Time to ridicule Kansas, again!

To all my friends saying, "wait, I've been doing that for 4 years, you don't have to tell me." I do, STFU and read, and you can make more fun of Kansas, either that, or you'll say it's not even worth it. In the later case, you're obligated to make fun of Kansas atleast 10 times about this. :)

It's going to be hard to compete with 300,000 blog entires about Kansas and Intelligent design about this news, go read it if you haven't heard. Regardless...

First off, a Vatican minister said this about Intelligent Design "The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim." He also (same speech) "backed" evolution, last week:

Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the Genesis description of how God created the universe and Darwin's theory of evolution were "perfectly compatible" if the Bible were read correctly.

So, The school board in Kansas is more fundamentalist than the Vatican, which really sets a new bar for being christian in Kansas. This is the first thing that needs to be made fun of.

Secondly, Intelligent Design simply is not science and should not be taught in biology class. Intelligent Design's main concepts/beliefs are Irreducible complexity, Specified complexity, Fine-tuned universe, Co-evolution and Ecosystems which all try to disprove evolution, more than prove an alternate theory. There is no credible scientific evidence to support any of those 4 concepts/beliefs. And the Kansas school board is using those ID beliefs regardless to cast doubt on evolution.

Evolution is a theory and has it's unknowns, but using Intelligent design (which belongs in a comparative religion or philosophy class) to 'prove' those unknowns, by changing the definition of science (that's all/least they could do), also needs to be made fun of.

And lastly, In 1999 the school board decided to do something similar. I took biology I/II during 1999/2000 in a Kansas HS within one of the two districts (kansas city, lawrence) which voted democratic. Our biology teacher didn't teach us anything about intelligent design then (it didn't exist like it does now), he only didn't test us over evolution, which he did teach. All of that crap got overturned in 2001 (school board re-election after enough ridicule), but now it's back. It used to be called creationism, now it's Intelligent Design, it was belief then, and still is, but is now being portrayed as science.

Both times teachers in Kansas lost the right to use the NEA and NSTA's science curriculum. I'm leaving out how in school board hearings leading up to this, scientists didn't show up, and what exact changes the school board made.

Let the ridiculing and making fun of Kansas commence! Electing more sane people back into the school board... hopefully. Here are some bumper stickers...



I'm getting myself a "Fine... I evolved" T-shirt, and my favorites so far, a "Evolution, it's not a belief" and "If we outlaw the teaching of evolution, only outlaws will evolve!" bumper stickers.
Honorable mention: http://www.venganza.org/
Quite funny, worth a read...