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(Some Guy) Asinine Texas state school board member wonders how anyone could believe in evolution if there are no dog-cat or cat-rat hybrids running around   (tfninsider.org) divider line 321
More: Asinine, hybrid cars, Texas, Texas State Board of Education, curriculum framework, school boards, cats, local church, San Antonio  
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13858 clicks; posted to Main » on 28 Oct 2011 at 2:47 PM   |  Favorite    |   share:  Share on Twitter share via Email Share on Facebook   more»   |    Get this fabulous T-Shirt and impress the methane out of your friends! shirt it!



321 Comments   (+0 »)
   

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2011-10-28 12:36:23 PM
I'm against standardized testing, but I'm starting to think we need school boards with a basic minimum level of education. Require them to pass the same tests administered to their high school students.

/No School Board Member Left Behind
 
2011-10-28 12:37:31 PM
Wow, that's dumb.
 
2011-10-28 12:38:10 PM
i.imgur.com

The hell is this then?
 
2011-10-28 12:47:35 PM
I wonder how anyone can believe in evolution when there are people this profoundly deficient in basic reasoning. The only thing I can figure is that religion tends to create a protective effect, sheltering those who would ordinarily be too stupid to survive and allowing them to not only reproduce, but re-create the same anti-natural selection protection for their stupid offspring.
 
Pud [TotalFark]
2011-10-28 12:54:42 PM
penthesilea: I'm against standardized testing, but I'm starting to think we need school boards with a basic minimum level of education. Require them to pass the same tests administered to their high school students.

/No School Board Member Left Behind


That, and zero tolerance for school board members.

/Lives near Atlanta. Talk about a board that needs to be erased, washed with a strong detergent, then sanitized
 
2011-10-28 12:58:02 PM
that's not even misunderstanding evolution. that's just plain wrong.
and yes, stupid.
 
2011-10-28 01:01:21 PM
talulahgosh: that's not even misunderstanding evolution. that's just plain wrong.
and yes, stupid.


And this is why the whole "teach the controversy" thing these morons use to try to ram creationism into schools is a terrible idea. Because it's all bullshiat like this that only serves to completely fark up science education in general.
 
2011-10-28 01:06:32 PM
Perhaps they wouldn't wonder such stupid questions if they actually learned evolution. Perhaps we should teach it in biology class?

It's funny (the crying kind of funny), in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, which concentrated on the question of whether or not intelligent design could be viewed as science and taught in school science class, a lot of the reporters were surprised how strong the evidence for evolution was, and wondered why they never heard it before...

Uh, because there is a certain political faction that actively tries to STOP people from learning about it.
 
2011-10-28 01:20:19 PM
"In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards."
Mark Twain

/As true now as it was then
//if not more so
 
2011-10-28 01:25:24 PM
img.photobucket.com
 
2011-10-28 01:38:38 PM
My dog is a wookie

brojsimpson.com

Your argument is invalid
 
2011-10-28 01:44:19 PM
Mercer repeated (over and over) his misleading contention that supporters of teaching evolutionary science don't want students asking questions. That's nonsense, of course. Asking questions is one way students learn. What science supporters were saying two years ago (and since) is that 15-year-old kids simply don't have the knowledge to critique with any real authority the overwhelming scientific evidence behind evolution, the foundation of the biological sciences.

In other words, don't ask questions, kids, you're not qualified. Just shut up and accept your indoctrination.
 
2011-10-28 01:46:33 PM
img834.imageshack.us

It's not for lack of trying.
 
2011-10-28 02:23:25 PM
SkinnyHead: In other words, don't ask questions, kids, you're not qualified. Just shut up and accept your indoctrination.

So teaching evolution is indoctrination, but teaching creationism isn't?
 
2011-10-28 02:25:07 PM
I'd have been much better student with a creationist curriculum. When in doubt just write "I believe that God did this" and get an A
 
2011-10-28 02:27:56 PM
SkinnyHead: In other words, don't ask questions, kids, you're not qualified. Just shut up and accept your indoctrination.

