I had already called a couple of days ago to confirm the Nassau County had in fact passed their anti-evolution resolution. But now their act is further confirmed in this news story.
Board members voted unanimously Thursday to adopt the resolution recommended by Schools Superintendent John Ruis. The resolution opposes the draft Sunshine State Standards for science. It urges the standards be changed “such that evolution is not presented at the exclusion of other theories of origin of life.”
Evolution is not a theory of origin of life.
Ruis read the resolution aloud and made no further comment during the meeting. No discussion of the resolution followed. Board members Gail Cook and Janet Adkins asked the superintendent to forward the resolution to the Florida Legislature, in addition to the state board of education.
“I was hoping they had heard enough” from the public “that we wouldn’t have to do this,” Cook said.
Why do you have to do this, Cook? What is your motivation?
“We need to bring about letting the students think,” Jacksonville resident David Ramseur said.
Ramseur told the school board he has served on the state’s science textbook adoption committee and attended the meeting “to support the board,” he said.
“What we want our students to do is to be problem solvers, not to be taught a dogmatic position,” Ramseur said. “We want them to be able to think and be great scientists.”
Evolution is not a dogmatic position. It’s simply the best explanation for changes in life over time we have. Got another scientific theory to propose? Then propose it.
“We come as neighbors to speak from Duval County,” said Marjorie Ramseur. “We’re glad that you all are interested enough to take a stand and to act on a resolution in this regard.”
She said evolution is an unproven theory “that must be taught with its shortcomings . . . to allow the student to analyze and criticize.” And she added, “We are not asking that creation or intelligent design be taught in the classroom. If you’re going to teach evolution, teach it all.”
And those shortcomings are?
In the past, that discussion, of “how we all got here,” has been presented as theory, Ruis said Monday, noting the absence of “any reference to any other theories or beliefs” in the draft science standards. “The resolution expresses the sentiment for all of us,” he said.
And yet again we see the ol’ demonstration of scientific ignorance. Ruis, please tell the class what the definition of a scientific theory is.
Evolution is not a dogmatic position. It’s simply the best explanation for changes in life over time we have.
Evolution is an observed law of nature that is described by a scientific theory, but the evidence is subject to the extreme dogma of ideologically predispositioned “scientists”. It is a formally established fact that scientists generally are not honest about how they will interpret evidence that they wrongly perceive to be in support of the creationist argument. This is just as wrong as any stunt that creationists pull.
Politics as usual. Nothing more, nothing less, and frankly, I’m a little surprised that the good baptists of Eustis haven’t lynched you yet… 😉
Got another scientific theory to propose? Then propose it.
Talk to Paul Davies, Lynn Margulis, James Lovelock… and see if they don’t agree with my first statement, before you pretend like your rightousness isn’t concealing your left winged agenda and the culture war that is actually the only thing that you are interested in.
No single voice of reason that’s running against the tide of neodarwinian rightousness can overcome that:
“The problem with neo-Darwinism is that Random changes in DNA alone do not lead to speciation. It was like confessing a murder when I discovered I was not a neo-Darwinist. I am definitely a Darwinist though. I think we are missing important information about the origins of variation. I differ from the NEO-DARWINIAN BULLIES on this point.”
-Lynn Margulis
…as the honored guest speaker at the last evolution conference.
Don’t dare even mention an interpretation which indicates that “god” doesn’t throw dice”… or the gates of antifanatical hell will open up and swallow you up:
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/cms/?pid=1000567
Hey, no fair quote mining Einstein with the “God doesn’t throw dice” comment – he had long since agreed that there is much that is random in nature before he died.
You’re probably a little bit right – we tend to discount ‘evidence’ presented by creationists. This is because of all the quote mining, misrepresentation, and sheer stupidity we’ve had to deal with. If they have a real leg to stand on, why don’t they all agree? Why do they all have different theories? Why don’t they all get behind the evidence that scientists can’t refute? I think it’s because they’ve got nothing – but I keep waiting…
Also, with regards to “It is a formally established fact that scientists generally are not honest about how they will interpret evidence that they wrongly perceive to be in support of the creationist argument.”
I half agreed with you above, but I’m curious – where was this fact formally established? What evidence are you referring to specifically? I tend to agree that we will discount the ramblings of scientifically ignorant folks, but I’m interested in what EVIDENCE you say we lie about. Have any examples?
