Just f'in great!

[Cander]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/01....ap/index.html

My state is the latest to cave in to religious conservatives.

EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION

You came from a monkey so STFU!

God needs to be replaced by 'religious icon'

And Gerogia needs to be replaced with 'State of a bunch of whiney rednecks.'

The piss off I feel is mostly from being cut off in traffic by a truck covered in bumper sticker's crying about the flag change.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I LOVE it!!

Why didn't the superintendent just say: "They're a bunch of ignorant rednecks, so we're going to change the terminology on them. Most of them will think that they've won, while the rest of them will be too confused by the word 'terminology'. Either way, we can go right on as we were."

[Xcoder]

LOL, I just read this and I just cant stop doing this . ***!!!

from
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...king_evolution

"If you're teaching the concept without the word, what's the point?" said Rep. Bobby Franklin, a Republican. "It's stupid. It's like teaching gravity without using the word gravity."

LOL amazing.

[NotLKH]

Politicians who try to bend laws, gov't and society to meet some religious perspective should be removed from office, forcefully if necessary!

It Makes me sick that the religious conservatives are imposing upon the science curriculum of all states throughout the country!

Anybody have her email address?

[Xcoder]

There is a physical address somewhere here

Georgia Department of Education http://www.gadoe.org/

haha check this from link below:

Why, then, is the word itself not used in the draft of the curriculum, when the concepts are there? The unfortunate truth is that "evolution" has become a controversial buzzword that could prevent some from reading the proposed biology curriculum comprehensive document with multiple scientific models woven throughout. We don't want the public or our students to get stuck on a word when the curriculum actually includes the most widely accepted theories for biology. Ironically, people have become upset about the exclusion of the word again, without having read the document.

http://www.doe.k12.ga.us/doe/media/04/012804.asp

[MartinLiss]

Isn't Georgia Department of Education an oxymoron?

[Something Else]

God damn it!
The head of the education branch of her state, and she wants to pander!

OOOhhh, yeah! Lets not use the word "Evolution". It might make people less willing to learn about it!

aHEM! Excuse me??? If they turn away from what is being taught, FLUNK EM~!!!!

[WorkHorse]

Bah. It is meaningless. I write stuff like this all the time.

If we say in a government report that we will teach "evolution", people go nuts with objections. So, we say in our government report that we will teach "biological changes over time". It is OK with those people. We are now only teaching the basis for the theory of evolution and it’s resulting implications. We are not teaching a conclusive theory that all students must accept even if it contradicts a literal Bible interpretation.

This only means that the "official government" description of what is taught is from the perspective of "scientific evidence that results in a scientific conclusion" and not a "scientific conclusion based on scientific evidence".

What does this change. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. Nothing. Teachers can teach exactly as they could before. Exactly as they could before. The only difference is that in the class description "evolution" is replaced by "biological changes over time". Nothing changes but the words on papers. It doesn't change anything except words on paper.

This is complete political balderdash. Nothing changes. One side can say “Yeah, we got evolution removed from education.” And the other side can say “Yeah, we can continue teach evolution as we have been.” Nothing changes. Both side think they are victors. The politician looks good. And nothing changes.

Looks like a win-win with nothing happening. As I said, I do this stuff al the time.

[mendhak]

I wonder how many times the teacher will have to keep repeating biological changes over time before he falls into convulsions.





"According to the theory of biological changes over time, we have biologically changed over time from a type of monkey.

Yes, Mark?

Oh, we're studying the theory of biological changes over time. All species biologically change over time, that's the main gist of the theory of biological changes over time. "

[WorkHorse]

Originally posted by mendhak
I wonder how many times the teacher will have to keep repeating biological changes over time before he falls into convulsions.

Millions of teachers over millions of years will have to keep repeating biological changes over time before biological changes over time result in teachers that do not have to keep repeating that biological changes over time is evolution. That is the way God made it.

[mendhak]

God is great.

Hail god!

[WorkHorse]

Originally posted by mendhak
God is great.

Hail god!

Jesus, we had golf ball sized hail God come down last spring. God dented my hood. No fire or brimstone like John promissed. God is obedient, God is enormous, thank you for this fotter, almond.

[wossname]

The modern curriculum is like a tabloid.

The 10% of useful information is hidden away on a different page every day so you can't find it and its never in the index, the other 90% of the news is out of date and obsolete and 100% of the students' attention is wasted on the funnies and page 3.

I reckon in 10 years we'll be seeing headlines like "Christianity, Catholicism downgraded to cult worship status". Then maybe we'll all be able to get on with actually educating people and progressing the human race instead.

ANYWAY!
(on the other hand...)
Why bother to teach evolution at all? Humanity isn't evolving, and it will continue not to do so until we ban fertility treatment and stop curing things like, oh I don't know, diseases and stuff. Humanity got where it is today by letting the weak die off and letting mutations occur (ie. not rectifying that 6th finger with surgery).
Cochlear implants, for example, 50,000 years ago a born-deaf person wouldn't have lived long after learning how to walk, because they didn't hear that Rhino coming...SPLAT. Now a born-deaf person can hear enough to stay out of trouble. That's artificial evolution, because the ability to make hearing aids is not encoded into our DNA...

