Bluenose

[Bluenose puts on his rude, crude streetsmart cynical ballcap]

You all are missing the most important point of all political crap:
the money and who cuts the budget pie, ie "it's the money, stupid" is what this is all about.

The money grubbing radical "religious" right wing nuts want your tax money. [The largest local and state or regional budget items are education at all levels and science related things including safe food, air, water etc]

They want as much as they can get from the sheep and they want all they can get from the government. They are in politics to try to turn back the clock on "liberal science" ie evolution etc.

[End of short rant, we return you to your regular high, lofty idealistic thread]

ps: Hi Tyler, interesting post.

Gurdur

............

Tyler Durden

What's up with the editing, Gurdur?

Were you afraid of actually tippin' your hand and lettin' the "emotional" emotional know you actually kept count, and *gasp* cared?

Gurdur

well, first off I saw emotional's post, and replied to it as you saw (though I fail to see why you think I "cared" _).

Then I read back in the thread and saw the mod Doubting Didymus's warning, and I thought:
oh oh

You see, Doubting Didymus has never forgiven me for declaring his beloved viruses non-alive, and then winning a bet easily against him (about a certain thread ), so if anyone is going to get their posts in this thread deleted, it'ld probably be me.


And emotional would probably only find my post further evidence of the Universe having a personal downer on him, so I edited out my post.

Bluenose

Radio news just said that a $15,000,000 AIDS prevention bill just passed US Congress, with 1/3 for "sexual abstenence" programs. IOW another example of feeding religion with the public money. They are sure not going to pay SecWeb or PP to write secular morality guidelines. That money will end up supporting some religious group, even if disguised as health care providers.

Would not that money prevent more AIDS if invested in condoms?

I may have not connected all the dots in my little rant supra, so I will try to connect the rant with the OP.

Teaching "creation science" vs. evolution is only part of the problem IMO. The problem in the US is that the US Supreme Court has declared "creation" teaching in public funded schools an unconstitutional "establishment of religion".

Now the OP is about the UK and money from a rich car dealer for tech schools [I am not sure what age level attends those schools.] My point is that there is going to be tax money involved in those schools, one way or another. Student loans, research grants, equipment etc.

I think if people want to study creation mythology or teach it to their kids, they can do it without tax money. Email says Gurdur replied, I will post this with reserved right to edit after I read up to .....

EDIT to add: OK, Gurdur's dots were not about my failure to get all my ideas properly connected.

Doubting Didymus

What's this about winning a bet? I think you'll find that if you review the history of that particular occasion, the demonstration of a certain image was part of that bets criteria. You claimed that said image was contained within a certain thread, but you were mistaken. It is nowhere to be seen, as a matter of fact.

Seeing as the imiage was not the whole of the bet, I will not be forcing you to your obligatory week of sweetness and polite frivolity, however, I think it is grounds to resume my previous position on viral living status.

I will take your self-edit as an example of good citizenship, you antiviral agent you.

Hugo Holbling

An interesting post, Tyler. I'm still struggling to see the danger inherent in my proposals, given both that several people here have said that they learned about evolution via the challenge of creationism and that Dawkins is so sure the former will win out in any fair contest.

Alas, i'll be away for the weekend, but i look forward to any further responses when i get back.

Wounded King

No one really gives two hoots if you teach creationism in schools. They care if you teach it in a biology class as a valid, or indeed superior, alternative to evolution.

Albion

Well, if anybody's interested in the sort of curriculum the British creationists have in mind for these schools, here's an article, originally on the Christian Institute site, by the head of science at Emmanuel College, all about Bible-based science:

http://www.darwinwars.com/lunatic/liars/layfield.html

The Christian Institute has ideas about equivalent Bible-based curricula for all sorts of other subjects too:

http://www.christian.org.uk/html-pub.../lectures.html

The science one was there last year but was taken down (temporarily, so they said) after the Emmanuel College situation hit the headlines.

I think it's appalling that Tony Blair has managed to avoid condemning this stuff at least twice now in public. It certainly gives the idea that teaching creationism as science in schools in Britain isn't a big deal for him.

Wounded King

My brain hurts having read that, I need to lie down in a darkened room, or run some gels to get the science back into my system.