Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

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Georgia now wants to remove the word "evolution" from public school curriculums (at least this has been proposed) and replace it with "biological changes over time", but keep the rest of the curriculum the same. Asinine.

WTF!?!, Why?

Cox repeatedly referred to evolution as a "buzzword" Thursday and said the ban was proposed, in part, to alleviate pressure on teachers in socially conservative areas where parents object to its teaching.

Even changing the word is throwing a bone to religious zealotry and its unacceptable. Religion has no place PUBLIC in school, especially not when it comes to quelling FACTS about the origins of life and the human species.

Georgia and all the evolution nuts are ignorant. Strongly held beliefs that have no basis in fact are ignorant. Evolution is a fact, evolution is real, to remove it or just the word from a school curriculum is asinine.

Lets follow the non sequitor of the main argument "its just a theory" just for the hell of it. Evolution is a "theory" yet so is "cell theory", the "theory of relativity" and the "germ theory of disease". I suggest we remove all this crap also.

Instead we should teach the so called "alternative" theory of creation, even though it has absolutely ZERO credible evidence to support it. It sure looks a lot like some science fiction, or a fairy tale when you tell the story, but hey, we have been telling it so long why not just not bother to question it? In fact lets take it one step further and totally disregard any ACTUAL FACTS AND EVIDENCE THAT DO question it?

Oh and by the way, this alternative theory comes straight out of Christianity. We cant be bothered with also teaching the alternative theories of Buddhism or Hindu theologies, just the Christian one. And to do this teaching of Christian stuff in schools we are going to have to disregard that little Constitution thing, so what screw it, we are getting used to that.

So why does science use the word "theory" anyway? Well it seems that the definition of theory contains the words "evidence" and "fact" and other little troubling crap. It seems in science that everything is questioned, continually, thats how it works. Some common defnitions for "theory" are:

The grandest synthesis of a large and important body of information about some related group of natural phenomena (Moore, 1984)

A body of knowledge and explanatory concepts that seek to increase our understanding ("explain") a major phenomenon of nature (Moore, 1984).

A scientifically accepted general principle supported by a substantial body of evidence offered to provide an explanation of observed facts and as a basis for future discussion or investigation (Lincoln et al., 1990).

A scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena; a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment, and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts; a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles or causes of something known or observed. (Oxford English Dictionary, 1961; [emphasis added]).

An explanation for an observation or series of observations that is substantiated by a considerable body of evidence (Krimsley, 1995).

In science some things are called "laws". Generally laws are related to physics because they are based in some type of mathematical equation. The very nature of biology is that it isnt as mathematical. Does it mean its less than factual? Hell no.

I could go on and on, but basically religious nuts need to keep their crap out of schools. Teach whatever nonsense you want in a private school, but even "conservative" areas (as the article points out as wanting the change in Georgia) need to get a clue and keep nonsense out of education. This is clearly a RELIGIOUS matter, religious folks want to disregard evolution even in the face of facts and evidence, fine, do so at your own peril, but do not bring religion into PUBLIC schools. (Private schools, teach whatever you want, hellelujah, but the crux of the matter is that reality should stay in PUBLIC schools.)

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  Georgia considers banning evolution: CNN