It doesn't make sense to base curriculum on what kids ALREADY understand. Most kids don't know the first thing about calculus before they take a class on it- doesn't mean mandatory calculus education as part of a curriculum is "indoctrination".

Kids don't have a basis of knowledge to ask INTELLIGENT questions about evolution if they haven't studied related fields. I paste for you here this beautiful piece from Lizard_SF. Everything that follows is a quotation-

Lizard_SF:
SouthernManDunWrong:
If not, please read this: Peppered moth evolution (new window) bzzz - wrong answer. The peppered moth did not evolve. Sure, it adapted, but at the end of the day, the moth was still a moth and not a new species.

Let me try this another way. Suppose, in the interest of debating Christianity, I said to you, "How is it that of God's five sons, which he bore upon five different mothers at different times in history (See Aristotle 5:6-16), it was only Jesus who actually went into hell and fought Satan hand-to-hand (Cohen 14:2-45), while the others just sat around? Also, when Thor and Hercules meet Moses in the desert (Second Exodus, 17:1-12), why does the Bible have Thor wielding a sword, instead of his famous hammer?"

You'd look at me slack-jawed for a second or two, then tell me that I clearly haven't read the Bible, know nothing about Christianity, and you can't answer these questions because they're nonsensical -- it's like asking "If 2 and 2 makes oranges, how can you say pi=51?" The question shows such a fundamental level of ignorance that the only way to "answer" it is to go back to ground zero and start over, and, by the time you've learned enough to ask a sensible question, you'd know why your first question was nonsense.

Based on your posts here, that's the state you're at with your "knowledge" of evolution. You're speaking nonsense. Your questions can only be "answered" by starting you over in first grade and teaching you science. There are certainly many intelligent and interesting questions to be asked about evolution -- this is why scientists keep filling up journals with new studies, new discoveries, etc -- they ask the question and then they seek out the answers. You, however, do not yet possess enough knowledge to ask those questions. This doesn't mean you're stupid, just ill-informed. The main question for you, then, is are you willing to invest the time to learn what you need to learn to ask the right questions, or do you prefer ignorance? Your call.
 
2011-10-28 02:28:27 PM
As an Australian, I am sorely tempted to mail to this idiot, a platypus. I wonder what he would make of it.

/other than a hat.
 
2011-10-28 02:30:01 PM
Mr. Coffee Nerves: I'd have been much better student with a creationist curriculum. When in doubt just write "I believe that God did this" and get an A

SEE EVOTARDS? CREATIONISM BOOSTS GPA'S AND GETS KIDS INTO COLLEGE
 
2011-10-28 02:36:31 PM
Even IF you could display that evolution doesn't adequately explain the diversity of life on Earth, how the hell does that lead to "we must teach creationism (ID)"? ID isn't CLOSE to scientific. ID is not remotely in the same ballpark as empirical observation.

I mean, it would be MORE plausible to teach kids that Colonel Sanders created us all in his chickeny image. Unlike with ID, we can demonstrate that Colonel Sanders existed.
 
2011-10-28 02:40:29 PM
vernonFL: My dog is a wookie

[brojsimpson.com image 500x590]

Your argument is invalid


Adorable. I will not rest until I find another shiatzu of that coloration.
 
2011-10-28 02:43:59 PM
What about a pigeon-rat?
 
2011-10-28 02:44:38 PM
ArkAngel: What about a pigeon-rat?

Simpsons did it. Well, they tried.
 
2011-10-28 02:48:47 PM
Diogenes: [img834.imageshack.us image 500x330]

It's not for lack of trying.


I have personally seen DogCatRat twice. Once in Fort Worth, once in Santa Barbara. He really gets around.
/yes, it's the same DogCatRat
 
2011-10-28 02:49:34 PM
Fark member wonders how anyone could believe in evolution if there are Texas state school board members running around.
 