Listen, I could go on about this all day. Basically what I want to say is: All those self righteous a-hole evangelists and RE teachers - go read a f***ing book, learn some actual facts before you spout off your usual bull**** that was written down thousands of years ago by politicians intent on controlling millions of people by threatening behaviour.

ARRRRRRGHhhhhhhhhhhh.

Note to Moderators, Please don't ban me

[wossname]

Originally posted by wossname
Humanity got where it is today by letting the weak die off and letting mutations occur

That's me on both counts then

[alkatran]

Why bother to teach evolution at all? Humanity isn't evolving, and it will continue not to do so until we ban fertility treatment and stop curing things like, oh I don't know, diseases and stuff. Humanity got where it is today by letting the weak die off and letting mutations occur (ie. not rectifying that 6th finger with surgery).

Cutting off your 6th finger won't remove it from your DNA. and if we can care the diseases, we don't need the immunity to them. (not that wouldn't be helpful).

Eventually we'll start messing with the human genome, and either wipe ourselves out or do some pretty cool stuff.

[CornedBee]

That's the theory of memes, woss. Our modern society is moving to fast for classical evolution to keep up with it. Our genes, as encoded in the DNA, get less important, and the memes, the information we humans share via other means, gets more important, slowly replacing genes. Once we've perfected genetic engineering to the point where we can cure any kind of genetic defect or create human DNA from scratch, the genes will have been reduced to a short-time storage only and the memes will have taken over all long-time storage functions.

[NotLKH]

"biological changes over time"

Hmm, lets see.
Disease, Ageing, Getting stabbed, Hangovers, have nothing to do with evolution. But they certainly fall under the category of "biological changes over time".

At the very least, shouldn't they instead be calling it
"Genetic changes over time".

Jey, wait a second. isn't The part of "Over Time" redundant, when its used in conjunction with the word "Changes"?

Otherwise it implies that there could be a category of:
"biological changes over distance"
and outside of Xanth, or being physically stretched to the breaking point, It just doesn't happen!

Ok. So now I'm down to:

"biological changes" should be "Genetic Changes".
Either way, it sounds like an infantile description.

Lets call Physics "Stuff Hitting Things"
Lets Call Chemistry "Mixing Stuff Up"

[crptcblade]

biological changes over time

Sounds to me like they are just stealing from a 7th grade Health curriculum.

[wossname]

Originally posted by alkatran
Cutting off your 6th finger won't remove it from your DNA.

I know, but having it removed means that that particular individual will not have either the advantage or the disadvantage (this is important) of having it.

Universe 1
Lets say for argument's sake that the caveman's 6th finger on his right hand causes him to be able throw his spear with 10% extra accuracy. He gets fed 10% more than the other males in the tribe and thus all the ladies want him. All his kids have 6 digits on their right hands and they eventually take over the world as the dominant human subspecies. This is beneficial evolution...

Universe 2 (an almost exact copy of universe 1)
Lets say for argument's sake that the caveman's 6th finger on his right hand potentially enables him to throw his spear with 10% extra accuracy. Some CULTURAL ritual means that he has this digit removed on his "wedding" day. So the benefit of the finger is lost, but since he is bound to a mate he is gauranteed breeding rights until his death. His finger played no part in his finding a mate (because all males had 6 fingers too (although some were larger than others (ahem ))) but even so, all of his children will have the 6th finger.

The latter is not beneficial evolution because having extraneous body parts that have absolutely no use (normally) dies out over millennia because it takes more energy to grow them, thus less energy to breed and continue DNA.

(Nearly finished)

The real kicker is that in Universe 1 or 2 any mutant boy born with the normal 5 digits on each hand would probably be stoned to death for being a mutant!



Next point...
OK, lets cure all diseases, our immune system withers away and dies because we now live in a sterile world. Suddenly someone contracts space flue from a mission to planet Twiglet, they bring it back and the entire human race is wiped out in 3 years.
The fight for perfect DNA is literally an arms race (read a Richard Dawkins book).

OK you can wake up again now.

[alkatran]

I think the 6th finger would encourage him to become more involved with computers (or a piano) and shoot him straight to the top because of his increased reach, etc.



...and if someone had a 6th finger they wouldn't find many women (with our society).


...I don't even know what I'm arguing for anymore.

[Wally Pipp]

Education is all about what you want to teach to the next generation. I won't be surprised that the US will be completely governed by religious nuts (the Christian kind) within decades.
Imagine : The Christian United States of America.

Then I'd like someone to explain to me what the difference is between that and an Islamic State ...

[crptcblade]

You can explain it now. The only difference is that we don't just out and say that the religious influence is there.

No matter how hard you try, religion will always play a big part in government, simply because the officials that are elected will follow the ideals instilled in them by the religion they grew up learning. Take the whole stem cell bit as an example.

You can't stop it. They will always have their greedy pedo-feelin' hands in it at some point or another.

[Wally Pipp]

one can only hope ...