Texas Board Of Education Unanimously Rejects Creationist Textbooks, page 4
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reply posted on 26-7-2011 @ 09:28 PM by goldentorch
reply to post by insanedr4gon


I would still question whether any belief system encourages the open mindedness that you claim but have agreed in another post on on this thread over the main thrust of your argument. It's about getting the balance always the difficult thing.
If we have a class of mixed belief systems in one class how do we turn the subjectivity of each one of those systems into an objective view of all systems. As you say we can't just ignore the creation myths as for thousands of years that was education and law for an overwhelming majority of the, now, developed World's cultures.
It was they way the learned to read, write and their explanation for all the natural sciences. In anthropological terms these things do not just disappear overnight.
So the problem for the comparative classes is to reach that objectivity and the only way they may be able to do that is to dissemble all creation myths. Now that would cause controversy. It would also then make them a science class which I don't feel is the thinking of the proponents of comparative religious studies.
So a bit of a cleft stick.
edit on 26/7/11 by goldentorch because: (no reason given)



reply posted on 27-7-2011 @ 03:41 AM by Maslo
reply to post by Bob Sholtz



With respect to O. gigas, today there are well over a hundred recognised species of Oenothera, but Oenothera gigas is not one of them.


Really?
www.ars-grin.gov...

Species number 88:
www.ars-grin.gov...


almost all of the plants on the first page you gave are hybrid breedings that result in infertile offspring, like breeding a lion and a tiger. the resultant offspring are infertile. it isn't a new species.


The Russian cytologist Karpchenko (1927, 1928) crossed the radish, Raphanus sativus, with the cabbage, Brassica oleracea. Despite the fact that the plants were in different genera, he got a sterile hybrid. Some unreduced gametes were formed in the hybrids. This allowed for the production of seed. Plants grown from the seeds were interfertile with each other. They were not interfertile with either parental species. Unfortunately the new plant (genus Raphanobrassica) had the foliage of a radish and the root of a cabbage.



speciation has never been seen.


Dobzhansky and Pavlovsky (1971) reported a speciation event that occurred in a laboratory culture of Drosophila paulistorum sometime between 1958 and 1963. The culture was descended from a single inseminated female that was captured in the Llanos of Colombia. In 1958 this strain produced fertile hybrids when crossed with conspecifics of different strains from Orinocan. From 1963 onward crosses with Orinocan strains produced only sterile males. Initially no assortative mating or behavioral isolation was seen between the Llanos strain and the Orinocan strains. Later on Dobzhansky produced assortative mating (Dobzhansky 1972).



In a series of papers (Rice 1985, Rice and Salt 1988 and Rice and Salt 1990) Rice and Salt presented experimental evidence for the possibility of sympatric speciation. They started from the premise that whenever organisms sort themselves into the environment first and then mate locally, individuals with the same habitat preferences will necessarily mate assortatively. They established a stock population of D. melanogaster with flies collected in an orchard near Davis, California. Pupae from the culture were placed into a habitat maze. Newly emerged flies had to negotiate the maze to find food. The maze simulated several environmental gradients simultaneously. The flies had to make three choices of which way to go. The first was between light and dark (phototaxis). The second was between up and down (geotaxis). The last was between the scent of acetaldehyde and the scent of ethanol (chemotaxis). This divided the flies among eight habitats. The flies were further divided by the time of day of emergence. In total the flies were divided among 24 spatio-temporal habitats.

They next cultured two strains of flies that had chosen opposite habitats. One strain emerged early, flew upward and was attracted to dark and acetaldehyde. The other emerged late, flew downward and was attracted to light and ethanol. Pupae from these two strains were placed together in the maze. They were allowed to mate at the food site and were collected. Eye color differences between the strains allowed Rice and Salt to distinguish between the two strains. A selective penalty was imposed on flies that switched habitats. Females that switched habitats were destroyed. None of their gametes passed into the next generation. Males that switched habitats received no penalty. After 25 generations of this mating tests showed reproductive isolation between the two strains. Habitat specialization was also produced.



5.7 Speciation in a Lab Rat Worm, Nereis acuminata

In 1964 five or six individuals of the polychaete worm, Nereis acuminata, were collected in Long Beach Harbor, California. These were allowed to grow into a population of thousands of individuals. Four pairs from this population were transferred to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. For over 20 years these worms were used as test organisms in environmental toxicology. From 1986 to 1991 the Long Beach area was searched for populations of the worm. Two populations, P1 and P2, were found. Weinberg, et al. (1992) performed tests on these two populations and the Woods Hole population (WH) for both postmating and premating isolation. To test for postmating isolation, they looked at whether broods from crosses were successfully reared. The results below give the percentage of successful rearings for each group of crosses.WH × WH - 75%
P1 × P1 - 95%
P2 × P2 - 80%
P1 × P2 - 77%
WH × P1 - 0%
WH × P2 - 0%


They also found statistically significant premating isolation between the WH population and the field populations. Finally, the Woods Hole population showed slightly different karyotypes from the field populations.


Another beautiful speciation example are various Ring Species.


evolution is dependent on alot of beneficial mutations. the rarity of mutations directly effects the validity of evolution.