2011-10-28 02:50:38 PM
Another Texas idiot (redundant) who doesn't know how evolution works.
 
2011-10-28 02:50:44 PM
Well, dog my cat!
 
2011-10-28 02:51:43 PM
Can we just get a [Derp] tag already?
 
2011-10-28 02:52:01 PM
ArkAngel: What about a pigeon-rat?

I prefer the octoparrot.
 
2011-10-28 02:52:05 PM
fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net

I agree with Al Gore on this.
 
2011-10-28 02:52:37 PM
Exactly!
I mean... wait... what?
 
2011-10-28 02:52:45 PM
Counterpoint:
3.bp.blogspot.com
 
2011-10-28 02:53:03 PM
"We cannot teach openly creation and 'intelligent design,' but where we draw the line is that we allow kids to ask honest questions in class. And that's the strength of it right there because sometimes in debate it isn't you really don't have to prove your point, but if you can just prove another point."

This is the single most coherent argument I've ever seen for teaching creationism.
 
2011-10-28 02:53:16 PM
"Intelligent design" isn't science. Therefore it should not be taught in science class. There, that was easy.
 
2011-10-28 02:53:46 PM
"Conservatives believe in a thing called education. The far left believes in a thing called political indoctrination. And that's the big difference. We want our kids educated, not indoctrinated."

Exactly! This is why they support teachers, want to increase funding for our educational programs, and are firmly opposed to any organization or group that insists that people take what they're being told on faith.
 
2011-10-28 02:54:30 PM
There's a place where Ken Mercer can learn enough about elementary genetics to understand that his point is nonsense. It's called a school. But then, these whackos choose to be ignorant. And that's fine. But they don't get to force stupidity on the rest of us. Evolution is in the science curriculum and it is never going away.
 
2011-10-28 02:54:47 PM
th29.photobucket.com
 
2011-10-28 02:54:50 PM
www.hostedfile.com
 
2011-10-28 02:54:50 PM
Obligatory:

A large part of the reason why Creationist arguments against evolution can sound so persuasive is because they don't address evolution, but rather argue against a set of misunderstandings that people are right to consider ludicrous. The Creationists wrongly believe that their understanding of evolution is what the theory of evolution really says, and declare evolution banished. In fact, they haven't even addressed the topic of evolution. (The situation isn't helped by poor science education generally. Even most beginning college biology students don't understand the theory of evolution.)

The five propositions below seem to be the most common misconceptions based on a Creationist straw-man version of evolution. If you hear anyone making any of them, chances are excellent that they don't know enough about the real theory of evolution to make informed opinions about it.

Evolution has never been observed.
Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
There are no transitional fossils.
The theory of evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds, by random chance.
Evolution is only a theory; it hasn't been proved.
Explanations of why these statements are wrong are given below. They are brief and therefore somewhat simplified; consult the references at the end for more thorough explanations.


"Evolution has never been observed."

Biologists define evolution as a change in the gene pool of a population over time. One example is insects developing a resistance to pesticides over the period of a few years. Even most Creationists recognize that evolution at this level is a fact. What they don't appreciate is that this rate of evolution is all that is required to produce the diversity of all living things from a common ancestor.

The origin of new species by evolution has also been observed, both in the laboratory and in the wild. See, for example, (Weinberg, J.R., V.R. Starczak, and D. Jorg, 1992, "Evidence for rapid speciation following a founder event in the laboratory." Evolution 46: 1214-1220). The "Observed Instances of Speciation" FAQ in the talk.origins archives gives several additional examples.

Even without these direct observations, it would be wrong to say that evolution hasn't been observed. Evidence isn't limited to seeing something happen before your eyes. Evolution makes predictions about what we would expect to see in the fossil record, comparative anatomy, genetic sequences, geographical distribution of species, etc., and these predictions have been verified many times over. The number of observations supporting evolution is overwhelming.

