It is mind-boggling that it wasn't like this before.

The amazing ignorance of these nut-job Christians will bring US down.

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It'd be great if they taught real history in schools, but they doesn't seem likely anytime soon. They could start with Zinn's "A People's History of the United States".

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There are stupid ignorant people everywhere. But the only ones that are proud of it are the religious ones.

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they can vote the BoE out.

I'm sure that orange was heartbroken to find out it's related to someone so fucking stupid.

jdfu!

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...when they teach physics, are they required to call it the "scientific theory of gravity"?

After all, gravity is "just a theory".

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...when blathering idiots like this have the privilege of speaking into a microphone...

Oofta...

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"They said they were "vigorously opposed" to the evolution language because it "clashes with their religious convictions or their personal beliefs that evolution has not been proved."

So- since you are too stupid to understand the overwhelming scientific evidence, or make a personal choice to reject it because it conflicts with whatever religious doctrine you grew up with, the rest of the nation must follow suit. Talk about "idiocracy."

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I have a conviction this man is an idiot.

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The author of this article has fallen into the Creationists' trap of conflating what is rightly called a scientific theory with the layman's notion of a theory. In layman's terms, the term theory often refers to some sort of speculation that is unproven or untested (what in science would be called a hypothesis).

To a scientist, the word theory does not carry the same connotations as it does to the layman. For instance, most people would not deride Atomic Theory as "just a theory"--they understand that there is a strong body of evidence to support it.

The author should take care not to perpetuate the falsehoods and equivocations of the Religious Right. I think any evolutionary biologist would be pleased, not dismayed, to hear of the Florida Board of Education's decision today to call it by this name.

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I teach Biology and I suspect natural selection will eventually catch up with this type of thinker. I have a conviction that the oranges may have been the most intelligent organism at the podium.

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You took the words right out of my fingers.

Darwin's book?

The Theory of Evolution

I'll bet the dipsticks on the Florida Board of Ed would have a hissy fit if they knew that. Maybe we should send them a copy or two.

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...have evolved them to resemble the ass that he is.

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Certainly, I would whole-heartedly agree with that throwback to H. erectus and say that oranges are indeed related to humans. Yes, we share many genes with oranges as well as many molecular patterns and motifs. All life, even bacteria, share these. That's what is beautiful about life.

So to say that like it is an outrageous statement and try to make a strawman out of it just shows the true depth of the speaker's ignorance. To echo a poster above, it is entirely possible that his enteric commensal bacteria are more intelligent than he. At least they know when to shut up through quorum sensing.

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I didn't think I could make it through the video, since the empathetic part of me was about to feel mortified for this guy. Then I noticed he didn't seem like some poor-shlub caricature of a redneck. He had on a suit and tie and was possessed of more arrogance than the standard ignorant hillbilly who didn't have much education and is easy to beat up on. Thus he's fair game.

Yes, oranges and people are genetically related, since a few billion years back we shared a common ancestor. I don't know enough evolutionary biology to know what the last common ancestor was, but my guess would be that it was some unicellular eukaryotic organism whose more complex descendents eventually diverged into the earliest plants and animals. If anyone knows exactly the common ancestral species or type of organism, please tell me.

If the guy had really done so much reading about evolution, he'd understand the concept of common ancestry and appreciate the huge timeframe in which evolution operates, so he could see how an orange and a human are related.

What he's really trying to say, though, is humans are ontologically unique and special, which is a concept derived from religious tradition.

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"the Florida Family Policy Council, managed to convince the board to insert the caveat. They said they were "vigorously opposed" to the evolution language because it "clashes with their religious convictions or their personal beliefs that evolution has not been proved."

The existance of God hasn't been proved either, therefore Christianity should also be taught as theory.

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Even if they do a virgen the firt night
of their HM,the next morning they will
ask the hotel desk for diappers.

