Smith-Cotton High - "Science is Religion".

[U-said-it]

...Or, they said to the same effect that "evolution is religion".

The pale gray shirts, intended to promote the band’s fall program, feature the image of a monkey progressing through evolutionary stages, emerging as a man. Each figure in the design clutches a brass musical instrument. The band debuted the T-shirts when it marched in the Missouri State Fair parade. Several parents complained after the parade.



Assistant Superintendent Pollitt said complaints by parents made him take action:

“I made the decision to have the band members turn the shirts in after several concerned parents brought the shirts to my attention. If the shirts had said ‘Brass Resurrections’ and had a picture of Jesus on the cross, we would have done the same thing."

Pollitt said the district is required by law to remain neutral where religion is concerned. The only problem, evolution is not a religion, evolution makes no religious claim. Evolution is a scientific theory, on par with the theory of gravity. Evolution is, for all intents and purposes, fact.

Religion and evolution at Smith-Cotton High

[SuperMegatron]

The more I read about this kind of stuff the more I feel that we are just like the Iranians.

[not just souLLy now]

LOL WIDE-SWEEPING GENERALISATIONS AHOY

[U-said-it]

I just find it amazing that 84 years after the Scopes Trial, we now have a rejuvenation of conservatives trying to set back education 150+ years. Especially after Kitzmiller v. Dover where real experts testimony was used to make the judgement, the so called "creation scientists" like Behe had their arguments soundly shredded.

[I.M. Weasel]

Those are actually cool shirts for those crappy HS spirit/ HS advertisement shirts genre. I would refuse to give mine back.

[DaMadFiddler]

Those are actually cool shirts for those crappy HS spirit/ HS advertisement shirts genre. I would refuse to give mine back.

[nods] That's a lot better than most school organization shirts. When I was a freshman in high school (god, was that really 12 years ago?), we had our cross-country team shirts recalled because the back said: "If you see mine, I'm kicking yours" and some parents felt it was inappropriate.

[Chilly Willy]

The only problem, evolution is not a religion, evolution makes no religious claim. Evolution is a scientific theory, on par with the theory of gravity. Evolution is, for all intents and purposes, fact.

That someone can say that shows they're as brainwashed as their opposition. There's a reason it's not called the "Law of Evolution" - it's not a proven fact. It's barely a theory - it's actually closer to a hypothesis. The author of the quote is as closed-minded as the religious idiots.

[Ex-Cyber]

There's a reason it's not called the "Law of Evolution" - it's not a proven fact. It's barely a theory - it's actually closer to a hypothesis.

The idea that there's some kind of promotional ladder of proof that goes hypothesis -> theory -> law is a common misconception. The difference between "law" and "theory" in scientific terminology has nothing to do with how proven something is, but rather a fundamental difference in the nature of what is being talked about.

A law describes a straightforward rule that describes behavior under particular conditions/assumptions. For example Hooke's law relates the displacement of a spring to the force applied to/by the spring; the ideal gas law relates pressure, temperature, and volume of an ideal gas in a closed container; Newton's second law of motion relates the force applied to/by an object to its acceleration. Experiments have been constructed that violate all of these "laws", but they're good enough for most situations where they would be needed.

A theory provides an overall explanation of a set of related phenomena, and theories often contain laws as components. For example, the non-relativistic/non-quantum movement of objects is described by the theory of classical mechanics, which incorporates Newton's laws of motion. Electromagnetic theory describes electricity and magnetism, and incorporates Coloumb's Law, the Biot-Savart Law, Gauss's Law, and so on.

[U-said-it]

I think you're confusing terms. Facts ≠ Theories.

It is a fact that the liquid water covers about ~70% pecent of this planet, and it is a fact that it's more than 3.6 billion years old. It is a fact that cellular life has been around for at least half of that period. It is a fact that organisms currently existing have not always been so. It is a fact that organisms in the past are no longer living. It is a fact that all living forms come from previous living forms , so all present forms of life arose from ancestral forms that were different.

Generally speaking scientific theories explain facts.

If you're interested, here are a couple links to a site that has some info:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html

[BlackAura]

It doesn't really help that the definition of the term "theory" has entirely different meanings in math and science, and that neither of them quite overlap with the colloquial meaning (which is basically an idea, possibly supported by anecdotal evidence and nothing more).

Scientific theories are observational - they describe how things work, and can be used to predict how other things will work. You can't actually prove them. You can find supporting evidence, or contradicting evidence. Even if we find contradictions, that doesn't necessarily make a theory any less valid or useful. Basic newtonian physics, for example, has plenty of known contradictions. However, it's still a close enough approximation, and the areas where it doesn't work are well defined, so we keep using it.

In maths, a theorem is actually something that can be proved. You start with stuff that has either already been proven, or stuff that's assumed to be true (like "1 + 1" will always come out with the answer "2"). The proof then demonstrates that, assuming the proof is correct and your assumptions are correct, the theorem will work.

Lots of people seem to assume that a theory in science has to work the same way as a theorem in maths, or as it does in colloquial English. This leads them to either demand proof, where none is possible, or dismiss things out of hand because it's "just a theory".

The theory of evolution is a fairly well accepted scientific theory. It doesn't even necessarily relate to biology - it can apply equally to language or culture, for example. To my knowledge, nobody has actually been able to come up with any contradicting evidence, but there's plenty of supporting evidence.

There's really no other way to explain antibiotic-resistant bacteria, for example. For that matter, how come rats are pretty much immune to rat poison, when it used to be so effective?

By this stage, I think anyone claiming that evolution is wrong is just ignorant, willfully or not. Claiming that it's a religious belief is similarly ignorant - a religious belief requires faith, which is a willingness to believe with no evidence, or even in spite of evidence.

[Specially Cork]

It doesn't mater what you call evolution. A single shred of evidence supporting it is a single shred more than any religion has.