On Nov 3, 2008, at 10:08 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:
I suppose it would depend on what the motivation was for doing so in
lieu of
also teaching evolution. The reason for the "teach no more evolution"
directive in Los Alamos was due to pressure from the Religious
Right. That,
and a hopelessly corrupted US-wide educational system which provided
an
environment that was prone to caving in to the demands of the "Moral
Majority".
That really is sad. I had no idea Los Alamos was so impaired.
BTW, I'd like to point out that "Creationism" and Creationist
beliefs fly in
the face of modern cosmology.
Yes, and they do not get modern cosmology tossed out of the schools.
Why? Its solid formal foundations.
If you go to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution
.. you'll see that evolution almost immediately discusses DNA
structures and so on. They break away from the "story" of evolution
into its most formalizable successes. I seriously doubt
fundamentalists could cause DNA genetics to get tossed from our schools.
Googling "Evolution Textbook", I find similar results: they get to
genetics etc pretty quickly. (Although I really appreciate other
forms of evolution mechanics like Lynn Margulis: Microcosmos: Four
Billion Years of Microbial Evolution)
It seems to me that God did a great job with evolution. I mean, such
a great process. Create some stuff, invent time, set the clock
ticking and you're done. Brilliant! Then He gets to focus on the
things that really matter like compassion, karma, love and so on.
(I'd better ground myself!)
-- Owen
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
