Jewish School Removes Evolution Questions From Exams 431
Alain Williams writes "Religious sponsored ignorance is not just in the USA, a school in Hackney, England is trying to hide the idea of evolution from its pupils. Maybe they fear that their creation story will be seen for what it is if pupils get to learn ideas supported evidence. The girls are also disadvantaged since they can't answer the redacted questions, thus making it harder to get good marks."
If you don't like it.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Then don't send your kids to a Jewish school. Religious freedom is part of that whole "freedom" idea that some folks are pretty fond of.
"Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes." - Mahatma Gandhi
Re:If you don't like it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
A shame the kids themselves don't get a say in their indoctrination & skewed education. I know parents need to make choices on behalf of their kids, but it's not always easy to watch.
Education is mandatory in most countries, regardless of religious beliefs, but I wonder how much control that allows over the curriculum.
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Now if the school is State funded then that's a different matter.
Re:If you don't like it.... (Score:4, Informative)
Actively sabotaging child education because you cannot let go of your goat-herding traditions of fear in the desert is WRONG.
If Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls School is trying to sabotage its pupils education, they're certainly doing a shitty job of it [telegraph.co.uk].
From that link:
Pupils at the Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls School in Stamford Hill, north London, were on average five terms ahead of 14-year-olds in the rest of the country in maths, English and science.
(Emphasis mine)
Seems they must be doing something right, even if I can't agree with the actions described in TFA, assuming that they are true.
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reply to this post by stating clearly that you hereby sell your soul to Satan for the price of a bag of Cheetos. If you have balls you will also include in this deal the souls of everyone in your family.
Oooh, I want to play! I hereby sell my soul to Satan for the price of a bag of Cheetos. Can I get free shipping on that?
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ah very clever of you... have your soul divided up between various deities. I sneaky way of achieving a sort immortality.
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'evolution facists' (facist as in trying to control other people's thoughts)
Eh? Teaching evolution in a *science* class is now controlling other people's thoughts? The whole reason this is an issue is because hardcore theists want to prevent it from being taught because they think it conflicts with one cultures interpretation of a creation story. Is that not attempting to control people's thoughts?
Re:If you don't like it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Any creed that requires the indoctrination of children for its survival is suspect. If it can't wait until adulthood to present evidence in its favor there is a very good chance that something evil is at its core. Forced ignorance is evil. Voluntary, self enforced ignorance is only slightly less evil, but at least an adult has a choice about being ignorant.
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Don't get your panties in a knot. Newton was a Creationist and wrote more books about Jesus than he did physics. He turned out fine.
Only because evolution hadn't been invented. You can bet he wouldn't have done any of that if it had.
PS: He was highly neurotic and died a virgin. Is that "fine"?
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Whoosh!
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These days, science and religion are mutually exclusive.
I'm not sure I'd go that far... but science and The Bible certainly are.
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People seem to be able to reconcile their religion with scientific fact.
In my opinion it's intellectually dishonest since you basically have to ignore some critical things on one or the other side of the fence to make it work.
What usually happens is people cherry pick from whatever holy text they subscribe to. Which is a big difference between science and religion.
Science/scientists can admit when they're wrong (most of the time) and adapt and move on. Religion on the other hand..
Re:He wouldn't be now. (Score:5, Insightful)
There are religions where one of the central tenets is that the beliefs must adapt to advances in science.
eg. Bahá'í [wikipedia.org]
They really do it, too. It's not just lip service.
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Actually, only a literal interpretation of the Bible conflicts with science. If you read it as metaphor trying to give the gist of things to people who had not yet developed arithmetic, it works reasonably well.
Meanwhile, with no way to prove or disprove God, science really doesn't have anything to say about the subject. For that reason, it must not (and does not) admit God as an explanation of anything.
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Rational thought and empathy aren't a religion, they are essential qualities and to deny them is to deny your own humanity.
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Islam has five pillars: declaration of belief, daily prayers, alms, fasting and Mecca pilgrimage.
Liberalism also has five pillars: democracy, darwinism, global warming, gay marriage and right to elective abortion.
you are a theocrat and a totalitarian.
[...] There's also no such thing as Darwinism. There's science, and science has shown that Evolution is an observed fact
Thank you for posting this darwinist version of Shahadah, and for doing so in a manner that truly illustrates how actual theocrats and totalitarians behave.
