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Darwin Day is a celebration of Charles Darwin's birthday, the theory of evolution and science in general. This year marks his 210th birthday and 160 years since the publication of The Origin of Species. Those looking to celebrate or learn more about Darwin and evolution will find a wealth of events going on, or if you'd rather not leave the house, try a Darwin Day card with designs generated by simulated evolution.
Recently, an important finding in man's evolution was announced; the so-called Missing Link was confirmed. Australopithecus Sediba fossils were found in 2010 but it took a decade of research and debate for scientists to confirm that this was indeed the missing link that connects man's evolution in an unbroken chain back to primate ancestors.
Not everyone is down with Darwin. The Pew Research Center reports, "In spite of the fact that evolutionary theory is accepted by all but a small number of scientists, it continues to be rejected by many Americans. In fact, about one-in-five U.S. adults reject the basic idea that life on Earth has evolved at all." In Indiana, senator Dennis Kruse introduced a bill that would, among other things, "require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science."
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by VLM on Monday February 11 2019, @06:42PM
I am not on that team, but my observation of their actions would imply they're kinda into academic scientific literary crit on the Bible.
So what the author thinks, and what the author wrote, are not the point, its more like trying to gain insight on contemporary modern society (for possibly weird values of modern society) by deconstructing the text to act as a mirror to view modern society. Along with heavy doses of abstract symbolism.
So an unintentionally pitiful example I'm making up as I go along would be the point of the book of genesis story of the first day light was created and the second day the dirt and oceans, wasn't to document the facts (like... why? what use could that possibly be?) but first of all to set off the civilizational meme of light side / dark side and god is the side of the good / light side, and secondly to make a philosophical statement about creating things (computer programs? Dog houses?) such that in this universe, the law for everyone including god, is you have to clearly see what you're doing before you get started making stuff, which seems like quite reasonable advice. I mean, I KNOW some programmers who start coding before they know what they're trying to do, I make money off fixing their F ups.
That's a pitiful literary crit interpretation of two days from a creation science perspective; I'm probably Fing up but not intentionally. The point is making some kind of insight on your life. Scientific in the soft sciences sense not hard sciences. You can't learn much hard science geology from a 2000 year old book.
My creation science insight from a brief study of the book of genesis is demand a clearly written spec before slinging code together.
A good analogy seems to be interpreting poems. Or koans. Where the point of the process usually isn't figuring out the "unlock key" so as to move as quickly as possible thru the set, nor is it to simply memorize the koan, its more to develop the skills for the sake of the skills. Kinda like the purpose of weight lifting usually isn't to to suspend cast iron above the firmament, we have better techs to do that; its all about the experience and side effects.
So... the biology textbook disagrees is about as interesting and relevant to them as the existence of a sports team fan aligned to a team different than their own team; somewhere between "thats nice" and "lets go full soccer hooligan on them". The mere existence of "Bears Fan" holds very little sway over "Patriots Fan" generally speaking.
I found arguing with them quite pointless, both the Christian Scientists and the football fans. They seem to greatly enjoy themselves while hurting no one; seems mostly harmless.
Where the conflict comes in, is imagine the face on a life long Chicago Bears fan when the kid enters Geography class and the teacher is like, yeah, I don't care what you been taught, turns out that not only do "The Chicago Bears" not exist, but Chicago doesn't even exist in reality, its all just a bunch of made up human order and paperwork and whatnot. And then the PE coach is like "F this we gonna teach creation science of football as if the Chicago Bears Football Team actually exists so as to gain insights on how to play football as a hobby or sports betting" Even if the Chicago Bears cease to exist because they move to Hawaii and become the Hawaii Bears or something, its still valuable to think about aerobic exercise or whatever.