The Slippery Slope of Stupid

[RedJeepXJ]

Originally Posted by Hillman

Sooooo, it's "better" if the Tennessee House OK'd a bill shielding teachers who insist on teaching evolution as the only opinion, or that global warming is the only opinion with factual data? Why can't they both be taught?...and then allow the brain matter of the one being taught come to it's own conclusions? Additionally, it speaks volumes when there has to be a bill passed to protect those who have different opinions from the elitist left leaning pseudo-intellectuals!!

Why is it that those who insist on free speech find it (free speech) acceptable only when they agree with it?

It's not the job of schools to take science and place a belief as significant when it has no place for it to be taught in a science class. We have to base science on what the scientific community has found to be true, And we have plenty of evidence to support that evolution is a fact really, we may not have it traced back without any shred of doubt to the first organism or how the universe was created but we sure know we have evolved.

Despite this, There are still plenty of people that believe the world is 6,000 years old, how are these students supposed to learn anything about science if we allow the teachers to push that false belief on the students?

[rivalarrival]

I am completely fed up with people who disregard reality as inconvenient to their world view.

You want a perfectly reasonable, perfectly valid, theistic idea that neatly stitches together these two seemingly disparate ideas, creationism and evolution? Ok. No problem. Let's start with Genesis. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. So far so good, right? Ok, HOW did god do that? Can you answer that question? Did God wink his eye and blink heaven and earth into existence? Did he mold it in his hands? Did he belch it out? How do you know?

Ok, let's move on - God said "Let there be light" - Ok? What was the nature of this first light? Did it snap on like a strobe light? Did it gradually warm up like some divine, cosmic flourescent bulb? Did it flicker? Warm Tungsten, or cool white? The bible tells us only God's opinion on that light: "Good". Seriously? This is the first light that ever existed and it gets exactly one adjective to describe it? Not even an interesting adjective, just "Good". I ask my kids about school, they give me that. Oh, Ok, great, I mean, I guess it's better than the alternative, but frankly, I'm kinda left wanting a bit more, aren't you? If I counted correctly, the version of the bible I'm looking at uses just 82 words to describe that entire first day. 82 freaking words to describe the whole of existence, the method in which God created it... He rested at the end of that day; did he watch TV and play solitaire? go for a jog? blog about his accomplishments for the day?

How big is the bible? 39 books in the old testament, 27 in the new? Can the sum total of God's wondrous creation be described in only 66 books, in a format and language that Man can comprehend? Seriously? You expect me to believe that man can read just 66 books and understand all of creation? You're not that stupid, you're not that deluded, and don't expect me to be either.

So, let's start looking at existence itself. Let's study the dirt beneath our feet and discover all the tiny creatures of God's creation. Look how they interact with eachother.

Let's look deeper - let's look at molecules. Let's see the millions of different ways they interact. Let's tear them apart and put them back together in new patterns. Let's break open the atoms themselves, like a kid disassembling an alarm clock to see what makes it tick.

Let's look at the molecules of living creatures, observe how similar they are. Let's discover how DNA works, how it interacts with RNA, how it encodes information, how that information is converted into cells. Let's record and categorize the DNA of every creature we can find, study them. Let's look at the wonder of how God created this planet, created life.




But God Forbid that we teach a class asking students to do all this for themselves. No, no, no, no, no - it would be an abomination before the Lord to have any sort of class that asks its students to study the very nature of existence itself, unless we specifically tell them to refer to the bible as some sort of cosmic answer key.



I'm still marveling about it. 82 words to describe that first day. Just 82 words to describe the single most momentous day in all of history, and then he gave us inquisitive minds, yearning for knowledge and understanding. Seriously? What kind of sick joke is that?!

[blucher]

I'm still marveling about it. 82 words to describe that first day. Just 82 words to describe the single most momentous day in all of history, and then he gave us inquisitive minds, yearning for knowledge and understanding. Seriously?

I worry about the words left out.

[Hillman]

Let's end unboxing videos. [VIDEO]

I couldn't help but think of this thread when I saw this video. It reminded me that things considered important by some are discarded as useless by others. The trash of some is counted as valuable by others. The obvious isn't necessarily obvious to all and stupidity, like evolution and gravity, can't be measured without intellectual honesty.

[blucher]

Folklore and Legend - Creation Myths

The First Human Beings (North Africa)
In the beginning there were only one man and one woman and they lived not on the earth but beneath it. They were the first people in the world and neither knew that the other was of another sex.

One day they both came to the well to drink. The man said, "Let me drink."
The woman said, "No, I'll drink first. I was here first."

The man tried to push the woman aside. She struck him. They fought. The man smote the woman so that she dropped to the ground. Her clothing fell to one side. Her thighs were naked.

The man saw the woman lying strange and naked before him. He saw that she had a taschunt. He felt that he had a thabuscht. He looked at the taschunt and asked, "What is that for?"

The woman said, "That is good."
The man lay upon the woman. He lay with the woman eight days.