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one must have faith in evolutuion same as the faith in jesus, both are deluded,an animal does not change into another one given a zillion years. it don't happen, wh yis there still the same trilobites as there were zillion years ago? they didnt change, why not? because they dont change.mutations are usually harmful to a species and a million mutatutions in a monkey doesnt make a human.evolutuion is a religion just as bizarre as all the others, it takes faith to believe in it.because it is a fairy tale popularized by darwin who was a game player in directing the thinking of this current paridigram.which sucks.slime mold with a straw.

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one must have faith in evolutuion same as the faith in jesus, both are deluded,an animal does not change into another one given a zillion years. it don't happen, wh yis there still the same trilobites as there were zillion years ago? they didnt change, why not? because they dont change.mutations are usually harmful to a species and a million mutatutions in a monkey doesnt make a human.evolutuion is a religion just as bizarre as all the others, it takes faith to believe in it.because it is a fairy tale popularized by darwin who was a game player in directing the thinking of this current paridigram.which sucks.slime mold with a straw.

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Two questions for this jester:
1. What is the basic building block of the orange?
2. What is the basic building block of the pet cat?
Answer: DNA.
So, yes, Darwin was right, they are related. But only a moron with no conception of time scale of evolution would posit that a fruit and a mammal are cousins.

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"clashes with their religious convictions or their personal beliefs that evolution has not been proved."

Sorry folks, but it don't work that way!

Science is based on EVIDENCE, REASON, EXPERIMENTATION, OBSERVATION and outcomes that are REPRODUCABLE.

Religion is based on "faith" - the willing suspension of disbelief - not evidence. You can't have a "personal belief" that evolution hasn't been proved; science has already proven it. You can have a "personal belief" that gravity is "just a theory", but that doesn't mean that you won't be stuck down here on the ground with the rest of us.

I personally think that adding "scientific theory" to the phrase gives evolution even more legitimacy. What would the alternative be? The "religious theory of creation"?

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that people still believe evolution isn't provable. I just got this in an email yesterday - I don't know who wrote it, so I can't give credit to the author:

Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.

Yup, that's just sooooo much more believable than evolution!

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If Eivlouion is aganst their beilifes.
Then they belive the world "does not" go around the sun,but stands still.
Then they must belive that bats are "birds".
That bugs have only "four" legs.
That rabbits "chew cuds".
That ,if ( the girl)is not a virgin,on her wedding night ,she is are to be killed by her parents.

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Gravity, yep it is theory, can't wait to hear them emphasize that theory. In America all scientific theories should be afford the same opportunity and emphasis. Only then will students learn what scientific theory means and that these religious wackos are more foolish than coherent.

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The problem with teaching the processes of science is that many teachers 1) are teaching in fields for which they are not qualified and 2) do not understand the processes of science (what a hypothesis, theory, and law are, etc.)

I have posted some thoughts on this on my blog - The Processes of Science

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Science deals with facts and only facts. Facts inform ALL scientific theory. Since Science can't ever be sure it has all the facts regarding an issue, it can never fully and finally prove any theory, but, to be valid scientifically, a theory must be supported by a preponderance of facts. Science classes then must also deal in a preponderance of facts and only facts.

Science, just as religion, uses conjecture and unproven hypotheses. In Science, however, these are used as a start for gathering facts that scientists hope will prove those hypotheses. A hypothesis is only considered proven (and that only provisionally) when it is supported by a preponderance of facts. Religionists use conjecture and hypotheses AS proof, but can’t go any further. Ironically, their proofs don’t prove anything.

Creationism/Intelligent Design deals with faith and faith is only opinion, no matter how fervently believed. No one person's opinion is more or less valid than another's. When the scientific method is applied to Creationism/Intelligent Design or any articles of faith, few, if any, facts can be called upon. Science classes, therefore have no means of teaching this opinion because it isn’t supported by a preponderance of facts.