What hasn't been observed is one animal abruptly changing into a radically different one, such as a frog changing into a cow. This is not a problem for evolution because evolution doesn't propose occurrences even remotely like that. In fact, if we ever observed a frog turn into a cow, it would be very strong evidence against evolution.



"Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics."

This shows more a misconception about thermodynamics than about evolution. The second law of thermodynamics says, "No process is possible in which the sole result is the transfer of energy from a cooler to a hotter body." [Atkins, 1984, The Second Law, pg. 25] Now you may be scratching your head wondering what this has to do with evolution. The confusion arises when the 2nd law is phrased in another equivalent way, "The entropy of a closed system cannot decrease." Entropy is an indication of unusable energy and often (but not always!) corresponds to intuitive notions of disorder or randomness. Creationists thus misinterpret the 2nd law to say that things invariably progress from order to disorder.

However, they neglect the fact that life is not a closed system. The sun provides more than enough energy to drive things. If a mature tomato plant can have more usable energy than the seed it grew from, why should anyone expect that the next generation of tomatoes can't have more usable energy still? Creationists sometimes try to get around this by claiming that the information carried by living things lets them create order. However, not only is life irrelevant to the 2nd law, but order from disorder is common in nonliving systems, too. Snowflakes, sand dunes, tornadoes, stalactites, graded river beds, and lightning are just a few examples of order coming from disorder in nature; none require an intelligent program to achieve that order. In any nontrivial system with lots of energy flowing through it, you are almost certain to find order arising somewhere in the system. If order from disorder is supposed to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, why is it ubiquitous in nature?

The thermodynamics argument against evolution displays a misconception about evolution as well as about thermodynamics, since a clear understanding of how evolution works should reveal major flaws in the argument. Evolution says that organisms reproduce with only small changes between generations (after their own kind, so to speak). For example, animals might have appendages which are longer or shorter, thicker or flatter, lighter or darker than their parents. Occasionally, a change might be on the order of having four or six fingers instead of five. Once the differences appear, the theory of evolution calls for differential reproductive success. For example, maybe the animals with longer appendages survive to have more offspring than short-appendaged ones. All of these processes can be observed today. They obviously don't violate any physical laws.



"There are no transitional fossils."

A transitional fossil is one that looks like it's from an organism intermediate between two lineages, meaning it has some characteristics of lineage A, some characteristics of lineage B, and probably some characteristics part way between the two. Transitional fossils can occur between groups of any taxonomic level, such as between species, between orders, etc. Ideally, the transitional fossil should be found stratigraphically between the first occurrence of the ancestral lineage and the first occurrence of the descendent lineage, but evolution also predicts the occurrence of some fossils with transitional morphology that occur after both lineages. There's nothing in the theory of evolution which says an intermediate form (or any organism, for that matter) can have only one line of descendents, or that the intermediate form itself has to go extinct when a line of descendents evolves.

To say there are no transitional fossils is simply false. Paleontology has progressed a bit since Origin of Species was published, uncovering thousands of transitional fossils, by both the temporally restrictive and the less restrictive definitions. The fossil record is still spotty and always will be; erosion and the rarity of conditions favorable to fossilization make that inevitable. Also, transitions may occur in a small population, in a small area, and/or in a relatively short amount of time; when any of these conditions hold, the chances of finding the transitional fossils goes down. Still, there are still many instances where excellent sequences of transitional fossils exist. Some notable examples are the transitions from reptile to mammal, from land animal to early whale, and from early ape to human. For many more examples, see the transitional fossils FAQ in the talk.origins archive, and see http://www.geo.ucalgary.ca/~macrae/talk_origins.html for sample images for some invertebrate groups.

The misconception about the lack of transitional fossils is perpetuated in part by a common way of thinking about categories. When people think about a category like "dog" or "ant," they often subconsciously believe that there is a well-defined boundary around the category, or that there is some eternal ideal form (for philosophers, the Platonic idea) which defines the category. This kind of thinking leads people to declare that Archaeopteryx is "100% bird," when it is clearly a mix of bird and reptile features (with more reptile than bird features, in fact). In truth, categories are man-made and artificial. Nature is not constrained to follow them, and it doesn't.