After nine months the woman bore four daughters. Again, after nine months, she bore four sons, And again four daughters and again four sons. So at last the man and the woman had fifty daughters and fifty sons. The father and the mother did not know what to do with so many children. So they sent them away.

The fifty maidens went off together towards the north. The fifty young men went off together towards the east. After the maidens had been on their way northwards under the earth for a year, they saw a light above them. There was a hole in the earth.

The maidens saw the sky above them and cried, "Why stay under the earth when we can climb to the surface where we can see the sky?"

The maidens climbed up through the hole and on to the earth.

The fifty youths likewise continued in their own direction under the earth for a year until they, too, came to a place where there was a hole in the crust and they could see the sky above them.

The youths looked at the sky and cried, "Why remain under the earth when there is a place from which one can see the sky?"

So they climbed through their hole to the surface.

Thereafter the fifty maidens went their way over the earth's surface and the youths went their way and none knew aught of the others.

At that time all trees and plants and stones could speak. The fifty maidens saw the plants and asked them, "Who made you?"

And the plants replied, "The earth."
The maidens asked the earth, "Who made you?"
And the earth replied, "I was already here."

During the night the maidens saw the moon and the stars and they cried, "Who made you that you stand so high over us and over the trees? Is it you who give us light? Who are you, great and little stars? Who created you? Or are you, perhaps, the ones who have made everything else?" All the maidens called and shouted. But the moon and the stars were so high that they could not answer.

The youths had wandered into the same region and could hear the fifty maidens shouting.

They said to one another, "Surely here are other people like ourselves. Let us go and see who they are." And they set off in the direction from which the shouts had come.

But just before they reached the place they came to the bank of a great stream. The stream lay between the fifty maidens and the fifty youths. The youths had, however, never seen a river before, so they shouted. The maidens heard the shouting in the distance and came towards it.

The maidens reached the other bank of the river, saw the fifty youths and cried, "Who are you? What are you shouting? Are you human beings, too?"

The fifty youths shouted back, "We, too, are human beings. We have come out of the earth. But what are you yelling about?"

The maidens replied, "We, too, are human beings and we, too, have come out of the earth. We shouted and asked the moon and the stars who had made them or if they had made everything else."

The fifty boys spoke to the river, "You are not like us," they said. "We cannot grasp you and cannot pass over you as one can pass over the earth. What are you? How can one cross over you to the other side?"

The river said, "I am the water. I am for bathing and washing. I am there to drink. If you want to reach my other shore go upstream to the shallows. There you can cross over me."

The fifty youths went upstream, found the shallows and crossed over to the other shore. The fifty youths now wished to join the fifty maidens, but the latter cried, "Do not come too close to us. We won't stand for it. You go over there, and we'll stay here leaving that strip of steppe between us."

So the fifty youths and the fifty maidens continued on their way, some distance, apart, but traveling in the same direction.

One day the fifty boys came to a spring. The fifty maidens also came to a spring.
The youths said, "Did not the river tell us that water was to bathe in? Come, let us bathe."

The fifty youths laid aside their clothing and stepped down into the water and bathed. The fifty maidens sat around their spring and saw the youths in the distance. A bold maiden said, "Come with me and we shall see what the other human beings are doing."

Two maidens replied, "We'll come with you." All the others refused.

The three maidens crept through the bushes towards the fifty youths. Two of them stopped on the way. Only the bold maiden came, hidden by the bushes, to the very place where the youths were bathing. Through the bushes the maiden looked at the youths who had laid aside their clothing. The youths were naked. The maiden looked at all of them. She saw that they were not like the maidens. She looked at everything carefully. As the youths dressed again the maiden crept away without their having seen her.

The maiden returned to the other maidens who gathered around her and asked, "What have you seen?"
The bold maiden replied, "Come, we'll bathe, too, and then I can tell you and show you."
The fifty maidens undressed and stepped down into their spring.

The bold maiden told them, "The people over there are not as we are. Where our breasts are, they have nothing. Where our taschunt is, they have something else. The hair on their heads is not long like ours, but short. And when one sees them naked one's heart pounds and one wishes to embrace them. When one has seen them naked, one can never forget it."

The other maidens replied, "You lie."
But the bold maiden said, "Go and see for yourselves and you'll come back feeling as I do."

[Funetical]

"Science is the key to our future, and if you don't believe in science, then you're holding everybody back. And it's fine if you as an adult want to run around pretending or claiming that you don't believe in evolution, but if we educate a generation of people who don't believe in science, that's a recipe for disaster. ... The main idea in all of biology is evolution. To not teach it to our young people is wrong." Bill Nye

[blucher]

but if we educate a generation of people who don't believe in science, that's a recipe for disaster. ...

In the 15th century the Arabs turned from mathematics, astronomy and science to Islam, little interest in science and 500 years of ignorance.
You see the results every night on the evening news.

We are a country with tolerance for all religions but a separation of religious dogma from secular legislation. We could become backward fundamentalists insisting on literal observance of religious laws or a progressive center of education and discovery.