School board member wants evolution dropped from its science curriculum

snip:
WATERVILLE, Maine (AP) – A Somerset County school district is being urged by one of its members to drop evolution from its high school science curriculums on grounds that it is an unprovable theory that should not be taught as fact.

snip:
Linkletter's pastor, Roy Blevins of Church of the Open Bible in Athens, favored a suggestion from SAD 59 Chairman Norman Luce that a philosophy class might provide a better forum for the study of evolution.

"That's a sane approach," Blevins said. "The evolution concept is a theory, and not provable. If the science department at Madison High is simply teaching theory, then you ought to leave it in the science department."

Madison Town Manager Norman Dean, who taught science in Madison from 1962 through 1996 and once taught Linkletter, characterized his former student's proposal as "absolutely stupid."

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080512/NEWS02/641816381

n/t

:evilgrin:

Give that man a medal!

You know, the ones who can't deal with the idea of science trumping mythology!

"Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/treaty_tripoli.html

It never ceases to amaze me how dishonest and/or ignorant the anti-science assclowns are. I wonder how they sleep at night.

Somebody needs to tell these freaks that evolution is a FACT, borne out both by fossil evidence and by laboratory experiments with fast growing species. Natural selection is the theory because nobody has yet nailed down the mechanism.

"Philosophy class," my pasty white old ass.

Evolution is a certifiable FACT on the micro-evolution scale. And we are closer and closer to filling the remaining the holes in the macro theory. Evolution is the only explanation for modern medicine theory. What, is germ theory also a lie and is really caused by God smiting people? Since we are talking about absurd things, how in the hell are we conditioned to believe that some guy died, laid for three days, and then came back to life? God literally took a rib out of adam and made eve? I can only hope that religion is extinct when I'm old.

Too funny....

http://www.austinlizards.com/songs/old_blevins.mp3

Just like the bible....

...while evolution is a scientific theory backed by incredulous amounts of evidence.

Evolution is a directly observable phenomenon. There isn't anything at all "unproved" about its occurrence. Sad things happen when people try to acquire a science education from Fox Newz, or the the xtian church.

and zoology I'd like to say that most people don't know as much about evolution as they think they do.

Most non-biologist evolution advocates accept Dobzhansky's statement that nothing in biology makes sense without evolution. But those same advovated usually can't name 5 different lines of evidence that suggest Dobzhansky is right. Similarly most folks who aren't professional anti-evolutionists can't recognize the vocabulary let alone counter a line of evidence that could be used to support Dobzhansky's notion.

Most non-biologists can't tell you the basic definition of microevolution or mechanisms of microevolution. Nor can most non-biologists identify the two fundamental forces that underly macroevolution, or tell you the sorts of things that are observed and measured at the microevolutinary level or the macroevolutionary level. Nor can most explain how microevolutionary mechanisms yeild species in a manner that accounts for species from all of Whitakers 5 Kingdoms.

Certainly, many people can taut various estimates of similarity in genes of humans and chimpanzees but they couldn't tell you how humans compare in chromosome number to the other 'great apes' and the significance of that to our relatedness to other primates. Nor can most people tell you 5 sympleisiomorphies that humans share with old world monkeys or 5 apomorphies that can be used to distinguish humans from old world monkeys.

Most people I've had conversations with, whether they accept evolution or not, do it on the basis of prescious little information. My experience is that most essentially believe whatever they believe about evolution on faith that their education didn't mislead them rather than on their comprehension of the evidence.

I have polled hundreds of freshman students on whether or not they believe in evolution prior to discussing it in class. And I have polled them after the class spent several weeks specifically looking at the methods and the evidence. The result no longer surprises me. Almost no one changes their mind about their belief And THAT phenomenon is an issue for psychologists to study rather evolutionary biologists).

As a consequence most people haven't the sophistication nor the intellectual honesty to recognize that the various components of evolutionary theory and the practice of evolutionary studies with respect to being guided by theory in the interpretation of evidence really do have philosophical difficulties. Most people don't realize that just as Mother Theresa spent much of her life pondering the difficulties of faith, great evolutionary theorists such as Stephan J. Gould went to their graves accepting the notion of evolution but aware of and troubled by a variety of unresolved problems that cant be talked about outside of small clusters of specialists because of the limited level of understanding of nonspecialists.

...but never have-- there always seem to be too many other things that need addressing first. Damn, that is depressing though. I've heard similar anecdotes from other colleagues.

I've only recently rotated into teaching freshman biology at my university-- a couple of years ago-- so I don't have nearly your experience. I think I'm going to go have a drink now.

unresolved problems that cant be talked about outside of small clusters of specialists because of the limited level of understanding of nonspecialists.

The understanding of non-specialists is by definition limited when you are dealing with complex subjects..

I'm neither a scientist nor a science teacher but I can assure you that in the subjects about which I'm most knowledgeable it is quite difficult to find people to discuss those subjects on the same level I can.

That is simply the nature of specialized knowledge, only a few specialists have that knowledge.

It was the "unresolved problems" with Newtonian mechanics which led to relativity, but those problems were only known to a tiny subset of humanity, the specialists in Physics.

Now we have relativity but there are still unresolved problems with our understanding of the nature of the universe.. A Grand Unified Theory has yet to make an unambiguous appearance.

I tutored remedial students in college and helped start the writing lab and then went on to teach high school. I was constantly amazed at how little most people I worked with understood English. Seniors in high school not knowing the difference between an adjective and an adverb and having absolutely no clue on how to combine sentences or how to know if an independent clause was a sentence or just a fragment.

No, I cannot name all those things, despite having read Gould's *The Panda's Thumb* in 9th grade science. I can tell you that we're having to use stronger and stronger pesticides on the fields and stronger and stronger antibiotics as the things we're trying to kill keep evolving new protections against our defenses. I can tell you that there are holes in our understanding of the theory of evolution, just as there are holes in our understanding of the theory of gravity and our understanding of various theories of language acquisition. Holes in understanding are great to ponder if you're an expert and love your field--they don't make much sense to a non-expert trying to get through daily life.

If you think of all the information that we're supposed to absorb by the end of high school these days and be jacks of all trades and masters of none, then you might understand why many of your students do not know or understand the specifics.

It doesn't matter that there aren't popular votes or science delegates. They are gonna keep taking it to "rules committees" forever.
So long as they can gain financial support to keep the season going they are gonna keep appealing to low knowledge voters.

It's just one of many other things that just seem to refuse to go away.

Guess we should just stop teaching science, then.

Whew, glad we got that controversy out of the way!

They should be banned too.

...bet he drives his ass to work every day, though.

Is republican synonymous with hypocrite?

His house, in fact he should just become a hunter-gatherer, with rocks as his only weapon.

I mean, if our theories of how humans learn and use language and how that affects thought aren't entirely solid and unimpeachable, then we should stop teaching English and grammar and writing, then, right?

Make far more sense too, hahaha... riiiight.

Just remember that friends.