OT: This is Baylor country

[wire chief]

truly bizarre...

http://www.thinkatheist.com/profiles/blogs/bill-nye-bood-in-texas-for

 

[ed4ourgirls]

The link is to something posted in 2009, and according to one of the
follow-on comments, the story was originally published elsewhere in
2006, so this is not something hot off the wires.

Still, I'm guessing Waco hasn't changed all that much in the intervening
7 years.

 

[UcMiami]

It is frightening to realize that almost 50% of our children grow up in homes where they are told their science teachers are liars when they get taught evolution! Nothing specific to Waco here, this is a nationwide phenomenon though it is probably weighted toward the southern states.

 

[easttexastrash]

Hey, there can never be too many Baylor bashing threads, I suppose.

I have many friends in Waco...and to my knowledge they are all aware that that moonlight is reflected from the sun. But I try to just hang around the smart ones.

 

[RS9999X]

The original reporter has done follow up several times on the transmission errors in the story. As one critic elsewhere noted Nye didn't need to make the crack about Genesis. Even then only one women left with her kids while letting Nye know he said nothing undermining her faith murmuring "we believe in God". Her reasons for leaving are unknown and hardly reflective of the 600 who stayed and enjoyed the lecture.



http://www.examiner.com/article/reporter-of-bill-nye-moonbat-story-speaks

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

It is frightening to realize that almost 50% of our children grow up in homes where they are told their science teachers are liars when they get taught evolution! Nothing specific to Waco here, this is a nationwide phenomenon though it is probably weighted toward the southern states.

I would doubt your statistic greatly. It just plain seems unlikely to me that 50% of children in the US are in fundamentalist households that disbelieve in evolution.

 

[Bestiarius]

I use to be an atheist but there's not enough holidays.

 

[SWHuskyFan]

According to this Gallup poll taken in 2009, only 40% believe in evolution. People are dumber than you think, which I think you'll find is usually the case.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/114544/darwin-birthday-believe-evolution.aspx

Looking at the breakdown, the most amazing part to me is that 22% of college graduates do not believe in evolution. How do you get out of college without acknowledging basic facts that are put in front of you. I would call that willful ignorance rather that non-belief.

 

[UcMiami]

I would doubt your statistic greatly. It just plain seems unlikely to me that 50% of children in the US are in fundamentalist households that disbelieve in evolution.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/155003/hold-creationist-view-human-origins.aspx
Gallup poll results for the US which comes in at 46% believing God created humans in their present form. International polls rank the US at the very bottom with most countries coming in nearer 20%. So not sure how that works out to % of children, but it has to be close to 50%

 

[Icebear]

What really makes that statistic sad and suspect is that Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, UCC, Presbyterians, American Baptists, United Methodists and many other denominations all teach evolution and solid science in their universities and colleges and parolchial schools and have for a very long time. All of those denominations find no conflict with the principles of science and evolution.

 

[UcMiami]

What really makes that statistic sad and suspect is that Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, UCC, Presbyterians, American Baptists, United Methodists and many other denominations all teach evolution and solid science in their universities and colleges and parolchial schools and have for a very long time. All of those denominations find no conflict with the principles of science and evolution.

Yes - the major Christian sects all got out of the science business not long after they lost the 'flat earth' and 'sun revolves around the earth' arguments. And thankfully they did. I think knowledge of science can lead people away from religion, but does not preclude faith. And I have always felt true faith did not depend on exact readings of texts written and rewritten by humans over the millennia. We make mistakes, why couldn't the ancients make them too.

 

[HuskyNan]

I was dumbfounded that this actually exists. A Creation Museum. What's scary is that there is a link to arrange for school visits. Not in Texas, though, it's in Kentucky.

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

Yes - the major Christian sects all got out of the science business not long after they lost the 'flat earth' and 'sun revolves around the earth' arguments. And thankfully they did. I think knowledge of science can lead people away from religion, but does not preclude faith. And I have always felt true faith did not depend on exact readings of texts written and rewritten by humans over the millennia. We make mistakes, why couldn't the ancients make them too.

