<p>…and ousts all 8 of the fringe, fundamentalist school board members in Dover Pennsylvania who wanted Intelligent Design in the science curriculum.</p>
<p>NY Times:
</code></pre>
<p>now what is wrong with kansas?</p>
<p>I listened to a fascinating interview not too long ago with someone (sorry, don’t remember the name) who talked about Osama Bin Laden and how he was able to get the followers he did. The interviewee said that bin Laden’s greatest gift was to be able to convince - using the Koran and historical references and just the language he used - that his extreme views were the mainstream. I think that many people who are pushing ID think that they also are in the mainstream of thinking in the US.</p>
<p>A similar thing happened in Colorado Springs - one of the most conservative cities in the entire nation. Outside groups brought enormous sums of money to a school board race to elect a slate of wackos that had the agenda of bringing their extremist values to the district. One of the candidates said that the worst thing that ever happened to the US was the institution of public education and that education really belonged in the home and in churches. The agenda of this group: use the public school money to provide vouchers to parents, to eliminate substantive sex education, etc. The entire slate was defeated, even with the large amount of money spent.</p>
<p>So even as conservative as this city is, it can still recognize extremism.</p>
<p>Ummm … one problem with your “analysis”. You have it reversed in terms of which group erroneously believes that they are “mainstream”
<a href=“Religion A Strength And Weakness For Both Parties | Pew Research Center”>Religion A Strength And Weakness For Both Parties | Pew Research Center;
<p>those who believe life exists now as it has since the beginning: 42 percent</p>
<p>those who believe that life has evolved with the guidance of a supreme being: 18 percent</p>
<p>those who believe it evolved through natural selection: 26 percent</p>
<p>Percent of American who are open to teaching creationism along with evolution: 64%</p>
<p>Percent of people who think that liberals have gone too far in keeping religion out of the public school: 67%</p>
<p>But, other than the multiple errors, it was a nice attempt to link religious people with al Qaeda. But, if your theory of erroneously believing that one is in the mainstream holds, perhaps liberals are akin to al Qaeda?? Just wondering.</p>
<p>Hi, digmedia…was it that guy from Iowa? I should remember his name…just defeated a referendum in our district. But, to be fair, one that I expected would have trouble anyway…</p>
<p>Fundad-If your’e going to quote a source, you don’t need to be cagey about it. We can add.</p>
<p>"The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, conducted July 7-17 among 2,000 adults, also finds deep religious and political differences over questions relating to evolution and the origins of life. Overall, about half the public (48%) says that humans and other living things have evolved over time, while 42% say that living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time. Fully 70% of white evangelical Protestants say that life has existed in its present form since the beginning of time; fewer than half as many white mainline Protestants (32%) and white Catholics (31%) agree. "
This is actually a very interesting site. Thanks for sharing, FD - While I don’t think it supports your argument - that the belief that intelligent design should be taught in science classes is “the mainstream,” I think the statistics are interesting.
I also find the following statement a refreshing change from so many who claim their polls are unbiased and 100% accurate. </p>
<p>“In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.”</p>
<p>FF</p>
<p>That depends on the proper interpretation of the term Mainstream. </p>
<p>In lib-speak, mainstream in fact means something more akin to nonconformist or better yet liberal-minded.</p>
<p>Here, terms like counter-culture are praiseworthy. Here, amazingly, to be called unconventional is no more than a banal compliment; high-praise is held in reserve for heroic acts defined as transgressive. </p>
<p>Of course the so-called mainstream rarely gets it and simply must be spoken for by the refined vanguard that does. Otherwise, our beloved counter-culture would seem to be nothing more than naked egoism and to transgress would be nothing short of a brutal and immoral violation of someone or something.</p>
<p>It is pointless to refer to the beliefs actually held by un-washed-America. The mainstream, properly speaking, are those who know what the mainstream should be thinking or would be thinking if they actually had he where-with-all to think it.</p>
<p>Wookwork: huh? I had some wine with dinner and couldn’t really focus my brain enough to parse the post.</p>
<p>FF: Your response triggered something in me that got me to thinking that we all (mea culpa here too, many times) think of mainstream as what WE think. I saw those same polls you quoted (and I even thought of them as I wrote the post - thinking that it contradicts what I was saying), but I dismissed it with the same logic that WW quoted in the last paragraph in the post above this one.</p>
<p>In general, I think I’m NOT in the mainstream of thinking, but rather more liberal. I think there are two extremes (and I’m probably in the one you’re not in) with most Americans in between the two. Sometimes I’m amazed that they can disagree with me (how could ANYONE vote for Bush) and sometimes I’m amazed that they can agree with me (as in the OP above). But when I speak of the mainstream, I’m speaking of this middle group, who are - I admit - religious. </p>
<p>And they may even think that we’ve gone too far in separating church and state. But many of them (and ones who vote) can separate science from religion and let the science classes teach science. Evolution is the HOW, but not the WHY. Will physics classes be next because they teach the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe? Will we need a statement in those classes about why the Big Bang “theory” doesn’t give us the WHY of the origin of the universe?</p>
<p>At one time, virtually all people in Western Europe believed that the Earth was flat. Later, in similar numbers they believed the Sun revolved around the Earth. </p>
<p>At a far earlier time, some early hominids started walking upright while the knuckle-draggers looked on skeptically…I have this moment of epiphany that tells me which camp the remote ancestors of certain posters on this board were in.</p>
<p>Percentage of belief indicates nothing of scientific truth. If someone wishes to teach “intelligent design” in a religion class, they are free to do so as long as a) my kid isn’t subjected to it and b) my tax dollars don’t go to support such nonsense.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Lordy, lordy. All the more reason to beef up that science education! </p>
