But the stars we could reach were just starfish on the beach
Kansas Board of Education
1 785 296-3201
FAX: 1 785 296-7933
120 SE 10th Avenue
Topeka KS 66612-1182
My dearest Kansas Board of Education,
Oh sweetheart, we've known one another too long for deceipt. We've grown apart. It's sad, and I hoped it wouldn't come to this, but it has and must. While we are both to blame in part, I feel you've changed. At first, I remember thinking you were constant - a little flat, but constant, and I liked that about you. You were always there when I needed you. I thought that would always be true.
Now you've decided to dabble in superstition and hokus pokus. Oh my old friend, how I hoped you would come back to me and our sensible life! You've broken my heart! I can never trust you again. I can't trust the children you pretend to educate. For their sakes, I hope they're not interested in science because they'll be laughed out of any serious polytechnic institute in the world for reciting that drivel - not even the Vatican believes it should be taught in science class. You think this doesn't matter, but it does. America is falling behind industrialized nations in educating its workforce. Don't you remember reading about that car company that resorted to drawing pictures for its employees and still couldn't train them to assemble automobiles? That company built its new factory in Canada, where people can read. Jobs were lost, local economies were further weakened in an already weak area. How can I love you when I can't respect you? Plainly you love you more than you care about the children in your charge because you'll be fine, but those kids will graduate fit to pick up trash for a living. Well, except for that pesky gravity thing you attribute to "evil spirits."
I don't like children all that much, dear Kansas Board of Education, but what you're doing sounds like child abuse. And while many children could use an abrupt spanking, you're undermining their whole lives and the future of the State of Kansas. That's not even the worst thing you've done.
No, what I can't abide is your insufferable arrogance. CNN caught you playing fast and loose with the English language, and the very idea of proof: "In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena." You know words are the jewels of my heart. If I had caught you in a busy three-way Dirty Sanchez with Kevin and Britney I couldn't despise you more. I mean, unless I later found that icky tableau captioned on Fark.
Do you know Fark? You're very popular with the satirists.
I'll never forget you - or to avoid your kids practicing that dumb voodoo. Whatever: I live in New Jersey.
Always,
Princess Tata
posted by Tata at 8:33 PM
4 Comments:
Tata,
The issue is not whether intelligent design or evolution is correct. The issue is definetly not whether the biblical view of creation is being taught in schools. The issue is fairness and balance in how we educate. If evolution is a theory, with both evidence for and against it, and intelligent design is also a theory with both evidence for and against it, how can they not be given equal consideration in teaching? The bias that exists today is that evolution is taught as fact, without any mention of an alternative solution. What would be sad for our education system, in my opinion, would be to continue teaching only ONE of two major theories, and to continue to present that theory as sientific fact when it remains debatable.
Dear Anoymous, you don't know what science is and you don't understand the meaning of the term "theory" as it applies to science. That I blame on your education. I don't mean this to be nasty or insulting, but brutally blunt. Your attempt to explain the issue demonstrates that you don't actually understand the issue. Not all theories are equal, and calling something a theory doesn't make it a theory in scientific terms. The issue is what is taught in a science class, and ID does not rise to the standard of science.
Parading ignorance as "fairness and balance" and therefore equal to scientific theory as the basis for scientific study is rubbish. This is exactly why the arguments for ID are dismissed with so much contempt by people who actually understand something of the science. If you want to teach ID in a comparative religion class then it would be appropriate, along with other religious theories of creation, but stop trying to pretend that something that is not scientific should be taught as science for the sake of "fairness and balance".
And why is science so important and why does it need to be preserved without introducing religious "theories" as science? Because of that computer you're using to read this, bub. It wasn't built because X angels can dance on the heads of Y pins.
And Tata, in this case, it wasn't you, it was them. (For those who like to break up with "it's not you, it's me".)
anonymous,
To assert that I don't understand what I'm talking about is - I'll be generous - bullshit. My stepfather is a Baptist and a high school biology teacher, and the first person to drive home the point for me: be really, really careful about the differences between innuendo, theory and fact. Religion is neither fact nor theory.
I'm sure about the sources of my information. I'm also sure about the sources of *your* information.
anonymous, I don't want your crackpot pseudo-science near a public school system. There is nothing to debate. There is no controversy. You are simply wrong.
If you decide to pursue this line of reasoning, take it somewhere people will indulge your pointless fantasies that have everything to do with some bullying cult and nothing at all to do with science.
I had to come back to this. I see "anonymous" has taken a powder. Anonymous was wrong about even more. You see, the evidence for ID is nothing more than conjecture with no actual physical evidence. It is a word game. Again, since it is not science, there is no empirical data to support it and nothing about it is testable. How do you test a word game? Not only that, the logic it uses, which is all it has, is a complete failure. The notion that "it looks organized so therefore something had to organize it" is simply an example of weak reasoning. Also, the suggestion that because there are two "theories" (ID does not rise to the scientific definition for a theory) and one has evidence for and against it and the other has evidence for and against it does not in any way mean that the two "theories" are equal. If you have one weakass "theory" with no more evidence than a word game and another that is backed by a hundred and fifty years of observable phenomena, experimentation, dedicated study, the overwhelming majority of the scientific community, and NO CREDIBLE EVIDENCE AGAINST IT (it is fact, you see, and only a misunderstanding of the meaning of the word "theory" allows people to think it isn't), then the two "theories" are not equal.
Now where did Anonymous go? Run off with fingers in both ears yelling, "NANANANANANA I CAN'T HEAR YOU"?
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