Science classes teach and are bound by the rules and methodology of scientific principles. Unsupported opinions are anathema to good scientific principles. Teaching Creationism/Intelligent Design as an alternative theory of the origins of man in a Science class would be akin to teaching Cooking in a Math class. It's out of place. It's inappropriate. It's roots pre-date Science. It's anachronistic. It can't be fit into the curriculum in any sensible way. To do so robs the students of the basic building blocks of adult intelligence.

However, on the Orlando Sentinel site another blogger has suggested what I think might be an interesting compromise: okboston suggested a comparative theories section in the Science curriculum as a means of teaching the principles of scientific methodology. Applying these principles to an examination of the competing “theories” would serve two purposes: One, it would be an excellent way to teach the methodology; and two, it would reveal which one has the preponderance of evidence and which one has none. I would add that comparing the two also would be interesting in a civics class section regarding the Constitutional separation of church and state. What a school that would be.

C/ID is a religious belief. As such, the teaching of it is constitutionally prohibited in public schools. Whatever rationale is used to circumvent that prohibition could also be used to REQUIRE that Evolution be taught in Bible classes and Sunday Schools. Both ways, however, are unconstitutional.

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Science is an empirical philosophy. Bertrand Russell once said that to argue for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading.

Creationism and Intelligent Design, therefore, are not science: there is a gulf of difference between pointing out flaws and inconsistencies in a theory versus trying to find evidence to support or promote a particular belief (e.g., the biblical accounts of creation, the existence of God, etc.).

However...

Evolution is mostly speculation. The physical evidence from the past is fragmentary; of the one billion species believed to have existed, 99 percent did not leave fossils.

In the deliberate breeding of species, there are limits to the changes one can make. When pushed beyond a limit, species become sterile and die out or revert to their standard design.

We can induce changes in existing forms via breeding, but cannot generate new complex structures. If this cannot happen by man's conscious efforts, why should it happen by blind natural processes? No satisfactory evolutionary models have ever been made.

In an article on animal rights entitled "Just Like Us?" appearing in the August 1988 issue of Harper's, Ingrid Newkirk, Executive Director of PETA, said:

"You cannot find a relevant attribute in human beings that doesn't exist in animals as well. Darwin said that the only difference between humans and other animals was a difference of degree, not kind. If you ground any concept of human rights in a particular attribute, then animals will have to be included. Animals have rights."

Many in the animal rights movement still base their ethical system upon the Darwinian theory of evolution. This will have to change, as Darwin's theory is being demolished. Michael Cremo & Richard Thompson's Forbidden Archaeology (1993) is a step in that direction. This controversial book shocked the scientific community and became an underground classic.

The book's premise is that evolutionary prejudices held by powerful groups of scientists act as a "knowledge filter" which has eliminated evidence challenging accepted views, and left us with a radically altered understanding of human origins and antiquity.

Forbidden Archaeology shocked the scientific world with its evidence for extreme human antiquity. It documented hundreds of anomalies in the archaeological record that contradicted the prevailing theory and showed how this massive amount of evidence was systematically "filtered" out. This is how mainstream science reacts (almost like a religion) to any challenge to its deeply held beliefs.

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Looks like the Skopes Monkey trial all over again. Jeez...you'd think it was 1925 again!

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So far, no one has had the guts or the ingenuity to put the lie to all the religious twaddle that stands in the way of true enlightenment. Theistic religion becomes established once certain protections against criticisms are in place.The witch doctor becomes an authority figure whose views are immune to real scrutiny or challenge. This is codified into law in many instances. The pupport(s) of the superstitution acquire the same immunity to examination or critical analysis, and in some cases, "apostacy" is a capital crime. A knowlege of history is necessary to understand this. If you're engaged in conversation with a religious person, that person will invariably attempt to frame the discussion in religious terms, so, if you say "Evolution is a FACT, supported by a mountain of factual evidence", the reply will be something like "That's only a theory", as if theories are silly guesses. Once you explain the factual nature of theories, the reply is "Well you believe in evolution, and I believe in creation", as if science is a BELIEF system rather than the glorious accomplishment it truly is. This way of non-thought and intolerance of other views is deeply ingrained in many people to whom no amount of contradictory evidence is sufficient to sway them. It's this obstinate mind-set that must be addressed through good education and legislation where and when necessary.