I think you are missing 2 points:
First and foremost: there is no conflict between either pillars. Its not because you 'believe' (as you put it) in democracy and 'gay marriage' that you cannot do your prayer, adhere to the koran and do pelgrimage. There are millions of people who do just that. If fact in schools each of them have a separate subject and the appropriate time assigned to them. The only problem is that now religious believeres are going to dictate what should be taught in the other classes outsi
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Secondly (but very related): democracy is not a belief. It is how the society is operating now.
No it isn't. Western Society runs along the lines of an elective dictatorship, and has done for centuries. This system has almost nothing to do with the Greek system of democracy, other than in name. It's highly democratic compared to what we had in feudal times, where Kings annointed Barons and so forth, but the system we have now only gives "the people" en masse 2-3 bits of information input into the system p
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Here [wikipedia.org] you go, pal. You'll find free and fair elections as a central principle.
Re:If you don't like it.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but the reality is place like Chicago where dead people vote; or Nevada where Harry Reid buses in incoherent people from nursing homes to vote.
Or the deep South, where they go out of their way to prevent brown people from voting.
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So your "science" classes used Time magazine as a textbook? A Time reporter encountered the idea of Milencovitch Cycles, garbled some quotes from the few climatologists actually working then, and created that entire scenario out of whole cloth. Actual scientists never claimed that we were heading into another ice age, and I don't recall any actual textbooks making the claim either.
Or are you just making shit up again?
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First, what on earth are you on about?
Second, how about we draw a line between "education" (which I'll define as evidence-based teaching, and a good thing) and "indoctrination" (which I'll define as belief-based teaching; not automatically bad, unless it conflicts with evidence).
Third, evidence is evidence. You can ignore it if you like, but it won't go away. And you can make whatever tenuous speculative connections you wish to any bizarro conclusion of your choice, but do keep them out of reach of impressi
Re:If you don't like it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they should also teach them that 2+2=7 and that The Earth is flat. And feed them on nothing but kitkats.
Would you say that was OK, too?
Last time I checked we have child protection to take children away from clueless parents.
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Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Another thing I don't get, what does age have to do with the ability to make sensible decisions? It's also noteworthy that people in Angola mature 9 years faster than in Bahrain.
Re:If you don't like it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You think a six-year-old has the same decision making ability as an 20-year-old?
Is it a coincidence that most street gangs indoctrinate new members around the age of 13?
The "age of consent" thing is a bit arbitrary but it doeshave a basis in reality. Young children are far easier to indoctrinate/persuade than adults.
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No doubt about that 6 year old. But what would be a good age to make the transition from "not being able to decide anything" to "fully accountable for any and all actions and decisions someone makes"? What's makes that difference from 17 years, 364 days of age to 18 years of age so magical that it changes the rules completely 180 degrees?
When you compare countries all over the globe, the age that is deemed "old enough" ranges from 12 years to 21 years of age. That's quite a bit of a margin. And, just to ask
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No, you're the only one who thinks those numbers are based on some form of objective criteria rather than made up by men wearing silly hats based on cultural norms and personal convenience.
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Sometimes I wonder whether you really go out of your way to misunderstand my postings.
Re:If you don't like it.... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you're the only one who thinks those numbers are based on some form of objective criteria rather than made up by men wearing silly hats
I object. Some of those hats are quite nice.
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What's makes that difference from 17 years, 364 days of age to 18 years of age so magical that it changes the rules completely 180 degrees?
Nothing (duh!)
That's why I said "a bit arbitrary" above.
In some cultures a boy has to do something worthy for his people to consider him a man. Others have special rites of passage that a boy has to complete (hunt/kill a wildebeest). Street gangs have their initiation ceremonies (kill a member of another gang). etc.
In our society we chose "number of days since they popped out of their mother". Not the best way? I agree. Don't like it? Go and join one of those others.
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Better hurry up with the indoctrination then, before they reach that age.
My life already! Business is business... (Score:2)
Are we the debtor or the creditor here?
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You were just angry. You don't really want to take kids away from their parents just because (1) the parents are Jewish, (2) the parents send their kids to a religious school, and (3) the school takes a position in favor of creation over evolution. Right?
Let's look at what the school is really trying to do:
They reasoned that it would have been fairly easy for the test to make allowances fore the religious views of millions of people. Just reword a question like this: "Question 38: According to the Theory of
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I've just read a post by someone who thinks that evolution and the origin of the universe are the same thing. Obviously that totally invalidates all of the Hebrew faith, since he's an idiot and he's defending the Torah.
