told Abraham, and he didn't really mean it, I don't think...
What do you have against the World Wildlife Fund? I think it fits right in to a discussion of Creation.
You want my "reasoned argument" on an issue that science settled long ago (except in the minds of some Jewish, Christian and Muslim charlatans, that is)?
The way I see it is that there were green alligators and long-necked geese; some humpy-backed camels and some chimpanzees; some cats and rats and elephants...
But sure as you're born, the loveliest of all was the unicorn.
Cueball, "reasoned argument" on whether creationism should be taught in school is of no interest in Canada. This is not Texas. Even in the U.S., public school boards have banned this practice, and the courts have upheld them.
In Canada, arguing about whether creationism should be taught in school is akin to arguing whether human sacrifice should be taught in school.
In Quйbec, as I have pointed out before, we proudly shut down schools which try to teach creationism or other offensive anti-scientific doctrines, such as homophobia. We don't engage them in "reasoned argument", for Christ's sake.
To open a "reasoned" debate on this subject here is to degrade our discussion and to pretend that humanity has made no progress over the past 150 years. No thank you very much, Cueball. Anyone who thinks creationism should be taught in school deserves ridicule, not response. Oddly, I have never met such a person in my life. To repeat: We are living in Canada.
Reminder:
Teach sex and evolution or close, Quebec evangelical schools told
What next, Cueball? A reasoned debate on whether abortion should have been decriminalized?
Well yes, the public universities in Texas wouldn't have much choice but to accept them. But I'm sure lots of Texas students apply to out-of-state universities for science. Out-of-state universities should require them to pass remedial science courses (at their own expense) before letting them into their programs.
And graduates of Texas university science programs should be considered blacklisted from working at out-of-state universities as science professors, or out-of-state high schools as science teachers, unless they can show that those students have taken and passed courses that specifically debunk creationism at those Texas universities.
If the science community wants to take a stand, and protect their disciplines from this crapola, they should get tough.
[ 20 March 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]
There are plenty of sound and reasonable things to say supporting choice, its not like we are solely armed with derrisiveness.
Do you really not get the point? Debating creationism or ban-abortion views gives them crediblity. Whom would you debate these things with - some dinosaurs?? Some rabbi or imam? The Pope? George W. Bush?
[ 20 March 2008: Message edited by: Cueball ]