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You wrote, "Forbidden Archaeology shocked the scientific world with its evidence for extreme human antiquity. It documented hundreds of anomalies in the archaeological record that contradicted the prevailing theory and showed how this massive amount of evidence was systematically "filtered" out. This is how mainstream science reacts (almost like a religion) to any challenge to its deeply held beliefs."

The same things can be said about the Bible. LeeAnnG is correct about what she writes and there are LOTS of books (not just one) that support her points. They document the myriad of contradictions, undocumented miracles, flawed logic and reasoning, errors in historicity, the lack of physical, archeological evidence for places, people and events depicted in both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. I'll point to two: Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism by Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong and The Bible Unearthed by Finkelstein and Silberman.

Your last assertion re. how Science reacts to challenges is totally off the mark. Not only do religionists challenge Science, so do other scientists. The difference is that when religionists challenge scientists, they rarely bring new facts to the challenge. When they do, scientists do the same as they do when challenged by other scientists: They review the facts and test them objectively. Since there can't ever be Science without objectivity, if the review isn't objective, then it isn't Science and other scientists will make certain the testers hear about it. When the testers can objectively disprove facts, then, of course, they "filter them out." They are obligated to do so. I'll assume for the minute that other scientists are in the process of testing the "facts" contained in Forbidden Archeology right now. We'll see.

I have never heard of any religionists testing their opinions in a scientific manner. If you know of any, I'd appreciate the citations.

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unzip the entire State of florida from this union and allow it to drift off to Cuba where the majority of its citizens rightfully belong, if only they had the guts to face Castro??
Floridians have proven time and again that they're too ignorant to participate in self-governance.

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Anyone ever heard of Pierre Teilhard de Jardin?

He was a Jesuit, also a paleontologist and an archaeologist. He assisted in the discovery of Peking Man.

His defining work is The Phenomenon of Man, which I'd recommend to anyone who would like to delve into the issue of evolution and religious faith.

Teilhard's approach is a teleological one, essentially saying that creation of life evolved into a noosphere, our present, in which human consciousness transforms the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life). He disagrees that our redemption took place all at once with Christ's sacrifice, but is continuously evolving to a future 'Omega Point', a maximum level of complexity and consciousness, and the culmination of history--a unification of a great humane consciousness in an ascent toward the uncreated energies, or God.

Intelligent Design is also a teleological point of view, i.e. a system which posits a driving force or directive principal in the natural world, but it is very different from Teilhard's theory, which does not in any way use the cosmos' complexity to "prove" the hand of God.

Teilhard had a beautiful mind and a faithful heart. His writings annoyed the Curia so much, that they suppressed them, and would not allow him to publish on pain of expulsion from the Society of Jesus. One reason was that his veering away from Creation as it is written in Genesis tampers with the Church notion of Original Sin.

It was Pope John XXIII who brought The Phenomenon of Man back into the light, and allowed it to be published a few years after Teilhard's death in 1955. Before then, his fellow Jesuits passed copies of his work around in secret, using it as a great source of debate and discussion.

I went to Fordham for my undergrad training, and there, Teilhard was a hero. I felt as though I knew him, as I studied with men who did. He died on April 10, 1955, while in residence at St. Ignatius on Park Avenue, with the New York Chapter of Jesuits, and rests at a cemetery in Poughkeepsie, NY on the site of a former Jesuit Novitiate.

When he was dying, he said, "If in my life I haven't been wrong, I beg God to allow me to die on Easter Sunday." And he did.

What's beautiful about The Phenomenon of Man, is that it says that we all develop and evolve in a collective consciousness. Not one of us is going anywhere without the rest of us.

