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Cobb County - remove the stickers

scotth

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http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/01/13/evolution.textbooks.ruling/index.html

Cobb County gets to remove the evolution warning stickers.

Still can't believe this huge of an error was made in the article....

According to the AP, the schools placed the stickers after more than 2,000 parents complained the textbooks presented evolution as fact, without mentioning rival ideas about the beginnings of life.
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Evolution is NOT a theory concerning the 'beginnings of life'.
 
I can believe it. How many reporters have any level of expertise in science?

But still, this is good news. Thanks for posting it.
 
Well, it happened, and for that I am happy. But it did not happen in the manner I would like it to have happened. It would have been better had the district come to its senses.

My second choice would have been for an enraged mob of parents who actually care about the realities of education taking the 'school officials' out behind a custodian's shed and putting bullets in their brainpans.
 
Khonshu said:
I can believe it. How many reporters have any level of expertise in science?

But still, this is good news. Thanks for posting it.
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He's just churning out the same mistake made by the judges:

"Due to the manner in which the sticker refers to evolution as a theory, the sticker also has the effect of undermining evolution education to the benefit of those Cobb County citizens who would prefer that students maintain their religious beliefs regarding the origin of life," Cooper wrote in his ruling.
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The judge's version is not too far off. Evolution, while not about origins itself, is at odds with the bible's depiction of the beginnings of life.
 
The funny thing about this topic is how so many of the popularly accepted scientific discoveries of the past have contradicted the Bible countless times before. We now know we don't live in a geocentric universe, the Earth is not flat, etc., yet religious people will still be so protective of anything else that threatens to make their silly book invalid. These people ought to know that science won out in the war against religion long before the theory of evolution came to prominence.
 
You beat me to it again, Paj, dammit! ;) Good post.

The judges ruling and wording is correct if you think about it. He refers to the origins of life as the student's religious beliefs - he's not linking the theory of evolution to the origins of life.

BTW, Batman Jr. - AFAIK, the bible doesn't explicitely state anything about geocentricity or flat earth... does it? Maybe I've forgotten...
 
scotth said:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/01/13/evolution.textbooks.ruling/index.html

Cobb County gets to remove the evolution warning stickers.

Still can't believe this huge of an error was made in the article....

Evolution is NOT a theory concerning the 'beginnings of life'.
Click to expand...
It is not surprising. There was a recent article in the San Jose newspaper that made the same mistake. The anti-evolutionists promote this confusion at every opportunity. Clearly the reporters are repeating what they hear from one side without any effort to get input from elsewhere...
 
kookbreaker said:
He's just churning out the same mistake made by the judges:
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Let's be fair. The judge is not ruling on the scientific controversy, but upon the legal controversy placed before him. Unless you've got access to the various submissions made by the parties, you don't really know what the dispute in the briefs was about.

You've seen how easy it is for a discussion on this forum to get sidetracked --- and if Cobb County chose to defend their decision to place the stickers on the textbooks on the grounds of parental complaints that "the textbooks presented evolution as fact, without mentioning rival ideas about the beginnings of life"...

Well, this is exactly the sort of thing that a good lawyer should be able to refute directly. There are no other legitimate rival ideas regarding the beginnings of life for which there is a shred of scientific evidence, and therefore it's appropriate not to mention those "rival ideas." In point of fact, the original sticker wording openly states (incorrectly) that evolution is a theory regarding "the origin of life." Of course, a good lawyer will also point out that the sticker itself is factually incorrect, and that evolution is not a theory of albiogenesis. But the judge is free to base his ruling on any of the points under dispute. To me, it looks like he got it right. The central LEGAL point isn't that the sticker is factually incorrect, but that it violates the first amendment.
 
In ruling that the stickers violate the constitutionally mandated separation between church and state, U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper ruled that labeling evolution a "theory" played on the popular definition of the word as a "hunch" and could confuse students.
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What a great opportunity to clear up this popular misconception...

Unfortunately no follow-through... they bring up that theory is commonly held to mean "hunch" and imply that's inaccurate...

But they don't say what it really means!!!! Arrrrgh so close to something very laudable.
 
jmercer said:
BTW, Batman Jr. - AFAIK, the bible doesn't explicitely state anything about geocentricity or flat earth... does it? Maybe I've forgotten...
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1 Chronicles 16:30: "He has fixed the earth firm, immovable."

Matthew 4:8: "Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them"

Matthew 4:8 is a little more oblique in revealing its understanding of the universe, but it can be easily implied that it expresses a disbelief in a spherical Earth because there is no possible way to see every kingdom from one vantage point no matter how high you are. You'd only be able to see one side of the Earth at best.
 
Batman Jr. said:
yet religious people will still be so protective of anything else that threatens to make their silly book invalid. These people ought to know that science won out in the war against religion long before the theory of evolution came to prominence.
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Well, you should be more fair in your comments. Many religious people embrace science and the discoveries of science quite readily.
 
Batman Jr. said:
1 Chronicles 16:30: "He has fixed the earth firm, immovable."

Matthew 4:8: "Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them"

Matthew 4:8 is a little more oblique in revealing its understanding of the universe, but it can be easily implied that it expresses a disbelief in a spherical Earth because there is no possible way to see every kingdom from one vantage point no matter how high you are. You'd only be able to see one side of the Earth at best.
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Maybe the exceeding high mountain is another dimension?
 
jzs said:
Maybe the exceeding high mountain is another dimension?
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If the Bible presents itself in anything less than a very incisive way, then contradictions between it and science shouldn't mean much, because there will always be ways to make its indeterminacies adhere to what is known to be true. In this kind of case, no information of real use will really be that salvageable from it, because everything in it will have to remain moot.
Originally posted by jzs
Well, you should be more fair in your comments. Many religious people embrace science and the discoveries of science quite readily.
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Religion is something that values the unscientific in order to prolong its own existence. It's accurate to say that many religious people accept a great deal of the discoveries science has made, but the scientific process itself they reject by the very merits they find in their own religiosity.
 
Batman Jr. said:
If the Bible presents itself in anything less than a very incisive way, then contradictions between it and science shouldn't mean much, because there will always be ways to make its indeterminacies adhere to what is known to be true. In this kind of case, no information of real use will really be that salvageable from it, because everything in it will have to remain moot.
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Sorry, I didn't catch that.

If one doesn't interpret it as literal as possible, I don't see anything wrong with interpreting each passage.


Religion is something that values the unscientific in order to prolong its own existence. It's accurate to say that many religious people accept a great deal of the discoveries science has made, but the scientific process itself they reject by the very merits they find in their own religiosity.
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Some people, sure. But not all. For example, there are some who believe that science helps to discover how god operates, etc.

And what about some scientists who are religous? Just what are they thinking?? ;)
 
That decision put me in a good mood all day.

Take that uneducated and ill-informed people seeking to force beliefs over science. Those people should send their kids to private schools so they can learn the teachings of L Ron Hubbard and Joseph Smith and other "profits" of "intelligent design."
 
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