Re:If you don't like it.... (Score:4, Insightful)
You cannot be free if you don't have the knowledge to take informed decissions
An adult person may have the freedom to decide whether to learn or not ... but when we talk about kids, the society should warrant they have the opportunity to learn above the wishes of their tutors
Re:If you don't like it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the reason that education is *mandatory* in civilized countries - to take some part of the decision-making process away from uninformed parents.
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... and puts it into the hands of politicians voted into office by uninformed parents.
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People can (and do!) protest the anti-evolution movements in schools. Often successfully.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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There's nothing wrong with a religious school as long as they don't withhold knowledge, which unfortunately is what is happening in this case. A religious school that teaches evolution in their science lessons and creationism in their religious studies gets my blessing even though I'm a die-hard atheist.
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What if the children are homosexuals and their parents believe that all homosexuals should be stoned to death?
Who should we think of, the children or the parents? Who is the future?
Is it acceptable for a third party to tell the kids that homosexuality is part of being human and that their parents are religious bigots?
so...... (Score:2, Insightful)
Wait, so the school decides what questions they want on their exam, and people are complaining?
All the students are sitting exactly the same are they not?
"The examinations body, OCR, says it was satisfied that the girls did not have an unfair advantage. It now plans to allow the practice, saying it has come to an agreement with the school to protect the future integrity of the exams."
"The Department of Education meanwhile has asked for assurances that the children will be taught the full curriculum."
If they
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Most schools I've gone to have not had everything from the curriculum on the exam. One of the first questions when a new topic is introduced is this: "will this be on the midterm/review/exam?", and if the answer is "no" the students promptly doze of. Not having it on the exam (guaranteed) is the same as not having it in the curriculum at all.
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These are not school exams, these are external exams that the school administers.
All the students are sitting exactly the same are they not?
No. Subjugated girls being kept in ignorance by religious fuckwits are sitting an exam with fewer questions than well educated students at other schools.
Otherwise it's the same exam, but the girls at that particular school will fail to get the top marks, because they automatically score 0 for the questions that were removed from their papers.
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Give it a year or two; they'll be asking that those questions aren't counted (in the denominator, I mean).
UK != US (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, so the school decides what questions they want on their exam, and people are complaining?
Yes because in the UK the exams are not written by the schools but written by a central exam board so that the standard is consistent across the country. The same happens here in Alberta, Canada. By redacting the questions the school is preventing the students from being able to get any marks for those questions. I the exam board produced a paper where sufficient questions were "objectionable" then every pupil at that school would automatically fail the exam.
While the exam board might be ok with it because it offers zero advantage to the students the school inspectors ought to be all over this since it is grossly unfair to the students and may prevent them getting into university. We already have laws which limit religious freedom when it comes to refusing medical treatment for children because it harms them and frankly we should have similar ones when it comes to science education for exactly the same reason.
Cult (Score:5, Informative)
That's not mainstream Judaism. That's a Haredi [wikipedia.org] institution. They're not just anti-evolution. They're anti-TV, anti-Internet, anti-movies, anti-newspaper reading, anti birth control, anti public library usage, anti knowing the language of the country they're in, anti wearing colors, anti female equality... The sect is set up to give kids no option other than to stay in the Haredi community and overdose on religion for their entire lives.
It's a lot like Shia Islam, down to the beards. There's even a Haredi group in Canada that wants to move to Iran because Canada won't let them abuse their kids. [forward.com]
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So basically, the Jewish Amish.
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You will be suprised. Highly educated women from 'normal' societies, with careers, life plans, knowledge about birth control etc will have a lot less children than these poor girls kept in the dark. Evolution is about penalizing speciments which produce less offspring. Keeping women uneducated, 'happy' to bear 10 children is the tactic to win evolution game.
So, in 3 generation, it might turn out that 'society' which you are talking about will be 5% of population, rest being dumb-things-down-forbid-birth-con
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So it's not an evolution game of us vs. them, it's a game of
Re:Cult (Score:4, Insightful)
See, the thing is that 500 years ago our ancestors invented FTL travel. Several solar systems were colonized, most with far better planets than Earth. Eventually, Earth was solely inhabited by the Luddites who feared FTL, and therefore they completely erased it from the history books.
Now you want to visit another solar system, but you are told it is physically impossible. There is no way to do it, the means of travel do not exist.
