People, please, listen to reason...

Slashdot | 48% of Americans Reject Evolution

"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn."--St Augustine

Good enough for me...

This works for me:Creationism dismissed as 'a kind of paganism' by Vatican's astronomer

Actual Intelligent Design

Un-intelligent Design, continued

I Rest my case: "The Vatican newspaper has published an article saying “intelligent design” is not science and that teaching it alongside evolutionary theory in school classrooms only creates confusion."

[EDIT(10:30, 1/23/06)]: Even Strong Bad believes in evolution!

Un-intelligent Design

Evolution evidence, yay

I would just like to put forward some of my thoughts on the whole debate:

-To all you ID advocates, the recent rulings don't prevent ID from being taught in public schools, it just prevents it from being mandated.

-ID is not science! It's an untestable hypothesis! Stop trying to put it into science class! I doubt many of you would be very happy if the Bible were put to close scrutiny in history class.

-Seriously, if you have that much issue with your kids being taught evolution, then put them into a private school! And if that doesn't work for whatever reason, explain to them about how evolution is not what you believe in. If you can't come up with compeling reasons so that they believe you and not their teachers, perhaps that's saying something regarding your beliefs and why you hold them.

Vatican wants to end battle with science - Science - MSNBC.com

Vatican wants to end battle with science - Science - MSNBC.com

"Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, director of the Vatican project STOQ, or Science, Theology and Ontological Quest, reaffirmed John Paul’s 1996 statement that evolution was “more than just a hypothesis.”

“A hypothesis asks whether something is true or false,” he said. “(Evolution) is more than a hypothesis because there is proof.”"

Seriously, I'll go finish my Thermodynamics HW now...

Let there be light...

Come see Scotch'n'Soda's Homecoming Musical, Children of Eden

CMU University Center
McConomy Auditorium
Showtimes:
Friday, 9:30pm
Saturday, 2:00pm and 8:00pm

Ticket Prices:
$3 with CMU ID and
$5 without ID
Can be bought at UC Info Desk or at door.

...and it was good.

Intelligent Design is Stupid

Bush's Two Minds on Science

I'm constantly amazed at how stupid religion makes some people: suicide bombers, people who oppose all stem cell research and people who inist Intelligent Design is a valid scientific theory that should be tought in school.
"The natural world is too complicated" my butt.
Fine, then I suppose that the earth is flat because the math's much easier if it is a plane rather thana sphere. QED.
See, that flies in the face of pretty much everything we know about the earth as a result of relatively modern technology (eg pictures from orbit), but I think it should still be tought in school.
Or, maybe I think Einstein was a hack and the speed of light is not a limit. Do I personally have any scientific evidence to disprove the idea of the speed of light being a limit? Nope, but I do enjoy science fiction, and it would be a lot nicer if it didn't take hundreads of years to reach other planets.
I saw an episode of the Ali G show where he interviewed a couple opponents of Evolution and some rational scientists defending it. One of the opponents claimed that 'evolution has never been scientifically verified' or something like that. Huh? What about the moths in Industrial-Revolution era England who changed color from white to soot so as to blend into the now soot-colored trees? Or Darwin's finches? I think a lot of it is that people, like Ali, don't want to think of themselves as cousins of chimpanzee's and the like. People want to feel special and the 'everyone's a winner' feel of evolution might not agree with some people.
The point is, both the NAS and NCSE point out that "Intelligent design" is in no way a valid scientific theory and is nothing more than creationism packaged into pseudoscience.

[EDIT(2:06):] Fixed HTML and some grammatical things.