I did not quote mine Einstein, because I did not change the meaning one-little-iota, and he did not recant. Besides, I was only using that as an example for what would happen if you were to put forth a deterministic theory that indicates that there are no other possible configurations that the forces could have… which is still a valid expectation.
I half agreed with you above, but I’m curious – where was this fact formally established?
Here is one example:
The anthropic principle is a “Line of [cosmological] reasoning” that was put forth by Brandon Carter at the conference in Kracow Poland in 1973 as, “a reaction against conscious and subconscious – anticentrist dogma”, that he called, “exagerated subserviance to the Copernican Principle”, which leads to absurdities by ideologically predispositioned scientists.
He was talking about counter-reactionism among scientists against old historical beliefs about geocentrism that causes them to automatically dismiss any relevance to features of the universe that also permit our existence, and this leads to equally absurd Copernican-(like) cosmological extensions, which do not agree with observation.
Carter’s example was as follows:
Unfortunately, there has been a strong and not always subconscious tendency to extend this to a most questionable dogma to the effect that our situation cannot be privileged in any sense. This dogma (which in its most extreme form led to the “perfect cosmological principle” on which the steady state theory was based) is clearly untenable, as was pointed out by Dicke (Nature 192, 440, 1961).
-Brandon Carter
How Carter’s point applies, including the strength of the statement, depends on the cosmological model that is being assumed, so Brandon Carter’s own multiverse interpretation differs from what is actually observed, because the closest actual natural approximation to what is actually observed to be in effect is a biocentric structure principle, which produces a goldilocks enigma of commonly balanced habitable zones that appear over very specifically defined region of the observed universe.
So the kicker is that it would appear that “being priveledged in some sense ” means that we are only as priveledged as the next galaxy over within the intergalactic habitable zone of the observed universe, so there is no established reason to claim that the principle is strictly anthropic.
If anything, Carter’s point is even more true and applicable today, than it was then, except that the AP is now the target of the very politicians of science who are interested only in abusing the physics to their own selfish end, and regardless of the lack of integrity that this generates.
My apologies for the accusation regarding Einstein’s quote – it appears that you are correct, in that he never recanted his belief that the universe must be governed by forces subject to concrete laws, not probabilities. I knew that he had admitted that quantum mechanics was ‘true’ but had not realized that he qualified that with his search for a unified theory that accounted for the seeming randomness of the world.
As for your other comments, I tend to draw a line between natural philosophy and science as the discipline it has become. I mean, spontaneous generation was still considered valid – you’re really judging modern scientists by the actions of people who had not yet really solidified a concrete scientific method.
Today, I know full well that some scientists dig in their heels to support a bit of their own intuition right up until the moment it is all blown to bits by evidence. The scientific community as a whole balances this out, though – that’s really the beauty of it. Trust me, if there was any real evidence against evolution, some trained scientists in the past century or so would have been all over it. We’d be learning about THEM in science class.
Regardless, what we are fighting for here is not a matter of interpretation – the standards are actually rather bland and not objectionable at all except to kooks. Evolution occurred. Our students deserve better than the half-assed standards we’ve been using. Yes, there are things I’d like to see change within academia – open-sourcing of papers, for one – but those complaints do not change the fact that the people we are fighting do not care one whit for science at any level.
–“I was hoping they had heard enough†from the public “that we wouldn’t have to do this,†Cook said.
Why do you have to do this, Cook? What is your motivation?–
One motivation is that you have reported that 11 newspaper editorials support the proposed standards and have apparently not reported a single newspaper editorial that is opposed. These editorials give the false impression that public support for the proposed standards is overwhelming.
Larry Fafarman said: “…you have reported that 11 newspaper editorials support the proposed standards and have apparently not reported a single newspaper editorial that is opposed. These editorials give the false impression that public support for the proposed standards is overwhelming.”
Public support for the proposed standards IS overwhelming – at least in that segment of the public literate enough to write – and read – newspaper editorials. But support is not overwhelming in that segment of the public whose only “science” book is a Bible, and who listen to the lies of creationists, and who get all their information about science from religiously-motivated people instead of people rooted in the 21st century.
Hopefully, the Florida authorities will be smart enough to file the “Voluntary Ignorance Resolutions” from Nassau County and the other “Floribama” counties where they belong: In the trashbin of history.