Some Creationists claim that the hypothesis of punctuated equilibrium was proposed (by Eldredge and Gould) to explain gaps in the fossil record. Actually, it was proposed to explain the relative rarity of transitional forms, not their total absence, and to explain why speciation appears to happen relatively quickly in some cases, gradually in others, and not at all during some periods for some species. In no way does it deny that transitional sequences exist. In fact, both Gould and Eldredge are outspoken opponents of Creationism.


"But paleontologists have discovered several superb examples of intermediary forms and sequences, more than enough to convince any fair-minded skeptic about the reality of life's physical genealogy." - Stephen Jay Gould, Natural History, May 1994

"The theory of evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds, by random chance."

There is probably no other statement which is a better indication that the arguer doesn't understand evolution. Chance certainly plays a large part in evolution, but this argument completely ignores the fundamental role of natural selection, and selection is the very opposite of chance. Chance, in the form of mutations, provides genetic variation, which is the raw material that natural selection has to work with. From there, natural selection sorts out certain variations. Those variations which give greater reproductive success to their possessors (and chance ensures that such beneficial mutations will be inevitable) are retained, and less successful variations are weeded out. When the environment changes, or when organisms move to a different environment, different variations are selected, leading eventually to different species. Harmful mutations usually die out quickly, so they don't interfere with the process of beneficial mutations accumulating.

Nor is abiogenesis (the origin of the first life) due purely to chance. Atoms and molecules arrange themselves not purely randomly, but according to their chemical properties. In the case of carbon atoms especially, this means complex molecules are sure to form spontaneously, and these complex molecules can influence each other to create even more complex molecules. Once a molecule forms that is approximately self-replicating, natural selection will guide the formation of ever more efficient replicators. The first self-replicating object didn't need to be as complex as a modern cell or even a strand of DNA. Some self-replicating molecules are not really all that complex (as organic molecules go).

Some people still argue that it is wildly improbable for a given self-replicating molecule to form at a given point (although they usually don't state the "givens," but leave them implicit in their calculations). This is true, but there were oceans of molecules working on the problem, and no one knows how many possible self-replicating molecules could have served as the first one. A calculation of the odds of abiogenesis is worthless unless it recognizes the immense range of starting materials that the first replicator might have formed from, the probably innumerable different forms that the first replicator might have taken, and the fact that much of the construction of the replicating molecule would have been non-random to start with.

(One should also note that the theory of evolution doesn't depend on how the first life began. The truth or falsity of any theory of abiogenesis wouldn't affect evolution in the least.)



"Evolution is only a theory; it hasn't been proved."

First, we should clarify what "evolution" means. Like so many other words, it has more than one meaning. Its strict biological definition is "a change in allele frequencies over time." By that definition, evolution is an indisputable fact. Most people seem to associate the word "evolution" mainly with common descent, the theory that all life arose from one common ancestor. Many people believe that there is enough evidence to call this a fact, too. However, common descent is still not the theory of evolution, but just a fraction of it (and a part of several quite different theories as well). The theory of evolution not only says that life evolved, it also includes mechanisms, like mutations, natural selection, and genetic drift, which go a long way towards explaining how life evolved.

Calling the theory of evolution "only a theory" is, strictly speaking, true, but the idea it tries to convey is completely wrong. The argument rests on a confusion between what "theory" means in informal usage and in a scientific context. A theory, in the scientific sense, is "a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena" [Random House American College Dictionary]. The term does not imply tentativeness or lack of certainty. Generally speaking, scientific theories differ from scientific laws only in that laws can be expressed more tersely. Being a theory implies self-consistency, agreement with observations, and usefulness. (Creationism fails to be a theory mainly because of the last point; it makes few or no specific claims about what we would expect to find, so it can't be used for anything. When it does make falsifiable predictions, they prove to be false.)