For any given ratio of harmful to beneficial mutations, there exists some non-zero overall rate of mutation which results in the long-term accumulation of beneficial mutations. Exactly how many mutations are beneficial is of interest, but as long as there are at least some beneficial mutations, and as long as the overall mutation rate is low enough to prevent harmful mutations from accumulating faster than natural selection can remove them, evolution in a positive direction will occur.

www.talkorigins.org...
www.talkorigins.org...

Of course we must keep in mind that, except for a few clear cases, most mutations are not "harmful" or "beneficial" on their own, it depends on the environment. Mutation is simply change which increases variation in a population.



reply posted on 27-7-2011 @ 11:36 AM by insanedr4gon
reply to post by goldentorch


I may be a little confused about what you think that I said, do you think that I am suggesting to mix two completely different belief systems into one class? What I mean is that, since there are a few pieces of evidence that support both sides, they both should be taught in schools, in separate rooms, by different teachers, and at a different time, and the children be given the choice as to which class they are to attend, not to shove all of them into the same room and one side teaches science, and the other religious studies. As you said, getting the balance is always the difficult thing, and in my eyes this is a rather good balance rather than forcing evolution onto them because eventually that too would cause controversy and, most likely in order to make everyone quiet down, implement this method in schools.


reply posted on 28-7-2011 @ 05:24 AM by goldentorch
Originally posted by insanedr4gon
reply to post by goldentorch


I may be a little confused about what you think that I said, do you think that I am suggesting to mix two completely different belief systems into one class? What I mean is that, since there are a few pieces of evidence that support both sides, they both should be taught in schools, in separate rooms, by different teachers, and at a different time, and the children be given the choice as to which class they are to attend, not to shove all of them into the same room and one side teaches science, and the other religious studies. As you said, getting the balance is always the difficult thing, and in my eyes this is a rather good balance rather than forcing evolution onto them because eventually that too would cause controversy and, most likely in order to make everyone quiet down, implement this method in schools.


Sorry if I mixed you up. No I didn't mean mixing up science and religion I was coming at the problem from a comparative studies angle and presuming one would have to include many creation myths and belief systems in such a class. For surely just teaching one view would impinge on State Church seperation. So although the science v creation debate should be kept seperate religion taught as comparative classes should surely include other religious views.
Here in the UK as far as I know and I'm not totally up to date as to official policy, they began to teach religion as comparative. With a large dispersed immigrant population this I feel was unavoidable. There are however a large number of faith schools that do teach creationism. The state system outside of faith schools, and yes faith schools unfortunately recieve state funding, were largely seen as secular and did tend to use the state mandated religious education block within the national curriculum for comparative or a more humanities based teaching mode. We are now going backward with the Free Schools legislation where special interests will be able to recieve state funding to lean their institution towards those special interests. It is in the name of multi-culturism. In reality this tends to happen.

In 2001 there were 7000 state faith schools in England (of 25000). The worst teach creationism/intelligent design and some, although they excel at religious education and Koranic studies, fail on everything else from science to fitness. Faith schools on the whole take in far fewer poor pupils and fewer of those with special education needs than do non-religious all-inclusive schools. Conversely, faith schools tend to select better-educated and more well-off pupils. Reports on the race riots of 2001 criticized faith schools for creating the segregation that increases racial and religious sectarian tensions. Over 800 studies by social psychologists have found that cooperating and extended contact between racial groups is a very good way of producing positive race relations. Faith schools sometimes produce better-than-average results, but they also select students based on ability (despite attempts to stop them), whereas state schools accept poorer students in the first place. The Home Office, National Union of Teachers, Chief Schools Inspector, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers have all spoken out against faith schools. The United Nations Human Rights Commission and the European Union's Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia both recommend non-sectarian education, especially of children, as a means to reduce intolerance. The National Secular Society has long campaigned for the government to reverse the creation of faith schools (100 new ones since 1997), and instead convert faith schools back into all-inclusive secular schools where religion and race do not define the children. Abolishing faith schools will decrease social tension between ethnic and religious groups, increase the fairness of the schools system (as religious schools accept fewer poor and disadvantaged students), and reduce the scope for religious extremism and indoctrination.” "Faith Schools, Sectarian Education and Segregation: Divisive Religious Behavior" by Vexen Crabtree (2010)


Hope that's cleared the muddle up. What I've quoted is part of my reasoning in that if you teach any form of creation myth then it should be done in a comparative way so's not to exacerbate intolerance.


reply posted on 28-7-2011 @ 09:50 AM by insanedr4gon
reply to post by goldentorch


You actually just completely summarized what I was trying to get across. I'm sorry for the confusion, I left out having all creation and intelligent design beliefs in (muslim, hindu, christianity, etc.) because I thought that it would be implied. A class like the one described should be comparative not only to avoid the creation of more faith schools, but there also just wouldn't be enough to teach for more than a couple of days of classes. While people of beliefs different than the ones being taught would still take a lot of it with a grain of salt, at least at some point, their own beliefs would show up and they wouldn't feel as if someone else's beliefs are trying to be shoved down their throats.
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