One of the teachings - or analogies - that particularly spoke to me was the idea that the Bible was the great book of "who" and "why" - science and history are there to answer "how" and "when". (credit to Rev. Dr. Jack A. Denys).

But as Icebear says, the mainstream churches don't oppose evolution - but then again, in many cases don't require monotlithic belief on the subject of their members. And, at times, I believe surveys have shown that in many of the historical main stream denominations, members are actually somewhat unaware of what (in any detail) are the tenets of their denomination.

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

I was dumbfounded that this actually exists. A Creation Museum. What's scary is that there is a link to arrange for school visits. Not in Texas, though, it's in Kentucky.

Odd. I couldn't quite figure out how their dinosaur exhibit is supposed to prove biblical history and how showing an example of Natural Selection (blind cavefish) is educational but doesn't, as they say, relate to "molecules to man" evolution.

While I don't believe that folks have to have one set of beliefs, or accept any particular scientific theory - my concern is that we fall further and further behind the rest of the world if individuals cannot at least act according to scientific observations.

 

[RS9999X]

I liked Stanley Kubrick's take in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Mankind needed help. It was too passive. The first order of business was to create an angry technologist capable of killing and beating other animals away from the watering hole. Prey no longer this new predator with their new weapon would reign as the film cuts away from the old technology to the new: the Starship Discovery and its ultimate reveal of human science as an alienating dead end. No better way to travel the stars and the universe than rebirth/ reincarnation my friends. Total immersion and no bulky space suits. Go native!

 

[RS9999X]

Creationism, like global warming denial, serves a purpose. There are many holes and unknowns in both theories. Society benefits from the criticisms. Imagine how impoverished a world would be without reminding Science they are still apes with bone tools banging their heads against the Monolith and Multiverse theory while homelessness and poverty persist. Man doesn't understand Man yet. Or women

 

[alexrgct]

Creationism, like global warming denial, serves a purpose. There are many holes and unknowns in both theories. Society benefits from the criticisms. Imagine how impoverished a world would be without reminding Science they are still apes with bone tools banging their heads against the Monolith and Multiverse theory while homelessness and poverty persist. Man doesn't understand Man yet. Or women

Calling creationism a "theory" just like evolution is a "theory" implies a lack of understanding of what "theory" means in the context of science. The rest of your post has is bizarre given that a) science certainly has offered infinitely more solutions as to solving issues like poverty and hunger, and b) the fact that poverty exists has a lot to do with resource allocation (which absolutely ties neatly into evolutionary theory).

I can, in fact, imagine a world without antiquated and ignorant belief systems. Sounds quite excellent to me.

I'll leave you to waxing philosophical about how scientists are still cavemen, though. From your computer. Over the Internet.

 

[UcMiami]

What bothers me most is the denial of measurable/observable facts. The fact is that the planet is warmer today than it was 10, 20, and 50 years ago. The ice is melting in every area of the globe. Why that is happening and how much is the result of human activity is theory and can be debated, but the FACT remains, and it will have dire consequences to the human experience. Likewise, evolution is observable fact, and the 'theory of natural selection' is an explanation of the 'why'. It can also be debated and tinkered with, but it has stood the test of time and the increasing sensitivity of observations impressively. The scientific debate and adjustments to the theory has been almost entirely related to refinements of the 'selection' process, and not the underlying idea.
Too often we allow scientific debate of a theory to spill over into popular denial of the underlying facts.

 

[Icebear]

Calling creationism a "theory" just like evolution is a "theory" implies a lack of understanding of what "theory" means in the context of science. The rest of your post has is bizarre given that a) science certainly has offered infinitely more solutions as to solving issues like poverty and hunger, and b) the fact that poverty exists has a lot to do with resource allocation (which absolutely ties neatly into evolutionary theory).