Lack of proof isn't a weakness, either. On the contrary, claiming infallibility for one's conclusions is a sign of hubris. Nothing in the real world has ever been rigorously proved, or ever will be. Proof, in the mathematical sense, is possible only if you have the luxury of defining the universe you're operating in. In the real world, we must deal with levels of certainty based on observed evidence. The more and better evidence we have for something, the more certainty we assign to it; when there is enough evidence, we label the something a fact, even though it still isn't 100% certain.

What evolution has is what any good scientific claim has--evidence, and lots of it. Evolution is supported by a wide range of observations throughout the fields of genetics, anatomy, ecology, animal behavior, paleontology, and others. If you wish to challenge the theory of evolution, you must address that evidence. You must show that the evidence is either wrong or irrelevant or that it fits another theory better. Of course, to do this, you must know both the theory and the evidence.



Conclusion

These are not the only misconceptions about evolution by any means. Other common misunderstandings include how geological dating techniques work, implications to morality and religion, the meaning of "uniformitarianism," and many more. To address all these objections here would be impossible.

But consider: About a hundred years ago, scientists, who were then mostly creationists, looked at the world to figure out how God did things. These creationists came to the conclusions of an old earth and species originating by evolution. Since then, thousands of scientists have been studying evolution with increasingly more sophisticated tools. Many of these scientists have excellent understandings of the laws of thermodynamics, how fossil finds are interpreted, etc., and finding a better alternative to evolution would win them fame and fortune. Sometimes their work has changed our understanding of significant details of how evolution operates, but the theory of evolution still has essentially unanimous agreement from the people who work on it.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html
 
2011-10-28 02:55:19 PM
SkinnyHead: In other words, don't ask questions, kids, you're not qualified. Just shut up and accept your indoctrination.

www.shockya.com
 
2011-10-28 02:55:57 PM
upload.wikimedia.org
 
2011-10-28 02:56:20 PM
This is what Republicans really believe!
 
2011-10-28 02:57:13 PM
cache.gawkerassets.com
"I guess you have never heard of Mouse Rat, Pawnee's most rockin' band"

http://www.scarecrowboat.com/about.shtml
 
2011-10-28 02:57:33 PM
yeah poor old god needs the schoolboard's help to keep the mean old books from harming a supposedly all powerful entity.
 
2011-10-28 02:57:37 PM
Don't worry guys. I'm sure Bevets will be along shortly to clear all this up.
 
2011-10-28 02:58:11 PM
Archie Goodwin: As an Australian, I am sorely tempted to mail to this idiot, a platypus. I wonder what he would make of it.

/other than a hat.


Will you mail me a platypus? I'm sure I can find a better use for it than a hat.

/like pranks
/lots of platipus pranks
 
2011-10-28 02:58:14 PM
Probably a good thing it doesn't work that way. I think their would be a lot of cow-man, sheep-man, and centaurs running around in his district if it did.
 
2011-10-28 02:59:49 PM
kingoomieiii: SkinnyHead: herp

SouthernManDunWrong: derp


Good on ya kingoo for trying to fight the good fight, but 'belief' by definition requires the believer to suspend analysis & consideration, so you be wasting your time on these types...
 
2011-10-28 02:59:50 PM
Archie Goodwin: As an Australian, I am sorely tempted to mail to this idiot, a platypus. I wonder what he would make of it.

/other than a hat.


For a free platypus, I would gladly pretend to be a creationist.

/and I would name it Horatio P. Paddlebottom III, Esq.
 
2011-10-28 02:59:58 PM
Ok. I'm tired of defending it.

This state is full of retards. Industrial strength retardation. Those with the loudest voices here have the least intelligent things to say.
 
2011-10-28 03:00:08 PM
GleeUnit: Don't worry guys. I'm sure Bevets will be along shortly to clear all this up.

I'll summon him.....

img.photobucket.com
 
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