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?

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Evolution is USEFUL. Creationism is USELESS. Evolution
helps us do things, like the sciences of biology and sociobiology
and the technology of medicine. Biology without evolution is
butterfly collecting. It tells us nothing. Biology can no more
operate without evolution than you can balance your checkbook if
you don't believe that 1+1=2. If you don't like evolution, go to a
witch doctor next time you get sick.

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Religion is caused by any one or more of about half a dozen mental illnesses.
The truth about religion can be found in these books:

"The Neuropsychological bases of god beliefs" Dr. Michael A. Persinger MD,
psychiatrist 1987 "Religious people are just like my temporal lobe patients"

"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bi-Cameral Mind" Julian
Jaynes Professor, Harvard University 1976 "Religious people are just like
schizophrenic patients"

"The Psychiatric Interview in Clinical Practice" Roger A. MacKinnon, M.D.,
Robert Michels, M.D. W. B. Saunders Co. 1971 "Religiosity is a common
symptom [of] schizophrenic patients"

"The God delusion" by Richard Dawkins. "Religion is caused by a kind of
computer virus that infects the living computer, the human brain."

"The Science of Good and Evil" by Michael Shermer, 2004 "Morality and Ethics
are now in the jurisdiction of Science and greatly improved thereby."

Many books in the new science called "Sociobiology": Morals and ethics are
instinctive and they evolved.

"God: The Failed Hypothesis" by Victor Stenger Scientific proof that god does
not exist.

"The God Part of the Brain" by Matthew Alper 1996. "The USA is anomolusly
religious because many early founder groups were religiously insane and fleeing
prosecution in Europe. Religion is a genetic disorder."

"The Accidental Mind" by David J. Linden, 2007 Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press. Religion is caused by the extreme klugeyness of the "designed"
by evolution brain. In particular, the narrative creation system cannot be turned
off. It generates false narratives that are believed by the generating person. This is
seen in experiments done in the laboratory. This book has the best explanation of
resistance to evolution: "There has also been an assumption that if one accepts the
idea that life developed without divine intervention, it necessarily follows that all
aspects of religious thought must be rejected. Those who take this line of
argument to extremes argue that when religious thought is rejected moral and
social codes will degenerate and "the law of the jungle" will be all that is left. It is
imagined by religious fundamentalists that those who do not share their particular
religious faith are incapable of leading moral lives." These suppositions are not
true many times over. Linden later mentions that the creationists [intelligent
design advocates] are exactly 180 degrees wrong rather than just a little wrong.
Being exactly wrong, they are unable to unlearn their error. See Sociobiology or
Sciobio.

"Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism" edited by Petto &
Godfrey, 2007. The ID and creationist crowd are trying to do away with science.
They see science as a "godless religion." Science is a process, not a religion.

"Manufacturing Belief" by Lewis Wolpert
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/05/15/lewis_wolpert/

"The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris

"Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon", by Daniel Dennett
Let's do scientific research on religion and find out what causes it.

"Origins of the Modern Mind" by Merlin Donald 1991 "So what did you expect
from a brain that is based on the Chimpanzee brain?

"Atheism, A Case Against God" by George Smith

"God is not Great; how religion poisons everything" by Christopher Hitchens, 2007

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As a sophomore undergraduate student in Physics, your homework may include
figuring out when the second coming would be required, assuming that the bible
was 100% true in the year zero. That is, when would the bible be down to 50%
true? The popular and professors' answer in 1965 was the year 500. The true
answer: A friend of mine was born and raised in Budapest, Hungary. As an adult,
he came here and stayed. After 25 years, he visited his home town of Budapest.
He was unable to communicate with his high school classmates because the
Hungarian language had changed so much. The correct answer is less than 25
years. The first gospel was not written down until 50 years after the alleged
events and then in a different language. The people who told the story were at
about the same level of civilization as "wild Indians", I mean Native Americans
before Columbus got here. We have all played or seen played the game called
"Telephone" in which a story is passed down a line of re-tellers. By the Sixth re-
telling, the story has no resemblance to the original. The gospel story had to have
been re-told at least 6 times before it was mis-translated the first time. [Note that
whoever wrote it down the first time was free to write whatever he wanted to.
The storytellers were illiterate and unable to check his written text by reading it.
Besides that, he wrote in Greek rather than Aramaic.] Conclusion: There is no
truth anywhere in the bible, and there never was. There is no way to know what
"jesus" or "mohammed" or any other such character actually said or did.

