{"id":3001,"date":"2002-08-23T11:00:11","date_gmt":"2002-08-23T16:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=3001"},"modified":"2002-08-23T11:00:11","modified_gmt":"2002-08-23T16:00:11","slug":"damned_dirty_ap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/08\/23\/damned_dirty_ap.html","title":{"rendered":"Damned, dirty apes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Those whacky school board members in Cobb County (the second largest county in Georgia) have expanded their war on evil-lution. Previously they’ve slapped labels on their science books noting evolution “is a theory, not a fact,” and should be “approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.” Now they’ve voted to require teachers to give a “balanced education<\/a>” about the origin of life, giving equal weight to evolution and biblical interpretations.<\/p>\n

Board members said they were not restricting the teaching of evolution or encouraging the teaching of creationism. The policy, they said, was simply a reflection of the district’s philosophy of teaching a wide and objective range of ideas, particularly in discussing “disputed views of academic subjects, including the origin of species.”
\nAfter the vote, Gordon O’Neill, a board member, led his colleagues in a prayer: “Heavenly father, we ask that you provide to all of us a clear understanding of our fellow man and an acceptance of a diversity of thinking. Amen.”<\/p>\n

Now isn’t that cute? Who’d have thought “acceptance of a diversity of thinking” is something a Georgia school board member would pray for?<\/p>\n

The policy adopted last night says that evolution “remains an area of intense interest, research and discussion among scholars,” and so should be handled with objectivity.
\nJay Dillon, a district spokesman, said teachers should teach “all sides of an issue” instead of just evolution.<\/p>\n

The difference, of course, is that while there are scholars who debate the precise reasons that the US beat the Soviet Union in the Cold War, nobody debates whether the Soviet Union lost.<\/p>\n

Similarly, while you will find a lot of debate in the scientific community about the modality of evolution, or about the precise mechanisms by which it takes place, nobody debates evolution per se<\/i>, as a blanket label.<\/p>\n

Of course, you can find plenty of “scholars” who disagree. Many of them have D.D. in their list of scholarly degrees.<\/p>\n

If the Georgia school board is honest about wanting a variety of life\/world-origin “theories” to be taught, of course, I’m sure they’ll give equal time as well to a variety of religious origin tales, be they Navajo, Norse, Buddhist, or Masai.<\/p>\n

After all, it’s not that they want to put forward only one <\/i>religion’s agenda, right?<\/p>\n

UPDATE<\/u>: Well, perhaps this will be a good thing. Or, more importantly, entertaining<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those whacky school board members in Cobb County (the second largest county in Georgia) have expanded their war on evil-lution. Previously they’ve slapped labels on their science books noting evolution…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","category-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12708,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/02\/20\/florida_evolves.html","url_meta":{"origin":3001,"position":0},"title":"Florida evolves","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 20-Feb-08 9:46pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Florida's state board of education has (gasp!) adopted new guidelines that (shock! horror! dismay!) require that evolution be taught in schools. What sort of crazy-ass atheistic commie regime are they...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8304,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/12\/20\/dont_show_us_yo.html","url_meta":{"origin":3001,"position":1},"title":"Don’t show us your ID","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 20-Dec-05 10:30am","format":false,"excerpt":"A federal judge has ruled that a Pennsylvania public school district cannot require the teaching of -- or even standardized disclaimer about -- Intelligent Design in biology classes. 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When the Dover Area School Board voted to require the teaching of intelligent design Monday night, it likely...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":27187,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/03\/21\/free-play-time-in-the-asylum.html","url_meta":{"origin":3001,"position":4},"title":"Free Play Time in the Asylum","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 21-Mar-12 1:36pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I think the GOP (et al.) folks in state legislatures have realized that we've reached a tipping point of Crazy, with too many different stories to read (and protest) ever day -- abortion, birth control, immigration, evolution, the designated hitter rule -- leading to them doing whatever the hell they\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7712,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/01\/13\/unstuck.html","url_meta":{"origin":3001,"position":5},"title":"Unstuck","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 13-Jan-05 9:33pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A judge has ruled that the Cobb County school district must remove their goofy \"evolution is just a theory\" stickers from their biology textbooks. US District Judge Clarence Cooper noted:...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3001\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}