That is pretty much what it's like for the children in these kinds of sects to attempt to get a good education. The very knowledge that good educations exist are essentially kept from them.
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And given that democracy means that which group has more heads is right...
Religion has thought of that (Score:3)
In most religions its a womans "duty" to have as many kids as possible regardless of the effects upon her health. "Go forth and multiply" was one of the biggest pieces of social propaganda ever divised.
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I would say - in most _successful_ religions. My point was that this is evolution in action - ones which are saying otherwise are not passing their memes to further generations. Skoptsy comes to mind, even if their downfall was hastened by politics.
Feminism/women rights is probably first that widespread mindset which has negative birth rate correlation. I would risk saying that it will go extinct in few hundred years, unless technology will step in - with children being genespliced, grown in artificial womb
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Its been tried - it doesn't work very well. eg in orphanages and certain 60s cults. Children want their own parents, they don't want to share some unrelated strangers with 50 other kids. Human nature tends to get in the way of most of these types of hippy social experiments working.
I have no clue what's going on here (Score:2)
...beyond the fact that someone wants to deny evolution.
What answers are being changed, on what test?
Why bother to give the test at all if you don't like the material on it? Is it a government-required test? For what purpose? Is the government really OK with these arbitrary changes by the school?
The summary is pretty horrible, in terms of journalism, and the original article not much better.
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If there was some way to weed out 'bad teachers' you could hope that the Biology teachers at such a school would continually be identified by Ofsted (UK schools watchdog) and warned, offered re-train
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Yes, it's a government-required standardised test. Administered by the exam board OCR. I'm guessing OCRs agreement is something along the lines of OCR turning a blind eye and the school not starting legal action that could run for years and embarrass everyone involved.
5 months late (Score:3)
http://www.secularism.org.uk/n... [secularism.org.uk]
Religion and evolution (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it amusing that through the decades and centuries some fundamentalists, religious groups etc simply do everything they can no to not change.
Resisting change in new and interesting ways. They come up with new counter arguments, new legislation proposals, new interpretations of the same old texts.
That very same behaviour is evolutionary in nature. We need no other explanation to demonstrate that evolution as a fact is quite well grounded in fact.Sure there are gaps in our ability to explain everything but every time we have stepped forward and discovered something, solved what was thought to be impossible etc the arguments against evolution then evolved with the discovery. Much like the "Irreducibly complex" malarkey.
So some sect/faction/aspect/cult of Judaism or some other belief want X removed or have removed it from their school. Good. Evolution at work, they are one step closer to removing themselves from the gene pool. While some religious groups may have 11 - 15 kids per family religion overall is in decline.
We can argue these points on slashdot, religious people can counter argue and millions will read and judge for themselves -all very evolved.
I'm fine with this (Score:5, Insightful)
And seriously what the fuck up with the UK and this stupid policy? They could learn a thing or two from the French on this - education should be secular. There should be no religious dress, no segregation by sexes, no exemptions from subjects on religious grounds, no indoctrination into religion and no pandering to the sensibilities of religion in any way shape or form. In the long term this will mean far less religious whackaloons which can only be a good thing.
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I don't think this school really cares about the league table. People who want to send their children there do not do so because of the tables.
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There should... no segregation by sexes,
We do segregation by the sexes just fine in non religous schools, thankyouverymuch. Really: England has many single sex schools.
Other than that yeah. I hate the pandering where some people get special rights because they profess to believe that they need them.
Infinite. (Score:3)
As long as all their examination pupils forfeit the marks from those questions, and if the school's reputation suffers as it slips down the league table, and if the government withdraws all public funding from the school for failing to follow the national curriculum.
The school is supported by a small religious community that is comfortable in its separation from the modern world ---
or more precisely, the modern world as the geek chooses to define it.
I am profoundly wary of using the power of the state bring everyone around to a uniform secularist world-view. In perfect confidence that world-view will be the same as your own world-view.
It has been tried before, after all.
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Save the mythology for church (Score:3, Funny)
School children should be taught *facts*.
If it's a religious owned/operated school, save the mythology for the theology class. Be fair, make it a honest comparative religions class, so they can see how their stories compare with the rest.
For public schools, leave the mythology out entirely, except in the historical context.
Teaching kids the mythology encourages them to grow up to be adults that believe the mythology. They fail to grow up and learn in the real world there is a cause and effect relationship.
The last thing I need is someone coming into my office asking for help, and then praying to their deity to solve it. When I fix their problem, they'll thank their deity, who didn't have a thing to do with it.
