Evolutionary Biology replaced by Bible Studies in American Schools.

[Khartoun2004]

Originally Posted by katbeidar

Since Bush became president, Bible became a part of school education system, and evolution is "optional". What? America is keeping knowledge from it's own people! Just what we need, more ignorance in this world! Common! This is outrageous.

hold on a minute Kate. First I'd like to say I agree with everything else in your post whole heartedly.

However this statement is a little off. President Bush as much as he and the rest of the fundamentalists in this country would love, cannot mandate that evolution be optional to the bible unless it's in a private school. The First Amendment clearly states that there will be a seperation of Church and State. So even if Bush tried to make the bible the be all and end all of a science classroom, the supreme court, senate and house of reps would bit his head off. It's not possible as long as the system works.

Don't worry about us American students, I can assure you they are still teaching evolution instead of the bible in public schools.

[spyretto]

I think the verdict should be:

99% probability there's no God

1% that there is.

But you gotta respect that 1%.

As for evolution, I find the idea that all organisms originate from a single organism quite stupid - coz this is what the evolutionists' are trying to point out. But then again, one has to respect those theories too.

[Kate]

spyretto, in my opinion the probability that there's God is more like a 10 to the power of negative infinity. But I do respect people who believe in God to a certain extent.

[russkayatatu]

katbeidar, I think you're oversimplifying evolutionary theory into one answer, an ultrareductionary stance like Richard Dawkin's, which turns Darwinism into something like the key to everything - a powerful theory that explains all the fundamentals of our existence. But that's not the only way to look at it. Everyone agrees evolution occurs, but exactly how and why are where everybody disperses. Don't simplify "evolution" into an God (or god) -disproving, this-is-definitely-what-happened viewpoint. "We got lucky" and "bigger brains helped us survive" are POSSIBILITIES, but they're not necessary, and they're not something you need to 'believe' in either.

(To be honest, I really don't see how evolution has anything to do with God and why this is part of the discussion at all - like either you believe in "silly religious nonsense" or you're a True Scientist - Freeman Dyson pointed out that among first-class scientists are Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, militant atheists, and those, like him, loosely bound to Christianity through habit and upbringing but not devoted to any specific creed, as well as others. "The voice of science is a Babel of diverse languages and cultures," he said.)

I don't mean to suggest that the creationists are right when they say that evolution is "only a theory" and that "their theory is just as good" - they're not - I'm just saying that evolutionary biology doesn't end with Darwin's theories and that if you read Stephen Jay Gould, for example, he suggests that natural selection and standard Darwinian evolution really don't have much explaining power at all. Complexity theory and guys like Stuart Kauffman give little or no place to natural selection.

Regarding humans specifically, I think there's much more in play than what Darwin originally theorized - we know that we you apply Darwinian theory to human societies - Social Darwinism - you get all kinds of fatalistic, eugenic movements, people like Lombroso comparing the skulls of criminals and black people to the faces of apes and theories like "we go through all the races in the womb, ending at White; if you're born Black or Mongolian then you are 'stuck' at one of the lower levels." A few days ago I read part of an interesting book called Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People, by Joan Roughgarden, Professor of Biological Sciences at Stanford University, which basically argues, among other things, that Darwin's theory of sexual selection is wrong. I think you'd like it, Kate, it's really fascinating

[Kate]

russkayatatu, I'm a biology major, I think I have a winder grasp on what evolution is then any one of us here. I write essays on evolution that get "A+", I have a very wide base of knowledge on this subject, and can argue it from any point of view. But all my conclusions have a simple logic to them. Sorry if we disagree.