ALL of the jurisdictions that were formerly in the jurisdiction of religion have
been taken over by Science. There is no longer a need to debate the issue.
Religion is an unfortunate side effect of having evolved from a chimpanzee-like
animal in a very brief 6 or 7 million years. "God" will not save us from the
consequences of global warming or an asteroid impact or a tornado because there
is no such critter as "god.".] Ethics and morality are instinctive, not derived from
religion. Female instinct has greater force in morality than male instinct because
the female is in command of the sexual encounter. Look up "Sociobiology". The
origin of the Universe is the subject of Cosmology which is part of astronomy
which is part of the science of physics.
Religion is a SCAM. ANY religion, there are 10,000 to choose from at any one
time. People keep inventing new religions [for the benefit of the "prophet," of
course] and forgetting other religions. ALL preachers, priests, imams, rabbis,
iatolas, etc. belong in jail for "grand theft, bunko type".

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It is "The Origin of the Species" not "The Oranges of the Species." Duh.

/sarcasm

I just wish not understanding evolution somehow meant you'd be less likely to procreate. Just as our technology allows us to prolong life for the chronically ill, a school system in denial of evolution prolongs the relevance of the stupid. What sad irony.

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and imprisonment by the Catholic Church of Galileo for stating that the earth revolved around the sun put a total stop to the scientific tradition of the Mediterranean. And since nature abhors a vacuum, the scientific revolution moved to northern Europe.

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I watched the entire Board meeting by Webcast, and not ONE person said they wanted the wording of the science standards changed because "it clashes with their religious convictions." But yet everyone was being accused of doing so. In fact, each person speaking in favor of evolution being left a "theory" clarified their comments by saying "I'm not asking for religion to be taught in the classroom". Because they knew that the "other side" would accuse them of it. They were simply requesting that the ability & consideration for scientific exploration for proving or disproving something would be left open.
I will also point out that there were CLERGY people present who SUPPORTED the new wording.
When someone can unequivocably prove to me that God does not exist, I will whole-heartily support the big bang and evolution.

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P.S. Armbruster's report is so biased. Check out this real reporting piece about what happened at the Florida Bd of Ed before the vote:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/611999/ citizens_influence_the_florida_board.html. (FIRST - delete the space between / and the word citizens to make the URL work. AlterNet wouldn't post the entire URL as "one word". I had to split it up)

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brought us

Spontaneous generation - Sure, maggots can magically appear on rotting meat. Why not?

Geocentric universe - Everything revolves around the earth, got it? And anyone who disagrees will be burned at the stake

Demonic Theory of disease - No, that's not tuberculosis making you cough up blood, it's the DEBBLE AND HIS EVIL WORKS. YOU WEREN'T PIOUS ENOUGH - SINNER!

Maybe these folks should leave the science game to scientists. The fundies do not exactly have the best track record when it comes to science.

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Though the creationist factions can get pretty wound up (and in the case of this video, come up with crazy stuff) evolutionists can get caught up with things too.

Evolution is a theory. It is most likely accurate, but that doesn't change anything. All that science represents is our best understanding of how things are, and our best understanding is always improving. A theory is generally accurate until proven otherwise.

Scientific folks do need to be forward thinking and pragmatic, but that doesn't mean they need to have modernistic obsessions with truth.

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