I can, in fact, imagine a world without antiquated and ignorant belief systems. Sounds quite excellent to me.

I'll leave you to waxing philosophical about how scientists are still cavemen, though. From your computer. Over the Internet.

Bingo, alex, creationism is not a theory. It is not even a hypothesis in any scientific sense because it does not arise from the same principles of observation in the same manner. Creationism is simply starting with a preconception and then combing for only supporting fragments within the material world and ignoring material that contravenes its validity. It doesn't even deal honestly with the Biblical materials.

 

[RS9999X]

Creationism has many proponents from different perspectives including Intelligent Design of Artificial Intelligence Systems, logicians Who reject pure empiricism or material logic as a foundation to knowledge systems. Anti materialists, intuitionists, interventionists, etc.

There are those rejecting natural selection, Spiritual determinists, fatalists, the predestination crowd.

Hell, many evolution proponents disagree with the two simple buckets and simplifications put forth here.

I don't deny evolution or global warming. Just the obtuse conclusions drawn by the simplistic advocates of both camps looking to demonize the other.

Then we get into creationists who go back to the Primal Couple of morality and ethics as a fundamental change in an animals relationship with God. That is the real creation story. Adams Rib so to speak.

 

[Zorro]

There is also the fact that there is absolutely no way to test ("old earth") creationism. (There are literally hundreds of ways to test the idea of "young earth creationism", and every one of them proves it not just wrong but totally cock-eyed.) "Intelligent Design" ("creationism light") is not a theory either, because it yields no hypotheses that can be tested in any way. The only basis for ID is what Dawkins calls the "argument from personal incredulity". e.g., "I just don't see how (the human eye, the elephants trunk, the symbiosis between various insects and the flowers they feed from, the bacterial flagellum, or whatever) could have evolved in a Darwinian way." This is what ALL the dozens of books by Behe, Dempski, Johnston, et al come down to. That's it.

 

[RS9999X]

Here's the problem which Jay Gould was trying to overcome with his non overlapping magisterium and knowledge domains.

If evolution is defined as the passing of traits or alleles fine. Thus is fit for empirical study. If natural selection also includes the environment then the broad range if social sciences including religion have tool sets and nomenclature and typographies that are not as conducive to lab testing, empirical confirmation and replication of the exact environmental factors.

I readily concede the alleles argument and scientific basis.

I think empirical lab science makes for a lousy tool in describing the spiritual or social or economic or sociological environment that influences natural selection We have to fill in holes with conjecture as to why differentiation occurred. Data points only tell you so much. Also we use different language when speaking of those factors

In the case of religion we have oral histories etc that many find more value than lab experiments.

A wiki definition;

 

[RS9999X]

Natural selection can act on any heritable phenotypic trait, and selective pressure can be produced by any aspect of the ENVIRONMENT, including sexual selection and competition with members of the same or other species.

 

[RS9999X]

Stephen Jay Gould's great essay on Knowledge Domains. Gould knew the problems of turning out dogmatic literalist idiots in both science and religion. Both are dismissive to a point of fault

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html

 

[Icebear]

There is also the fact that there is absolutely no way to test ("old earth") creationism. (There are literally hundreds of ways to test the idea of "young earth creationism", and every one of them proves it not just wrong but totally rooster-eyed.) "Intelligent Design" ("creationism light") is not a theory either, because it yields no hypotheses that can be tested in any way. The only basis for ID is what Dawkins calls the "argument from personal incredulity". e.g., "I just don't see how (the human eye, the elephants trunk, the symbiosis between various insects and the flowers they feed from, the bacterial flagellum, or whatever) could have evolved in a Darwinian way." This is what ALL the dozens of books by Behe, Dempski, Johnston, et al come down to. That's it.

Exactly, Z. Besides the fact is it is more fun to play with the theoretical physicists and cosmologists.