<p>Must be the same 42% who think Bush is doing a great job.</p>
<p>Thedad, Kluge, Digmedia, et al, </p>
<p>At one time in North America, during the first half of the 20th century, the working end of Darwinism was called eugenics. It offered a cornucopia of ideas to respectable racists and their racial cures for what ailed mankind. The science had a rather popular run and even had some wondrous practical applications in their brave new world: the future is unwritten, they were heard to say.</p>
<p>Darwinian eugenics offered these fellows a breath of fresh air. The theories themselves were brought to fruition by Charles Darwins practical cousin, Francis Galton with Darwins encouragement and moral and intellectual support; at the time, eugenics was considered to be the logical and practical consequence of Darwinian Evolutionthe glory days it wasnt just for egg-heads anymore.</p>
<p>[Similarly, the science behind those who believed the world to be flat also applied their theory, though Im not so sure they did it with such a sense of zeal or mission. This view of the earth had practical implications that played a part in peoples day to day lives and observations (for the record, this was a scientific theory simply reaffirmed by the philosophy of the day which, incidentally, was composed from top to bottom of people whose view of the universe expanded into metaphysics: you know, belief in god. The proofs for this theory were offered through the best experimentation of the daythe scientific method such as it existed at the time, not theology; theology merely affirmed, it did not propose or innovate the science of earthly flatness; just as sociology and secularism affirm and endorse the current science and work diligently through its consequences: endorsed, not innovated).]</p>
<p>Heres a little synopsis, from a liberal source-- <a href=“http://www.facinghistorycampus.org/[/url]”>http://www.facinghistorycampus.org/</a>, of the working-end of Darwinism and the happy campers it gave license to in eugenics during the first half of the 20th century (some posting here may have been alive during this time, but probably not during the reign of earthly-flatness" that so worries them). There were, of course, those who opposed it, like William Jennings Bryant, but they were universally dismissed as being reactionary and superstitious, buffoons really, obstructing progress and the future:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
<a href=“http://www.facinghistorycampus.org/Campus/reslib.nsf/80008d40234fcbf985256f790074caaa/2d9cb93da4291b8485256f8d005b4e77/$FILE/R&M%20Chapter%203.pdf”>http://www.facinghistorycampus.org/Campus/reslib.nsf/80008d40234fcbf985256f790074caaa/2d9cb93da4291b8485256f8d005b4e77/$FILE/R&M%20Chapter%203.pdf</a></p>
<p>Darwinian eugenics also offered some rather innovative and brutal cures for homosexuality that I think many here would find distasteful, to say the least (in case the racial component just isnt not enough to get your blood boiling). </p>
<p>There were those who opposed it; you know, the usual suspects in the religious crowd, but it wasnt until the revelations of the Nazis shamed these brave new worldites that a rethinking of what they had done retrospectively occurred to them; admittedly, it was more look at those evil Nazis than what have we done, but the consequence was the same and eugenics was driven out of scientific fashion (but wait, perhaps genetic engineering is just eugenics with aluminum siding hmmm, what do you think, thedad?) .</p>
<p>Darwinism is still socially engineering things today, although it has less to do with race (only inasmuch as most racial minorities seem to need tradition and religion to work through their lives) and more to do with certain social groups and their retrograde superstitions, i.e. their most deeply held moral, ethical and cosmological beliefsyou know, the components of the self that buttresses their being against the machinations of their betters.</p>
<p>Well, you go get em boys
though I see from your posts that you need no encouragement in this scientific pastime of yours.
The Brave New World is always just around the corner!</p>
<p>[sorry for the double post, I accidentally posted this in the wrong thread…I intended it to be here]</p>
<p>Fountainsiren:</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone would argue that this isn’t an interesting a topic to debate – just not in science class. Take it to theology. Take it to sociology. Take it to history. Just take it out of the science class.</p>
<p>I understand surveys have shown 20% of Americans believe the sun travels around the earth. This is an alternate theory with lots of previous religous and cultural backing. We should probably consider teaching this alternate theory in science courses.</p>
<p>edad,</p>
<p>you seem to run in some peculiar intellectual circles…you ought to get out and meet some “real” Americans. I’ve known quite a few and to me they seem delightful and engaging–your imaginary American friends sound very stupid;)</p>
<p>I didn’t conduct the survey and have not asked any of my friends questions about astronomy. I am not sure about the “real” Americans who are delightful and engaging. If we believe the surveys, many of them must believe the sun circles the earth.</p>
<p>some large percentage of Americans also believe in ghosts. Should we teach that in science classes?</p>
<p>Some large part of Americans think that a large part of Americans are stupid–they delight in the very possibility [makes 'em feel smart]–should this also be taught: haughtiness I mean.</p>
<p>A large part of Americans believe Canada is a state and that we fought the French to win our independence–probably because they were taught this in their church, synagogue or mosque, don’t 'cha think;)</p>
<p>If we’re so concerned about the mainstream, why don’t we let mainstream scientists decide what should be taught in science courses? Let’s just go with the recommendations of the large professional associations of biologists, chemists, and physicists. Problem solved.</p>
<p>Scientists are too weird to be allowed to decide what should be taught in our public schools. We don’t allow historians to write the textbooks and determine how history should be taught. History texts are written by teams and subjected to thorough analysis to make sure they are politically correct. If we allowed mathematicians to write the textbooks we would end up with more new math stuff that we don’t want. It is much better to have education programs determined by strong school boards made up of real Americans.</p>
<p>edad:
Egads!</p>