What happened to our freedoms? Does anybody even remember a document something like the Consitution? Or what about the bill of rights?

Everybody needs to worry about their own damn family! Teach all aspects and allow for the choice. Don't spoonfeed pre-chewed tastless food as to brainwash future generations into the prior reign of thought.

We only hinder by limiting exploration. None of us will know for sure until it is too late anyway. Live your life how you choose. I'd rather live as if there was a God and die to find out there isn't, than to live as if there wasn't and find out there is.

That however does not give me or anybody the right to change the course of live for another mans children.

My 2 cents

It's funny. The conservatives love to criticize the public school system and lately they have been focusing on the fact that our science education needs to build up speed again. Yet, they also want trained professionals to teach that Jesus rode a dinosaur and completely ignore the rigorous scientific basis for evolution. Worse, they want to teach "Intelligent Design" as a valid critique of evolutionary theory -- which it isn't. It's a religious objection masquerading as science.

Perhaps some of the more rational people in Kansas (and yes, there are many) have finally figured out the stupidity of the situation.

My 3 cents is the opposite, I'd rather life my life as if there were no eternity and beyond, since I have nothing to look forward to but nothingness after the end result of this cosmic joke we call human consciousness.

And if I am wrong??
Eh.
I live my life without regret, why should "the afterlife" be any different?

Do you think we should teach both the Geocentric and Heliocentric models and allow the students to choose which to believe in? Instead of spoonfeeding and brainwashing children into thinking the earth is round, should we presnt the flat earth theory as an equally valid argument? How is that any more absurd than teaching Creationism in schools?

Pascal's Wager is a pretty weak reason to believe in God.

Evolution is just as much a Faith as Creation. Or have they finally found that "Missing Link"? As for the prior schoolboard, putting the Evolution/Creation debate aside, they probably did more to advance education in Kansas then several boards before them. This is the Bible Belt. Always has been and always will be.

No, evolution is not "faith". It is based on years and years of field work and observation. It is fully based on scientific method. Darwin's version of evolution has been radically changed, and if a scientist somewhere comes up with a better way to explain things than current evolutionary theory, it will change. By contrast, "creationism" locks its explanation down to a book that was written thousands of years ago, and accepts no alternatives.

This is why I'm glad to see "intelligent design" getting creamed. It fucks up people's understanding of science entirely. The way the term "theory" gets abused in these debates is particularly galling. A "theory" does not mean "a story that we like for now" in the scientific sense.

Oh, and I grew up in the "Bible Belt" too. That's not an excuse for shitty education.

Let's here it for willful, malignant stupidity. I mean, fuck, why don't we teach "Flat Earth" ideas in the schools too. What is with this slavish adherence to the whole round thing.

You are indeed lost, my friend.

The issue is not what parents teach their children, which is now and always has been, an unregulated domain.

The issue is what schools teach as science. Creationism (even dressed up in the emporer's new clothes of ID) does not pass muster as science. It is an idea, and as an idea has as much validity as any other idea, but the place for the discussion of ideas is in a philosophy class. Science is a discipline that in which ideas must be tested, questioned, based on replicable evidence and have at least some passing relationship with the emprical world (after which - and only after which, they get to be called theories).

So, teach your children whatever the fuck you want, just leave the teaching of science to science teachers.

NikkiIs, I think you've just been pwned. And I'm not sure that science will ever find a "missing link". What have they found is that, genetically speaking, we're all very similar. All modern humans are descended from a single group of early humans, likely the only survivors of a large-scale natural catastrophe to hit the Earth some 100K years ago.

Kansas progressives are delighted that the primary election had raised the prospect of a return to a science-oriented State Board of Education. We are also proud of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, her defense of women's rights and her opposition to the conservative agenda. She should be the first female President!

JosephB
jbdetrixhe@nckdirect.com

There's no such thing as a scientific theory that is beyond dispute. It's just that the dispute must come in the form of more science.

I think you managed to put this better then anyone else. Certainly better then I would have been able to.

At one point Kansas had the best public education in the country. I'm glad to hear that someone is trying to reclaim that.

I don't even want to think about running into newly graduated humans in my career in the future, who were taught that sort of thing as fact. By then it would be so ingrained it would be nearly impossible to disillusion them.

Well they can beleive what they want. Since I didn't state that creation is right either, maybe they should go back to school to learn about reading comprehension. But the entire THEORY behind one day we where Homo Eructus and then the next, Homo Sapien is as completely absurd as creation. For that matter lets go with the "A spaceship full of Telephone Sanitizers and Hair Dressers crashed and BOOM. Here we are" route. So yes folks, call me stupid, call me ignorant, but remember. 100 years ago science said it would never be possible to walk on the moon. Boy science sure was wrong.