I swear, if one more person prays for a fix, I'm going to stop working. Let the deity of their choice fix it, and I'll go helping other people.
Ya buddy, your deity works in mysterious ways, that's why you still can't log into your email, and your application server is still down. Keep praying, maybe it will miraculously recover. Ha.
Ahhhh fuck. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's spreading, Id rather hoped this kind of shit was going to stay on the other side of the pond :(
Not all Jews like this (Score:5, Informative)
The school is anti-Jewish teaching (Score:4, Informative)
Jewish teaching is all about asking questions. The entire religion is asking questions and challenging the answers. What this school is doing is wrong.
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Because DNA is a digital storage medium and genes change in steps.
There's no in-between states when you start modifying DNA just as there's nothing in between 1 and 0 in binary numbers.
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Different species can often interbreed:
Horses/donkeys
Lions/Tigers
etc.
The offspring aren't always sterile, either. Mules are usually sterile but ligers can often be fertile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Bengal cats are an artificially created crossbreed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The original ("rather stupid") answer assumed the parent was simply a troll who was trying a variant of the creationist's "Irreducible complexity" argument.
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The question: what makes evolution split the species into these two clearly distinctive species, instead of, say a hundred different species which are something between RockMonster ant and BigAss RockMonster ant?
Who says it doesn't split the ant into 100 different species? The term species is a human invention to help us classify the different forms of life on the planet. It doesn't define the forms of life on the planet, but instead is defined by the forms of life on the planet. This is a subtle but necessary distinction.
Re:How does evolution work like this? (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, nature is a total bitch, and a lot of species go extinct for various reasons, including competition from their related species. Of the many species alive now, some have no closely related species that we know of, and others have tons of them.
Now if you're upset about not knowing about the intermediate ones, you're worried over nothing. The fossil record has shown a clear progression of those in many different animals, so it's not like it's some big mystery as the creationists claim, rather it's their ignorance of evolutionary and paleontological studies. In fast replication species, we have a lot more experience with this, and samples of the intermediate forms are stored. Mostly this is bacterial for the simple reason that those suckers multiply faster than Bugs Bunny locked in a room full of viagra with Jessica Rabbit. There are of course other studies with non microbial life, but those have far fewer generations to work with and so aren't as advanced.
Evolution has been observed, tracked, and even experimented with. It's existence is not in doubt among biologists, though they are constantly refining and testing it.
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...Not sure who you're replying too....
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Nothing at all.
First, let's just cover the fact that it wouldn't quite work this way in the real world. You don't tend to have species A living at the same time as species B which evolved from it. What you usually get is the common ancestor, species A, which is by now extinct, and it's two descendant species, B and C. You occasionally get people scoffing that we couldn't have evolved from chimps; well, we didn't.
So, why do we only have LittleAss ants and BigAss ants, and no NiceAss ants? Well, in this simpl
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You need to learn more, because it does indeed split the species(es) into hundreds (or more) of different "species" over time - however, we do not generally refer to such as species because they are very tiny changes, many of which will breed back out of the population. However, some mutations tends to accumulate because they provide an advantage (or possibly disadvantage, but there is a second mutation that provides a bigger advantage and so both are perpetuated - this is possible to see in some species to
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There are lots of whats that speciation could occur -- one obvious one is that the population gets split into two which then evolves away from each other. If you had 100 different high related species then they would likely compete with each other or interbred. The end result of either is that you end up with fewer populations -- one wipes out the other, or the two interbred till they become one.
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Isolation. Geographic, mate choice, breeding season. Lots of factors can cause two nearly-identical populations to stop interbreeding, and divergence follows from there. That's simplified, of course. Species is something of an artificial concept - there are things like ring species that show just how hard it can be to classify.
Re:How does evolution work like this? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Nah, it's a classic strawman question used by creationists.
This one is a variant of "irreducible complexity": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Whats the point? (Score:5, Informative)
Don't they know wikipedia exists?
Maybe not - quoting said wikipedia:
The school primarily serves the Charedi Jewish community of Stamford Hill. The Charedi community do not have access to television, the internet or other media, and members of the community aim to lead modest lives governed by the codes of Torah observance.
Re:Whats the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Whats the point? (Score:5, Funny)
Don't they know wikipedia exists?
Do you know that conservapedia exists?
http://www.conservapedia.com/ [conservapedia.com]
Which one is correct? Teach the controversy!
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Is that still around? I remember reading a few articles there a couple years ago. Hilarious and depressing at the same time.
Re:Act of God? (Score:4, Interesting)
At the core of evolution is survival of the fittest. The theory of evolution also implies that "man", as in created by God in his own image, is nothing special, only a series of fortunate mutations, migrations and accidents. The Christian Bible basically starts out with a huge lie.
What is really perplexing is the fact that the Catholic Pope has conceded that man is descended from the apes, and there really isn't anywhere else in the first world where this "creationism vs evolution" is even a thing (to my knowledge at least).
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Because to the fundamentalist, it's an all-or-nothing thing. If you accept evolution, you have to throw out the story in Genesis - but if you do that, how can you be sure the rest happened? How can you be sure the story is right about the flood, or the slavery of the hebrews in egypt, or the exodus event, or the settlement of Israel, or all the prophets that followed? If you accept that one part of the holy text is a lie, then you open the whole thing up to doubt.
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Because science is about doubting, learning and knowing, religion is about faith and believe. They're mutually exclusive.
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They are against evolution, and in general science, because science is all at odds with one of the most important fundamental "virtue" of Christian: faith.
This post isn't about Christianity, as can be inferred from the title.
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Exactly, I know in The Netherlands you're in big trouble as a school if you even *open* the packaged exams before they are going to be distributed to the pupils.
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Not entirely true w/r Dutch exams.
http://www.examenblad.nl/exame... [examenblad.nl], page 13-14 for those who can read Dutch.
We did have a period in time where it was indeed entirely removed from exams and even in the above 2014 biology syllabus it uses weasel words to describe what a student needs to know about evolution for exams.
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p.s. "period of time" where evolution was not on exams is roughly somewhere between mid 1990's and mid 2000's. It was in the news around 1995/1996 and I could find practice-exams with evolution in them starting 2004.
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In England this may be incidental, but in the Netherlands, it is institutional. Questions about evolution are up to this day not allowed in Dutch highschool exams, as ruled by law.
This is where a link is welcome
Re:Why is this exciting? (Score:4, Informative)
Why don't you try to misunderstand the scientific definition of the word "theory" some more?
A theory is the most accepted, most rigorous, best description of facts that we have that fits in with all evidential proof. It is *proven*. Like "Pythagoras' theory" (which is what we call it, and has been proven beyond doubt countless millions of times).
What you're implying is that evolution is a "hypothesis". A hypothesis is, quite literally, our "best guess" at what the truth is. It's not proven.
If you were taught evolution was a theory, you were taught correctly. Maybe you should have a word with your English and science teachers, though, to establish which definition of "theory" was referred to in a science lesson.
We don't have "laws" by the way. It''s an old-fashioned way of saying theory (in the scientific sense), e.g. Newton's Third Law of Motion, or the Law of Conservation of Energy. Both of which, by the way, are proven theories (subject to the terms of Newtonian descriptions of motion which do not act on the quantum scale, but still - they are proven theories at the levels that they apply to).
And neither are "facts". Facts are indisputable items of information. They do not, in themselves, form an explanation. The explanation of the facts can be a hypothesis or theory, but a fact is just a datum.
Nobody gives a shit what you teach, so long as it's what is required by law. Unfortunately, the Department of Education take a dim view of failing to teach an area of the National Curriculum. If you don't want to teach it, don't run a school. Run a religious group. Or an after-school club. Or a church. Not a school.
Re:Well it IS the BBC (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course they're going to ignore the 500 madrassas in England which do precisely the same thing and seek out the only Jewish school they could find than shriek and moan and predict the Evil Jew Menace (tm, BBC) is going to destroy all of civilization. This is what they do every day.
In the mean time the Muslims teach their kids much worse things than creationism. Like children as young as 11 learning that Hindus have ‘no intellect’ and that they ‘drink cow piss [dailymail.co.uk], and hatred of Jews and Christians.
But of course it's the one Jewish school that they pick on.
Re: (Score:3)
The Telegraph has a nice one right now about the madrassas discriminating by gender in hiring teachers [telegraph.co.uk]. The BBC, however, has had a history [patheos.com] of being soft [patheos.com] on Islam.
Re: (Score:3)
No, it isn't.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-e... [bbc.co.uk]
However, one Jewish reference gets the propaganda industry into full swing.
Re: (Score:3)
Those are after school institutions, not instead of school institutions, you Daily Mail reader.